HAPPINESS

It only takes one joyous person to infect an entire population....

It was the worst of times and it was the worst of hopes.

And it was, perhaps, in the worst of cities.

Janine Peacock lived there. She lived in a tiny flat perched almost like a deformed masonry bird of prey on the grimiest street of that city and her constant state was one of suppressed misery. Her cat (getting on in years and incontinent) was miserable. The mice it never caught despite trying until it was breathless were miserable. Even the fleas that somehow clung to its mangy back were miserable.

Everyone, even the neighbours, were miserable. They grunted and grumbled instead of smiling and chirping joyful “good mornings” to each other when they passed on their way in or out of the flats. They scowled and frowned and generally despised each other. Old Sad Mac (his real name was totally unknown even by him) spent most of his time writing limericks of a darkly obscene nature and posting them through the neighbours’ letterboxes, and such was the misery of the neighbours that they didn’t even smile at some of his imaginative rhymes. Then there was Mrs Gimbol, the nosiest lump of female misery you ever did meet, and her favourite trick was kicking Janine’s geriatric cat whenever she saw it which, thankfully so far as the cat was concerned, wasn’t very often.

So we have the scene. Four flats (one of them empty almost since time immemorial or at least since Goudy Withers had passed away) in a small block, and everyone was miserable, and every creature, every swallow that circled in the skies above it, every postman who pushed junk mail through letterboxes that were usually crammed with dirty rhymes, every bin man who emptied every bin, everyone who had anything to do with that rancid corner of creation.

Even the rent collector was miserable, but that probably had something to do with the difficulties he experienced wresting the rent from the grubby hands of the tenants rather than anything substantial in the air.

And this is how it might have stayed, perhaps for an excruciating eternity, but Tom Bombadillo moved in. You might have met him elsewhere for he was a distant relative of a native of Middle Earth, and almost exactly like him. The genes, it might be suggested, had not been diluted down the aeons and geographical relocation. Tom Bombadillo was, as his name suggests, a jolly enough cove and you might think far too jolly to find himself in a sceptic flat in a totally miserable corner of creation.

Janine Peacock was the first of his new neighbours to meet him, and with her mouth turned down against the possibility of her encountering any joy in the world she hunched herself into her own shoulders and went to barge past him on a disgustingly filthy passageway that led to the street that ran past the flats.

But Tom Bombadillo wasn’t going to have anything of it. Here was a neighbour, one who might actually look vaguely human if something shiny entered her heart, and he was going to greet her.

“Why greetings happy lady with sun shining on your pillow,

Come smile at me a moment, at neighbour Bombadillo,

And let me see the gentle curve of pretty lips made happy

And I will sing a song for you, tirra and rippy-rappy.”

Tirra and rippy-rappy? Janine, of course didn’t know what to make of it. She barely remembered what smiling was, and why should this strange little man in his spring-coloured clothes complete with daffodil buttons want her to deform the perfectly normal shape of her lips? And why, in the name of goodness, should she want him to sing for her?

Her confusion might have sent her to a place that nobody likes to go even if they’re as miserable as she always was, but an interruption in the shape of Old Sad Mac sticking his head out of the window and snarling a limerick at them made her pause.

“I once saw a man from Old Pipping

Whose bottom was constantly dripping,

And when he attempted to jump

He produced such a trump

That the locals all ran away, skipping.”

“I’ll never skip, not now and not ever!” declared Janine with such a fierce look of misery shining from her eyes that even Mus Gimbol opened her front door and looked up and down the fronts of the flats.

“Where’s that effing cat?” she bawled, “I need an effing cat to kick!”

Janine looked at her balefully, but said nothing because nobody ever said anything to Mrs Gimbol and she didn’t want to start a new tradition.

“Now silly folks around here, don’t prattle and don’t labour

But look at me and smile, for I’m your brand new neighbour,

And when the evening falls and your heads are on your pillow

Just think of joyful me, of Old Tom Bombadillo!”

“I’ve never head such nonsense in my life!” snarled Janine Peacock, breaking a vow of never talking to strangers until they hadn’t been strangers for above a year or more.

But Tom Bombadillo wasn’t to be thwarted. His enthusiasm for joy was almost uncontrollable, and he started a jolly laugh that rolled round and round the estate of miserable flats until all the fleas leapt off the cat’s back and committed mass suicide by leaping into the nearest fire and the mice all froze where they were until that same cat actually caught one and instead of gobbling it up forged a long-term friendship with it.

Then Mrs Gimbol saw the funny side of life and her face, frozen since birth in a down-turned force of misery, began to ripple and jiggle until it very nearly smiled.

“There was a sweet lady from Crewe

Who revelled in eating crab stew

But when she once started

And upped and then farted

She didn’t know quite what to do...”

“That’s almost funny,” groaned Janine.

“Then let’s dance!” declared Tom Bombadillo, and he danced a little jig and laughed like a child with joy and pointed towards a solitary tree growing in a patch of wasteland the other side of the street.

“Come join in and dance with old Tom Bombadillo,

Come join in and dance round yon willow,

And then when we’ve done and your tired heads are spinning

You’ll know there and then that you’re actually winning!”

And that’s what they did. All four of them, and the cat with its new best whiskery friend. And all because, it seems, one joyful heart spilled over and the soul and spirit of the whole neighbourhood was lifted.

Even the rent collector’s.

© Peter Rogerson 03.07.17