HEIDI’S HOUSE
And Other Rhymes
by Linda Talbot
Illustrations by Linda Talbot
Copyright Linda Talbot 2013
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Table of Contents and Illustrations
Heidi's House
Where's Fred?
[Fred the Fish]
Solomon Tucket
The Sorry Tale of Slurp, Burp and Slops
The Black Umbrella
Rollo the Rabbit
The Little People
The Luminous Shoes
[Timothy Wright]
An Apple for the Teacher
[Miss Henshaw]
Downstream
Grey-Faced Men
Two Heads
[Benjamin Biggins]
The Wind
The Camel
Small Secrets
Black Tom
Sailors' Socks
[Hickory Fish]
Change of Season
The Spider
Winter Sea
Rock Pools
The Story of Jeremy Pitts
Author's Note and Contact Blog
Here is the house where Heidi was born
with a patchwork roof and a bright blue lawn.
Where Heidi sits when the weather’s fair
or she climbs to the attic or slides on the stair.
Then one grey day Heidi is seen
being carried away by the Fairy Queen.
Everyone sighs for they know very well
that she’ll shortly be motionless under a spell.
Her eyes will turn green and her face will go grey
and she will be shut in a tree trunk all day.
Her voice will be stolen, her long pigtails knotted
and she’ll have to eat toadstools until she turns spotted.
The house feels so empty where Heidi was born
his unhappy tears tumble onto the lawn.
He wishes for feet so that he can roam
and find spotted Heidi and carry her home.
No sooner has this wish passed out of the door
than feet begin sprouting from under the floor.
He moves each one stiffly over the lawn
and in six strides has flattened a whole field of corn.
He billows out smoke and crashes through trees
and “Heidi!” he calls on the soft summer breeze.
And from where she’s been tied up for more than a week
Heidi can hear him but she cannot speak.
Then the house hears a squeal from under his floor.
He turns down his eyes and by the back door
the Queen is squashed like an overripe pear
and Heidi’s voice drifts upon the night air.
For her voice has returned now the Queen is no more
and her eyes are as blue as they were before.
Her spots disappear and her pigtails hang long
and from far off she hears the house break into song.
He finds her sitting under the tree
happily laughing because she is free.
She blinks at the house and turns white with surprise;
where windows once were are two very large eyes.
“Oh house!” says Heidi, “What feet you have grown!
“Did you really walk all this way on your own?”
“Yes, come on inside,” the house replies
and opens the front door at once very wide.
In ten long strides they reach the blue lawn
just as the summer night turns into dawn.
And the feet of the house begin to shrink
which rattles the doors and cracks the sink.
But Heidi is dreaming in her small bed
with the jumbled up bedclothes over her head.
The house shuts his windows against the cold dawn
and with a deep sigh sinks back in the lawn.
BACK TO THE START!
Where's Fred?
Through the sea shoot the silver fish;
the rainbow fish and plaice,
the invisible fish who fly in a race
and a fish called Fred
who is purple and red
and who has a freckled face.
The fishermen chase him under the moon,
while Fred puffs up like a coloured balloon
as he nibbles at weeds and swallows whole fish.
He does not want to be fried on a dish,
so he grows even larger - as big as the boat
and comes to the surface to splutter and float.
Then he bursts in a shower of purple and red
and the fishermen cry, “What’s happened to Fred?”
Now Fred is a rainbow spread over the sea;
then a shimmering bridge stretching up to the moon.
The fishermen step from their bobbing boat
and walk up the rainbow, cum fish, cum balloon.
They cry, “Look! There’s Venus.
“Oh, look! There is Mars.
“And there is the Great Bear’s head.
“And there is Orion and millions of stars.
“And a moon like a cheese, but where’s Fred?”
“I’m here, here and here,”
the rainbow declares
and its colours illumine the night.
“I will not be fried or battered or beaten
“And, needless to say, I will NOT be eaten!
“Now I belong to the night and the day.
“I’m red, blue and green and I’m melting away.
“You’ll have to catch other fish instead.”
The fishermen slide back into their boat.
But still they demand, “Where’s Fred?”
BACK TO THE START!
Solomon Tucket
Solomon Tucket lives in a bucket
once used for carrying coals.
The handle squeaks and Solomon shrieks
when the wind whistles in through the holes.
The bucket is tied to a very tall tree
and sighs as it swings in the air.
So does Solomon, wondering why
everyone comes to stare.
“Why do you live in a bucket?” they ask.
Solomon shouts through the holes,
“I looked for a house, but all I could find
was this bucket for carrying coals.”
Sadly the people wander away
this curious story to tell.
Then an old man with very dim eyes arrives
and carries the bucket away to the well.
“Oh, no!” shouts Solomon, “Look at the holes.
“If you lower the bucket, I’ll drown.”
But the old man is deaf, as well as dim-eyed
and slowly the bucket slides down.
In the slippery well is a slimy smell
and the ghost of Solomon’s cry.
The bucket is bouncing against the wet walls
and Solomon’s waiting to die.
He remembers the curious homes he has known,
like the boot with the broken toe,
the barrel of beer where he lived for a year
and the saucepan he found in the snow.
The bucket is best, in spite of the holes
and the wind when it starts to blow.
For even the wind is less chilling than beer
and warmer than inches of snow.
; But what will become of him down in the well
when the water flows over his head?
I should have looked for a dry ditch, he thinks
or an empty box under a bed.
Then the bucket stops plunging and swings to and fro
and Solomon’s struck by the thought
as it starts moving upwards - the old man’s dim-eyed
and the rope on the bucket’s too short.
The water is winking a long way below;
so deep and the colour of lead.
The bucket bumps twice and two very large lumps
appear on Solomon’s head.
At the top of the well comes a sickening lurch
which increases the bruises to three.
“I know where there’s water,” the old man mutters
and stumbles away to the sea.
Solomon’s bruises are bright black and blue,
but he happily peers through the holes.
Seeing the sun, he says, “How well I’ve done
to live in a bucket that once carried coals.”
BACK TO THE START!
The Sorry Tale of Slurp, Burp and Slops
High on a hill live Slurp, Burp and Slops
with their legs fat as butter and heads like mops.
They bumble about in the dead of night
round dustbins whose lids are not left on too tight.
With a bang and a clatter each slithers and flops
among old paper bags and the bones of meat chops
and carries them off to the hilltop high,
where the heaps spread and tumble against the night sky.
For Slurp, Burp and Slops have to hoard all they find
and seldom leave anything lying behind;
bits of chicken and crusts of bread,
a clock with no hands, a doll with no head.
Stockings with ladders turned inside out
and stuffed in a teapot without any spout.
Eggshells, boxes and bags full of holes,
a sad pair of slippers without any soles.
The dustmen stare at the empty bins
and gather a handful of left behind tins.
“People are tidy,” says one called Fred
and shrugging his shoulders, he goes back to bed.
But Slurp, Burp and Slops have such a large heap
there is nowhere left for them to sleep.
The tin cans are sharp and lie piled on the floor
and boxes and bedsteads have blocked up the door.
For eighteen days they crunch old bones
and nobody hears their hungry moans,
until their mops turn brown as leaves
and they start to rattle around the knees.
“I know we were greedy,” they weakly moan,
“But look how pale and thin we have grown.”
They bumble no more but mope in the gloom
and flop in confusion around the room.
The tins turn rusty, the doll’s lost an arm
“What’s the time?” ticks the clock and rings his alarm.
The teapot groans, the slippers mutter
and wish they’d been thrown out in the gutter.
Soon Slurp, Burp and Slops moan no more
and their mops fall to pieces and lie by the door.
The dustbins are bulging, but only the breeze
plucks out the paper and laughs in the trees.
Then one day the dustmen pass the door
and see the mess and the mops on the floor.
“Here’s all the rubbish!” they shout, “Hooray!”
And carry Slurp, Burp and Slops away.
The moral of this tale is “Beware!”
and carefully choose what you want here and there.
Or your legs may grow squashy, your heads turn to mops
and the dustmen will carry you off with the slops.
BACK TO THE START!
The Black Umbrella
The black umbrella lies broken and bent.
“What a life!” he is heard to mutter.
“I’m made of best cane and I kept off the rain
“and here I am, sprawled in the gutter.”
The black umbrella was blown inside out
by a wind that blustered and whirled,
that snatched at the nylon and wrenched at the spokes
the moment that he was unfurled.
His owner, a small man, was swept off his feet
and carried aloft with a cry.
The umbrella - absurd - flapped about like a bird
then flopped down in the gutter to die.
He struggles to gather his spokes in one piece
and to straighten his handle of cane.
But they splinter and cry, then subside with a sigh
as he sneezes, awash in the rain.
He shivers and sobs at the side of the road
and hears wet feet hurrying by.
THEY’RE going home, he thinks with a groan,
but where do umbrellas go when they die?
Do they drift through the grey like improbable birds
with wings black as bad-tempered clouds?
Or laugh from the heights like flyaway kites
above wide-mouthed and wondering crowds?
Or do they lie sighing in rain-spattered fields,
gazing helplessly up at the sky
as the rain slowly soaks through their shivering spokes,
while they dream of the days when they kept people dry?
The umbrella’s tears wash away with the rain
as the bright sound of singing is heard,
and a man in a mac with a bulging brown sack
picks up the umbrella without a word.
Inside the sack are other umbrellas;
broken or blown outside in.
After bumping around, they are banged on the ground
and the umbrella mender looks down with a grin.
He finds old umbrellas and carries them home
where he mends them with thread and new cane.
Then he waits for a shower and sells ten in one hour
before splashing back home in the rain.
But our broken umbrella has special new spokes
and is placed with great pride on a shelf.
And when it rains hard, the umbrella mender
uses the big black umbrella himself.
BACK TO THE START!
Rollo the Rabbit
Rollo the rabbit takes the air.
It is March and he feels full of vim.
He scutters and bounds on his big back legs
to the stream where a water witch swims.
She is wavy and sleek with water-weed hair
and chuckles on seeing the rabbit.
She must make a spell, for Rollo can’t know
she cannot get out of the habit.
She waves a long finger, dripping with slime
and Rollo is wrapped in a fog.
She cackles and croaks in her water-weed cloaks
as she turns Rollo into a frog.
But the spell is worn out and stops at his snout,
so he still has his long floppy ears.
He sits on the bank as the witch waves goodbye
and fills up the stream with his tears.
He tries hard to swim, but his ears fill with fish,
so he sinks in the grass in despair.
Two children arrive with a net and a tin
which they drop as they stand still and stare.
The witch swims back with a shoal of fish
and the children spread their net wide.
Thinking they’ve found a different dish,
they soon have the water witch wriggling inside.
Spluttering with anger, she musters a spell,
but her water-weed hair is wound tight round her head.
The children, fearing she’d be tough to eat,
decide to play with the witch inste
ad.
“What can you do?” asks Osbert Simms.
“I cast spells and solve riddles,” the water witch sneers.
“Look at this rabbit! Now he’s a frog.”
But Rollo still flaps his untidy ears.
“I think you’re a fraud!” says Betty Bulloo
and wonders now why they caught her
and before she can turn them from children to frogs
pushes her back in the water.
BACK TO THE START!
The Little People
At the bottom of forgotten drawers
and dark and dusty places,
little people live and laugh
with funny crumpled faces.
They are not exactly fairy folk,
they cannot even fly.
But when the room is hot and dark
they may come skipping by.
They gurgle in the water pipes
and run along the stair.
They pull the bedclothes on the floor
and fumble in your hair.
You may think this is nonsense,
but when you’re feeling ill,
there’s sure to be some on your bed
or on the window sill.
To keep them in their hiding place,
be sure to sweep your room,
brush your hair and clean your teeth
and chase them with the broom.
BACK TO THE START!
The Luminous Shoes
Timothy Wright has luminous shoes
which are ideal for walking on dark winter nights.
Motorists see them approaching for miles;
gleaming and glinting like promenade lights.
Timothy Wright is so proud of his shoes,
he makes them walk everywhere, in and out town.
So the shoes begin creaking, their soles are so sore
and they wrinkle their leather up into a frown.
“Oh, shoes, do walk faster!” Timothy says.
But they pull at his heels and grunt instead.
And when he is sleeping, half way through the night,
they creep without creaking from under the bed.