TRICKLE DOWN IN SWANSPOTTLE

Times are hard in Swanspottle, where a lovely fox has his home...

Ferdy was a fox and quite enjoyed his life. Or had when times were good.

He wasn’t so popular with some of the inhabitants down Swanspottle way, though. Farmer Hocklepotch had tried to snare him for as long as he could remember, but Ferdy always found a way to safety even though some of the traps were ingenious. One even involved Marmite on nice crisp toast, and he sniffed it, his mouth watered and then he noticed the axe suspended on a length of string and held in place by the weight of the Marmite on toast, and managed to sneak the deliciousness off the plate by being ingenious himself.

Then hard times came to Swanspottle. The price of food went through the ceiling, and nobody couolld afford either it or fuel for their fires. Old Mrs Binklesnatch caught the flu, suffered greatly from hibernating worms in her intestines and passed away before Michaelmas and was buried in the graveyard next to her teenage lover, Ben Nimblethush, who had been entertaining micro-organisms in his decaying coffin for above fifty years.

Ferdy might have feasted on the skinny remains of the Old woman, but there wasn’t much of her left after starvation had taken its toll of her and even the worms had given up the ghost, and it didn’t seem worth his while to excavate the coffin on an empty stomach.

It was when the vicar, the Reverend Brian Bonkers, hung up his cassock and prepared to starve to death himself that the villagers decided to have a public meeting in the village hall in which it was decided something ought to be done, and it was then that Ferdy’s name got to be mentioned.

Sir Benjamin Bloodbones stood up and mentioned him from the chair (Sir Benjamin always chaired meetings in Swanpottle because the chair belonged to him and he took it away afterwards so that he had something to rest his weary old feet on when he got home to the Manor House where he lived.

“There’s a fox running wild in Swanspottle,” he announced, “and we ought to do something about it. They do say roasted fox makes quite a treat on Sundays, and now that Reverend Bonkers is in no state to tell us not to, I suggest we invite Ferdy to our table this coming Sunday and thus stop ourselves from starving to death.”

There was a mjuted roar of approval, most people being of the opinion that anything would be better than joining their ancestors in the cemetery.

That might well have proved to be a useful suggestion but for one thing. Ferdy the fox had secreted himself into a cupboard that humans had never had the courage to touch since Victorian times when the nasty miller had bled tiny lambs to death so that he could sell their blood on the open market, and the cupboard had suffered a residual stink. It was a far from pleasant stink all these decades later, and even Ferdy hated it, but it was still a useful place for him to use as a hidey hole where he could spy, unseen and unsuspected.

Sp forewarned is forearmed, it is often said, and he was forewarned on the villagers’ intention of making him into their Sunday roast. Now I don’t want to suggest that he was a nasty fox because he wasn’t. In truth, he was sympathetic to their needs and their own resolve to do something about their hunger. But first and foremast, that is, he had to feast himself, and that was no easy thing to achieve because food was in short supply even in the forest around Swanpottle.

Now, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that Ferdy was a cruel or even unkind fox but he did have needs of his own. Farmer Hocklepotch had done his worst, and when he actually set traps around an ants nest where a few ants eggs survived the hatching season, possibly because they were dead, it was clear that Ferdy needed to forget ther sweet side of his nature and make a rotten plan by thinking outside the box. Rotten, that is, to the villagers of Swanspottle, but probably very splendid rom his own perspective.

He thought of the warming and refreshing qualities inherent in the consumption of a good hot soup and decided to treat himself.

Now, most people in desperate circumstances might struggle opening a tin of Heinz or Baxters or just about anyone’s soup, but Ferdy was going to go back to the birth of soup and make some himself from scratch.

There were still a few carrots rotting in a corner of Farmer Hocklepotch’s herb garden (I know carrots aren’t herbs, but that’s where the farmer grew his), half a cabbage lying forgotten in a ditch where he himself had dropped it back in June when he had stolen it from the vegetable display outside Mary Chuntpuss’s corner shop and decided he wasn’t so keen on cabbage after all. And he knew a few secrets, and other little delicacies he could add to his soup such as a nice once-green and now brown pepper and some salt.

And in his mind he Included, and here his mouth watered when he thought about it, Clara, Sandi Pinknose’s new baby daughter, probably the most potentially delicious addition to the fare available to man or beast since the hard times began.

So Ferdy stole a pan from the vicar’s kitchen when his housekeeper wasn’t looking because she was busy preparing an unfortunately calorie-free unguent for an outburst of boils on his body that prayer didn’t seem to want to wipe out. I say unfortunately calorie-free because there’s no telling what might have happened to it when the starning housekeeper struggled up the stairs and to the vicar’s bedchamber with it.

Now, Ferdy the fox knew a thing or two about the habits of the people of Swanspottle, and one thing he was quite sure of was there would be a bonfire crackling away on the back garden where Snotty Spooningal, the paperboy, disposed of the thick Sunday newspapers that he couldn’t be bothered to deliver, and who could blame in as his round was a country one and involved several miles of hard cycling?

So, equipped with the stolen pan and purloined carrot together with the disintegrating and aromatically decomposing cabbage, Ferdy sneaked into Snotty’s back yard and marvelled how such an obnoxious creature as the paperboy had the secret of fire when he himself didn’t. But true to expectations, there it was, burning away with a dozen copies of the Sunday Times and kits many supplements smoking as if smoking was going out of fashion.

He somehow suspended the pan over the brightest flames in the fire, and set about collecting Clara Pinknose as the nutrient in his soup. His mouth watered again. It would be delicious.

And that was where his scheme fell to pieces in front of his very eyes.

The baby was there, all right, and it being Michaelmas or thereabouts and consequently quite cold, she was in a carry cot in front of a blazing fire.

Well, I say blazing, but that’s not quite the right word. Fuel was in short supply, so Sandi had to turn to alternatives and some things just don’t burn. She had struggled, of course she had, but every time she struck a match to light her fire, the match flickered out and the fire barely got warm. You just can’t light pottery dining sets even if they are made by such respected manufacturers as Made In China.

But not, to be put off, Ferdy was about to coo at the infant before carefully extracting it from its carry cot when there was the sound of a muffled explosion from the direction of the infant’s bottom, and Clara jerked and giggled. A swelling and oozing from the region of her nappy told its own story.

“Oooh, you clever girl,” giggled Sandi, and she turned to show her child how much she loved her by smiling and wrinkling her nose at it, and then she saw Ferdi. And what’s more, she quite rightly suspected that she knew what Ferdy was about to do.

“You bad fox!” she yelled, and before the sad animal could do anything like run away or escape she had thrown the teapot from her non-fuel collection at him. It hit him square on the end of his foxy nose and before he could so much as yelp she followed it with the coffee pot.

That was quite enough for Foxy, and he collapsed onto the floor, out cold.

And by being thus he guaranteed that the good folk of Swanspottle would have something roast that Sunday. Which shows, indeed, that some goodness might trickle down to feed the starving. Hurrah!

And poor dear Ferdy.

© Peter Rogerson. 29.09.22

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