Emily Pilcher
Pilcher’s Farm!
by Graham Duncan
Copyright © 2015 by Graham Duncan
- Emily –
Emily awoke with a start. Keeping her eyes shut tight and with a huge grin on her face, she peeked her big toe out of the bedcovers, seeking the delights carefully stacked at the foot of the bed.
It had been a long-time coming and Emily had counted down the weeks and days but, at last, it was Emily’s birthday and she was eight years old!
Emily leapt out of bed and dived at the pile of presents. In an instant, glorious wrapping paper flew through the air as she ripped away at the wonderful packages. There was a crocodile jigsaw puzzle from Great Grandma, a book of exotic animals from Aunt Marge and a stretchy monkey thing and a sticker book of creepy-crawlies from Grandma and Gramps. Before long, only one parcel remained and it was the biggest one of all!
Emily carefully peeled back a tiny corner of the wrapping paper almost too afraid to peak in case someone had made a terrible mistake and forgotten the one thing she had wanted most of all. Then, closing one eye slightly, she peered through the small hole and gazed within…
All in a flash, Emily beamed. Grinning from ear to ear, she ripped off the rest of the paper and threw it aside. She stared triumphantly at the familiar leatherette style red box with green inlay and gold lettering and read aloud:
‘Maxwell’s Marvellous Menagerie – A luxury farm set with animal stock, yard and machinery. Everything you need to create your very own living, breathing, farm!’
Emily loved animals.
Emily Pilcher lived with her parents on Pilcher’s farm. Set in a beautiful location, the house sat at the foot of a hill, in a valley, surrounded by bright yellow fields and a lake. It was a beautiful place and Emily felt very lucky to live there. The only problem was that Pilcher’s farm was a special sort of farm; a farm that harvested crops for industry – it had no farm animals.
Emily dreamed of living on a proper working farm full of animals of all sorts. Cows and sheep in the fields, little piglets with their curly tails oinking and snuffling in the yard and ducks and geese waddling around, just as a farm should be. She peered out of the window and sighed.
Emily washed, changed and dashed downstairs wearing her favourite red dress and white stockings – her long plaits trailing behind.
As a special birthday treat, Emily’s mother and father, Mr and Mrs Pilcher, had promised a trip to her favourite place in the whole world Wallington Zoo!
- Breakfast -
Emily Pilcher spooned another heap of dry honey puffs into her mouth and contemplated once again how wonderful it would be to live on a real farm with real animals.
‘Just imagine being woken up by a cockerel, “cock-a-doodle-doing!” in the morning - or watching a herd of cows wandering in the fields, swishing their tales,’ she thought. ‘I would be able to tell if it was going to rain or stay dry all day just by looking to see if they were sitting down or standing up… well, at any rate, I might get some fresh milk to go with my breakfast in the morning!’ she mused.
‘Milkman’s late again,’ Mrs Pilcher was saying. ‘Poor Stan, I expect he’s got stuck in the mud again coming up Mudcake lane. I do wish he would use the main road into the farm.’
‘Well Mudcake lane is quite a short-cut from the town,’ said Mr Pilcher, looking up from his newspaper. ‘Saves him going round the old mill; no problem though, we’ll tow him out with the Morris, on the way to the zoo. Easy job for the old girl!’ said Mr Pilcher.
‘I do wish you’d stop referring to that old truck of yours as a girl, young or old!’ said Mrs Pilcher, ‘It really is a bit silly in this day and age!’
‘That old Morris is the best truck in the business - she’ll load up twice as much as these modern trucks and pull twice as hard too!’ said Mr Pilcher defiantly. ‘Silly or not, I’ve got a fresh delivery of rapeseed oil for Rawlins to make in the old girl this afternoon, so if we’re going to make a day of it, we’d better be off.’
Boring old rapeseed oil! Dad was forever going on about rapeseed oil. ‘Keeps industry going,’ Mr Pilcher would often lecture. ‘If it wasn’t for Pilcher’s high-grade rapeseed oil, this nation, and all who work in it, would grind to a halt! The whole nation depends on this farm to keep the wheels of industry turning!’ he would say.
Emily was not really sure what the “wheels of industry” were but sort of knew that they were important. All the same, she did wish they lived on a real farm; you know, a proper farm, with animals roaming around… It seemed a lot more fun than rapeseed oil!
As the Pilcher family set off for the zoo, they stopped off briefly to help the hapless Milkman, whose van was stuck fast in the muddy trail leading up to the back of the farmhouse.
‘Morning Stan,’ said Mr Pilcher, ‘we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy my old son, just you see. Emily, you know what to do my girl!’
Stan looked on as Emily jumped out of the cab and placed a Hessian sack in front of each of the wheels of the milk-van.
Then she tied the tow rope from the tow bar of the Morris to the tow hook of the milk-van. Emily stood well back as Mr Pilcher revved up the engine and slowly started inching forward, gradually pulling the milk-van out of the sticky wet mud.
Just as the wheels of the milk-van rose clear of the mud, Mrs Pilcher cried an almighty ‘WHOOAAH!’ and whacked the side of the old Morris with a colossal THWACK, rocking the old truck about on its axles and knocking poor old Mr Pilcher about a bit too!
‘There you are Stan, back on the straight and narrow,’ said Mum, ‘Ooh, two pints tomorrow and half a dozen eggs please!’
Presently the old Morris honked and puffed its way up the road, belching clouds of smelly black smoke, on its way to the zoo.
- Wallington Zoo -
The black and gold iron gates arched tall and proud over the entrance to Wallington Zoo. People from near and afar, boys, girls, mums and dads, coach-parties and school-outings flocked toward the narrow turnstiles for entrance to the zoo.
Shuffling for position, Emily and her parents joined the back of the snaking queue; they inched forward, step-by-step. It seemed an age before they got anywhere at all, but eventually they found themselves right at the front of the queue. Mrs Pilcher went through the turnstile first, followed by Mr Pilcher, then it was Emily’s turn - with one hard push and an enormous “clang”, the turnstile rotated, admitting her. At last they were in!
‘Right, let’s go and have nice hot cup of tea!’ said Mr Pilcher. ‘Ooh yes and I must find the loo!’ added Mrs Pilcher. Emily sighed…
Emily loved being at the zoo. On hot summer days she would stroll around eating ice cream and sit down to watch the seals and sea lions splash around in their pool. Then it would be over to see the penguins queuing up to flop off their diving ledges into the cool water below. She would laugh as they waddled out of the water and up, onto the ramp, to join the queue once again - like smart waiters busily serving meals at a restaurant.
On cold winter days she would head to the reptile house, where it was always nice and warm, to watch the sly movements and staring eyes of snakes, geckos and chameleons as they basked in their dark dry habitats. Occasionally she would hear the wisp of a rapid tongue flicking out to taste the air, or the ominous hiss of a rattle.
Today was fine and Emily was content to wander from place to place with her parents, soaking up the sights, sounds and smells of the zoo at large.
- Miss Yorktown -
At two o’clock, the Pil
cher family arrived at the head zookeeper’s cabin to listen to the head keeper, Miss Yorktown, talk about the feeding habits of the zoo’s animals.
Miss Yorktown, it turned out, was a plump animated woman with a loud pompous voice, who threw her arms around all over the place when she was talking. She stood before her audience in green zoo issue dungarees and muddy Wellington boots that looked as though they had not been cleaned in a very long time.
‘…Oh yes and of course a fully grown tapir will easily eat over 20 pounds of vegetation in a single day!’ Miss Yorktown lectured, ‘while a giraffe can eat up to 50 pounds of twigs and leaves in a single sitting. A gorilla, on the other hand, will gobble up over 60 pounds of vegetation in a single afternoon!’
‘Now - how do we get all of that food to all three hundred hungry animals, inside a single lunch hour, I hear you ask?’
‘Technology! That’s how,’ commanded Miss Yorktown.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the world’s first “AutoManagement, Feeding, Cleaning and Veterinary Console!” and, with a click of her fingers, the garage door of the cabin behind her slowly raised itself into the air…
Emily gasped and stared at the