lifted. “Go on,” he said, “You, first. I’ll pass the buckets in through to you.”
Being so small, Jimmy passed easily under the fence. Eric, however, was another matter. “Here you are,” he said, passing the buckets to Jimmy. Crouching down, on all fours, Eric began crawling under the fence. However, he became stuck. “Are you holding it up all the way?” he called out from his undignified position below.
“Yes, I am.”
Then why am I stuck?”
“Because you’re too big,” Jimmy explained. “I told you only last week this would soon happen. “You are growing too fast. This hole is now too small for you.”
Huffing and puffing, Eric would hear none of it, and he tried even harder to pass through the small space. RIP. Accompanied by a loud ripping sound, he suddenly shot through the gap under the fence.
“There, I told you I could do it,” Eric said triumphantly, trying to forget the sound he had just heard. “Come on,” he said, “we have a good way to go, yet.” With that, he began sliding his way down the steep incline ahead of them.
From behind, Jimmy’s eyes were drawn to the consequence of the ripping sound, a sound they had both heard whether Eric admitted it or not – a tear in the seat of his pants. “Eric, wait!” he called out. Eric, being Eric, would hear none of it, and he barrelled on, slipping and sliding his way down the slope.
By the time Jimmy had caught up with him, at the bottom of the slope, his best friend had come to realise the errors of his ways. Feeling rather embarrassed, he asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a pin handy, would you?”
Laughing, Jimmy rummaged through his duffle coat pockets, to see if he had anything resembling a pin. Withdrawing a gloved hand, he sorted through the various items upon it. There was a pencil, a rubber, two blackjack sweets, a half-eaten sherbet fountain, a three-quarters licked gobstopper covered in fluff – and a pin. Eric was in luck. “Ah, here you are,” he said, separating the pin from a sticky bit of something that might have once been a piece of liquorice shoelace.
With the problem of the torn trousers thus sorted, the two friends began the task they were there for – to collect coal, the coal their families desperately needed to keep warm. You see, from the moment they had passed under the fence, they had been within the grounds of the local coalmine. Now, well within it, at the base of the largest of its many slagheaps, where the best bits of coal tended to fall and collect, silence and subterfuge were paramount. The only problem, however, was that the owners of the coalmine also knew this, and men, guards, patrolled it day and night, to stop the likes of them taking even one small piece of coal.
This was a bone of contention for Jimmy, because the owners of the coalmine ignored the slagheaps, allowing them to grow bigger and bigger. In his young mind, he could see no problem, nothing at all wrong with collecting the pieces of coal that gathered there.
“Hurry up, Eric,” said Jimmy, who had already half filled his battered old bucket.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Eric replied. Stopping, cocking his head to one side, he asked, “Did you hear something?”
Holding a lump of shiny black coal in his hand, Jimmy froze with fright. However, he heard nothing, not a thing. Finally, picking up enough courage to speak, he said, “It must have been a piece of coal falling down the slagheap.” Relieved, the two boys resumed their coal collecting duties…
When their buckets were full, Jimmy and Eric began the long, torturous return journey back up the slippery slagheap. It would have been a hard enough task for an adult to try, but for two small children encumbered by buckets filled to the top with heavy coal it was a slow, painful, torturous process that took them a full thirty minutes to do. Their fingers ached from the frost and their toes were numb. It was going to be a very slow climb indeed.
After climbing for thirty minutes, the two boys were barely thirty feet higher from where they had started. It was beginning to get bright; the weak watery moon gone, replaced by a golden globe rising slowly above the eastern horizon. Although its rays were weak, they were warm enough to begin melting the frost. It was a double-edged sword. As their fingers and toes began to defrost, so too did the slagheap, making it all the more slippery underfoot.
Again thinking he heard something, Eric looked down over his shoulder. At the base of the slagheap, he saw a man, a guard staring up at them. “Oi! You two!” the man hollered. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Hearing this, the boys stopped dead in their tracks, hoping they might blend into the slagheap and thus disappear from sight.
Shouting up at them, the guard said, “You’re trespassing! You do know that, don’t you?” Receiving no reply, he said angrily, “Trespassers get shot!”
Well, that certainly did it, on hearing those words Jimmy and Eric dropped their buckets, coal and all, and scorched their way up the remainder of the slagheap so fast the guard was left speechless. He was also left hurt, as the two buckets came tumbling down the slagheap, smashing into him, knocking him for six.
Eric had no problem passing under the fence, this time. He shot through the gap as if he had lost several pounds in weight, and he kept on running, way ahead of Jimmy, all the way home. It was only when he entered the safety of their own street did he slow down, allowing his friend to catch up.
Puffing and panting, the two boys struggled to catch their breath. People were beginning to stir, people with questioning faces, wondering why Jimmy and Eric had coal dust all over them, but no coal in evidence to see. Embarrassed to have returned empty-handed, Eric suggested, “Same time tomorrow?”
Smiling, Jimmy replied, “You bet!”
“But we have no buckets!” Eric bemoaned.
With a mischievous grin, Jimmy replied, “That guard has another thing coming if he thinks he’s keeping my bucket! Don’t worry, Eric. We will retrieve our buckets, and he will get his comeuppance! See you tomorrow, bye.”
CONTD.
Oh, to Have Legs
Oh to have legs like insects and things,
To walk on all fours is something I dream,
Or even just two, like HU-MAN THEINGS.
Would make me so happy, would realise my dreams
I dream of the day, I grow legs and see,
What it feels like to walk instead of sliming slowly,
You see, I am a poor slug with no legs at all,
A garbled old thing; slime and slow drawl.
Now don’t get me wrong it’s not all bad, I confess,
There are some perks living in a damp mess,
But I cannot help wonder about legs, I admit,
Oh lord give me legs, be it two, four or six.
A Snail
One day, while I was contentedly slipping and sliming my way down the garden path, I came face to face with a snail! ‘A snail?’ I can hear you asking, ‘What’s so strange about that?’ read on my friend, read on...
This was no ordinary snail, not by a long chalk. The snail in front of me, barring my way down the garden path, was big, enormous, it was a veritable GIANT!
‘Yeh, yeh,’ I can now hear you saying, ‘Who does he think he is, snails could never be considered large by any stretch of the imagination.’ Normally I would have to agree with you, that snails, like slugs, are small, quite nondescript creatures, but this one really and truly was a GIANT! This snail, standing there, proud and erect, in his huge shell with yellow and brown markings, stripes, running along it, made me look like a dwarf, a midget in comparison.
Smiling, low and syrupy, he began speaking, he said, “Hello there, my slimy friend, and what a grand day it is for anyone fortunate enough to still have his wife.”
Thrown off my guard by such a peculiar introductory piece of gesticulated vocabulary, I struggled to find words sufficient for a reply.
Suffering from no such affliction, the huge snail began speaking again, he said, “Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Myles; Smiles Myles is how my dear wife used to address me...that is, until
yesterday...” With that, he began sobbing, slow, laborious, gelatinous and slimy blubbering.
Peeved, feeling for the hurt, the pain that this mountain of a snail was so obviously enduring, I said, “What do you mean...until yesterday?”
A smile; for a split second I thought I saw a smile on his slippery face, then sobbing even louder, he continued with his story, “My poor wife in gone,” he howled, “taken by the HU-MAN THEINGS, to be sold in their market, boiled in the pot and then eaten.”
“Why, that’s terrible!” I said, on hearing of this aberration from their accepted way of behaviour.”How did it happen?” I asked, genuinely feeling an affinity for the snail giant before me.
Holding back his sobs, he said, “They were there...in the park, early yesterday morning...”
“How did it happen?” I asked, totally drawn into his sorry story.
“I had forgotten that it was Friday, market day,” he blubbered, “but why should I have remembered,” he continued, “for they had never hunted us, before!”
“Hunted?”
“Yes, hunted,” he said loudly, enforcing his point. “Like, like ...animals!”
“But we are animals, albeit small ones, no insult indented, Myles, to your own great size,” I replied.
“None taken,” he answered blankly “They were there...inside the gates of the park...lying in wait for us, me and the missus. We were going into the park for our breakfast; there are some fine dahlias in there, very fine dahlias indeed.” For a moment, he cheered up,