GRISELDA HAS SOME FUN

Griselda and Bumptious find themselves aboard a ;pirate ship where school children have a nautical experience...

“It’s so sweet of you to leave your charming little crow’s nest where a passing … er, broomstick … might find a safe landing place,” grinned Griselda to the Captain, who was smelling sweetly of shower gel and shaving foam.

It was next morning and she had flown, with her political passenger, down from the high point at the top of the pirate’s ship mast down to the deck, and they were surrounded by a host of children all waving plastic daggers and wearing black eye-patches whilst screaming a million questions at the tops of their voices.

“Shush, children,” soothed the captain, but the only effect he had was to cause the almost unbearable decibels from the ten year-olds to increase unbearably.

How do you fly that thing…

Are you really a witch, misses?

Go on, cast a spell…

Put thunder and lightning in the sky!

Do you cook in a cauldron?

Is that mister really your familiar and does he talk to the devil…

and so on

In the end Griselda could stand it no longer and after the Captain tried a second time to quell the excitement and failed she decided to take a hand in the proceedings.

She was good at taking a hand in proceedings.

“SHUT UP!” she bellowed, an extraordinary amount of sound to emerge from a geriatric and very wrinkled old mouth, such volume as nobody on board the ship could believe would be produced by any mortal pair of lungs. There was a sudden hush and even the traffic on a road a mile or two away from the shore pulled to a standstill to see what might be up. The BBC issued a warning of imminent attack, though they didn’t know who from or why, and everyone tuned in was advised to seek shelter under the nearest kitchen table.

Half a dozen of the more sensitive little girls started sobbing, their hands over their ears, whilst most of the boys merely turned deathly white and started suffering from uncontrollable knocking knees, adding a staccato rhythm to the proceedings.

The Captain sunk to the deck and wept openly. Such was the effect of a single bellow from Griselda on even important and powerful men like pirate captains. Other crew members wet their pants and ran to the wash room, hopefully before anyone noticed and called them names.

And life returned to a silent normal, which meant it wasn’t silent at all, and barely normal.

“That’s better,” almost whispered Griselda, and everyone heard her. Then she smiled a really sweet old-lady smile and won the hearts of all the children by announcing a competition.

“The first person under the age of twelve to answer a very difficult question will receive a first very special prize of a ride round the bay with me on my broomstick!”

A hushed but none-the-less audible clamour began, and she held up one hand to silence the growing hubbub, and that hand worked as effectively as her bellow had.

“The question,” she said, “the question is, where am I going on my broomstick with this pompous little politician when we leave here?” And she indicated Bumptious Tiddles as she said that.

There was a moment’s pause, and then another moment’s pause, then fifty voices all suggested very different places in a rabble of a chorus that nobody could have made sense of.

“Ah, you,” grinned Griselda pointing at a nervous looking little girl of nine with a plastic parrot on one shoulder. “Yours was the first voice I heard, so you are the winner!”

“Did she get it right, misses?” asked an assertive eleven year-old with spots.

“I didn’t specify it had to be the right answer, just the first person to answer the question,” Griselda told him.

“That’s not fair!” squalled several dozen voices in blessed unison.

“It’s perfectly fair,” growled Griselda, and that growl was enough to quell any rebellion in the pirate ranks. “You should learn to listen. I’m always fair. To a fault.” she added.

And she picked the little girl up and gently perched her on the broomstick behind where she was going to sit herself.

“Hold on tight and you’ll be perfectly all right,” she assured the child quietly, and climbed aboard herself with well-practised ease.

And at a murmur of command by her the broomstick shot into the skies. She gave the child value for her answer all right: she zoomed and looped-the-loop and did figures of eight and rolled left and right until, when even she was feeling a little dizzy and had to issue a quiet word of command to her own stomach she landed on exactly the same spot that she’d taken off from.

“That was great!” laughed the girl, and she didn’t look the least bit green around the gills.

“Lovely child,” cackled Griselda, “lovely, lovely child!” and she rubbed her hair until it looked as tousled as a boy’s might after a serious wrestling bout in the school playground when no teachers were looking.

“Can we go again?” asked the girl.

“Maybe next time,” conceded Griselda, having no intention of there ever being a next time.

“Well, it was nice of you to pop in,” growled the Captain who, it turned out, was also the school’s PE teacher. “Though what their parents are going to say when they hear that a mythical old lady with an old fashioned besom broomstick zoomed round the heavens with a child behind her on it I’ll never know. I mean, how will I explain what we’ve just seen?”

“You won’t need to,” Griselda assured him, “they won’t believe a word of it but put it down to special activities on a pirate ship, and assume that you’ve got some kind of drone disguised as a broomstick to entertain the sweet little things with. You’ll be all right. Nobody ever believes they’ve seen a broomstick even when there’s one right before their eyes, so they’re hardly likely to believe the word of a sweet little darling, are they?”

Then she turned to Bumptious Tiddles and fixed him with both of her eyes.

“We’re off,” she told him. “I’ve had my fun, the kids have enjoyed the game and now it’s time for us to continue on our way.” Then she touched the girl who’d won her prize on one shoulder. “By the way, where did you think we were going?” she asked.

“To America,” said the child, “to Washington to see the Pope.”

“What a clever child you are! But it’s not the Pope in Washington. Other wise you’re quite right! What’s your favourite dinner?”

“Mmm, fish and chips,” sighed the girl, “and being as we’re on a ship I hope we get fish and chips today!”

“Fat chance,” grumbled the PE Teacher/Captain. “It’s not on the menu.”

“Then you, my dear, enjoy your fish and chips for lunch. You’ve earned it!”

Then she adopted a serious expression and glared at Bumptious. “You’re a politician! You’re supposed to know things!” she snapped.

“Like what?” he asked sullenly.

“That it’s time to climb aboard and wave goodbye to this motley band of pirates,” she said.

And he did, very, very reluctantly, climb behind her onto the broomstick and winced as the knobbly bit on the stick rubbed against a sore patch the broomstick had created yesterday on his bottom.

“Goodbye, then!” cackled Griselda, and she looped her stick in a twirly pattern as the party of pirate children cheered, and inhaled the delicious aroma of fish and chips cooking in the kitchen of the pirate ship, wondering what the confused cook would be thinking when the ravioli changed into something much more delicious.

© Peter Rogerson 04.02.18