GRISELDA QUIETLY CONFIDENT

Griselda and Bumptious meet up again with the American President

“This is as good a place as any,” shouted Griselda to Bumptious Tiddles as she hovered over a golden beach somewhere on the East coast, quietly confident that they’d successfully escaped from a nasty situation involving too many guns pointing their way.

“I’m dead,” grunted Bumpy, lying through his teeth because he was most obviously capable of some kind of speech, which made him alive.

“I’m landing anyway,” decided Griselda, “and I’m going to become myself again. It’s not easy holding the creases of age at bay when a woman’s concentrating on flying a golf club!”

“What happened to your best broomstick then?” demanded Bumpy, rubbing his bottom.

“We had to leave in a hurry,” sighed Griselda as she rapidly became the familiar old hag Bumptious was used to. “I was caught out! That President chappie’s sharper than I thought he was and he had enough armed guards at his beck and call to keep an army at bay, and we’re no army. Anyway, it’s got its orders. It’ll follow us. It’s got a spell on it that makes sure of that.”

Bumptious was just enjoying the sensation created by his golfing plus-fours changing back into his old trousers with many a ripple where he best liked feeling ripples when he pointed an animated finger towards the bright blue heavens.

“What’s that!” he squawked, the finger waving in a nervous circle as he indicated something in the heavens, something that was approaching them rapidly in a zooming straight line.

“What’s what?” asked an irritable Griselda.

“There, in the sky, swooping towards us? Is it a bird? Or is it an aeroplane? A helicopter? Or could it be a missile? What is it?”

Griselda turned to look and then she gasped like an old bellows running out of air.

“My broomstick! The daft bugger!” she shrieked, and waved her by now geriatric fists, but to no avail.

There, perched upon the shaft of her best broomstick, was the President of the United States of America. His combed-over hair was raging as it drifted every which way in the gentle wind as the broomstick lowered towards Griselda. And he was a magnificent sight! Never has so important a man been seen aboard one of Griselda’s broomsticks, and maybe not upon any other person’s broomstick either, as the balmy summer air ruffled his golfing trousers, blew through his colourful jumper and dislodged cobwebs in his underpants. But what it did to the expression on his face was beyond belief.

You might have supposed that he’d be terrified of the experience, that the last vestiges of sanity would have been blasted from his being by the very experience of broomstick flight, but that hadn’t happened, or if it had he was hiding his fear very well.

With no apparent effort he made his unusual craft complete a figure of eight in the skies above the watchers on the beach, and then he soared upwards with the grace of a dove and when he became no more than a speck in the skies contrived to perform a stalling procedure that ended in he and his Griselda broomstick toppling over seemingly out of all kinds of control until he was halfway down, and then seamlessly turning the seemingly errant descent into a graceful dive that terminated mere feet above the ground.

His face was one glorious and very orange picture of perfect health and happiness. And as his flight ended when the broomstick landed next to Griselda, he leapt off it laughing like a child with a new and very expensive toy.

“Now that’s what I call flying!” he laughed, “if any of my apprentices had come up with a wheeze like this he’d be a millionaire by now. I’m going to issue a Presidential order! You just wait and see that I do! I’m going to have a machine like this issued to every one of the thousands of personnel in the air force, and teach them to fly it so that when I declare war on some rancid little nation any day soon we can attack them by broomstick! Imagine the glory of a broomstick equipped with a rapid-firing machine gun!Can you imagine the history books of the future and what they’ll say about me? Can you dream of what generations as yet unborn are going to say when they read of my time as President and the glories I brought upon my nation?”

“So you enjoyed your ride, Mr President?” asked Griselda with a half smile lighting up the corners of her wrinkled old lips.

“Did I enjoy it, ma’am?” he grinned in reply, “I’ve always known that I was the best broomstick rider ever born. As you know, there are have been many special Americans over the years but I’m the one who’s most special. Oh yes, I am, so there’s no need for you to disagree. So it’s perfectly natural that I’m the best broomstick aeronaut. Mummy said I was special when she rocked me in her arms so I’ve always been quite sure that special I must be...”

“Don’t you think people will think it a bit odd that their President has turned into a wizard like Harry Potter and spends his time zooming everywhere as if there were no regulations?” asked Griselda, her horny old voice cracked with amusement.

“They can think it, but let any of them dared say it aloud,” chortled the President. “I’ve got punishments that will sort out that kind of unpatriotic talk! If I say that I’m flying by broomstick, then flying by broomstick I’ll be doing, and make no mistake.”

“And if they think you’re barking mad, sir?” asked Bumptious, almost enjoying what he saw as a ridiculous scene.

“Then there’s jails enough for them to rot in!” snapped the President, and the texture of his skin darkened somewhat. “Now excuse me! I’ve spent enough time talking to simpletons like you! I’m off by broomstick to the Whitehouse where there’s a group of rather silly people waiting for my latest pronouncement!”

With that he tried to climb back onto the broomstick, tried being the operative word. Griselda watched in amusement as he jammed the shaft of the stick between his legs and leapt in the air only to fall back at an awkward angle and manage to get his well-combed locks tangled in the rear-end bristles of his wonderful new mode of transport.

“Giddy-up!” he roared, but the broomstick remained unmoved like any old inanimate creation of wood and sticks.

He tried again to force the shaft of the simple antique cleansing appliance between his legs, but when he tried to lower himself on it so that it took his weight he once again collapsed to the ground. It was all becoming somewhat humiliating for one in so noble a position in the land of the free, especially for one so supremely convinced of his own abilities.

“Come on, Bumpy,” grinned Griselda when it struck her that the President’s humility might become terminal as he started tearing at his already thinning hair in his frustration.

With the ease of the long-experienced she almost drifted onto the broomstick with Bumptious not so far behind her.

“We’ll send a bus for you, Mr President,” she said with a chortle, “and we’ll meet again before I return home. After all, we’re here because you sent a missile to demolish most of the quaint little village I live in, and we’ve got to talk about that before I go back home. So see you for tea and crumpets at the Whitehouse!”

And without waiting for a reply she mumbled something so quietly that nobody heard the least syllable of it, and she with Bumptious Tiddles behind her she zoomed off into the bright blue skies somewhere above the East Coast of the good old U.S of A.

© Peter Rogerson 22.02.18