by Heide Goody
Clovenhoof was mildly disappointed they were not having fox sausages, but he would keep an open mind. “What else did you get, Nerys?”
“Well, this one is going to be interesting,” she said, lifting a large jar. “I’m not even sure what we do with them to be honest. Pickled pigs’ feet.”
“Wow!” Clovenhoof walked over and peered into the jar. It was like the one in the chip shop that held the pickled eggs, but someone had decided pickled eggs were not weird enough so they had pickled some pigs’ feet instead. They were packed inside like giant fleshy gherkins. “I have never seen these in the supermarket.”
“No, I called into the Polish shop to see what they had,” said Nerys.
“Polish people eat pigs’ feet?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know if they do. They got them in for someone as a special order, apparently, and they never came back. It was the only part of the display that didn’t look bare. We should be able to get more if we like them.”
“But they’re pickled pigs’ feet,” said Ben, looking a little queasy.
Clovenhoof opened the lid and inhaled. A soupy fog enveloped him, with vinegar being the dominant smell. He reached in and pulled out a pig’s foot. It was intact, and recognisably the foot of a pig, so he obviously had to take another one to do piggy impressions. He put on a high voice. “Has Nerys brought home the bacon? You bet. Am I going to go the whole hog eating these? Oh yes.” He made little running motions with the trotter in each hand.
“Are you actually going to eat one of those?” asked Spartacus.
“Absolutely.” Clovenhoof nibbled one of the trotter. The meat came away easily, gelatinous and soft. It was pork, but also pickled. It was a peculiar but delicious combination. He worked his way around the bone, slurping and chomping with relish. “This is amazing! Did you say they had more? We should get loads and have it every day. I’m going in for the toenail now, watch this everybody.”
Nerys joined Ben in looking a little off-colour, but Spartacus stepped forward. “I’ll try one. Want one, Bea?”
“Oink! Oink!” said Bea, reaching into the jar and taking one herself.
Spartacus sniffed, gave a small nod and tucked in. He made short work of his first and reached for another.
“Well I guess it cuts down on the washing up if we eat straight from the jar,” said Nerys.
“Ah!” Clovenhoof raised a finger. “Good point. Young Spartacus is trying to raise money to buy a games console, so he’s looking for jobs he can do in exchange for cash. On that basis, he can do the washing up.” He picked up a plate and gave it a huge lick. “See? I have a generous nature.”
8
Clovenhoof knocked on Ben’s door on Monday afternoon.
“I’m busy,” said Ben.
“You have to let me in. It’s an emergency.”
Clovenhoof could hear his friend and neighbour sigh through the door, but Ben opened up anyway. Clovenhoof barged in, wearing only a Hawaiian shirt and grubby y-fronts. He looked like he had dressed in a hurry. “Quick! I need somewhere to hide!”
Ben blinked. “Are the police coming? Bailiffs?”
“Children!” He dashed into the kitchen and crouched by the counter. He opened a cupboard and briefly considered whether he could hide inside with the pots and pans.
“I know you’ve been put in this position by their mum, but running away and hiding is not an acceptable response to childcare responsibilities,” said Ben.
“I’m not running away from my responsibilities,” snapped Clovenhoof. “I don’t run away from anything.” He crawled under Ben’s dining table, but it offered too little protective cover.
“Mind my parcels!” wailed Ben. There were more than fifty books wrapped up and ready to send out on his table. Pre-printed postage labels for the delivery company were laid out on each package. Ben slapped his hand on some that were in danger of wafting away.
“You should stick those down,” said Clovenhoof. He ducked behind the sofa and immediately yelped in pain as he collided with an unexpected length of wood someone had left there.
“I would stick them down,” said Ben, “but I’m out of Sellotape. I ordered it at the same time as my face mask, and neither’s arrived.”
“You’ll have to improvise,” said Clovenhoof. “Stick ’em down with spit and make a mask from something. What’s this?”
He held up the length of wood he had collided with. It was as tall as himself and smoothly shaped like the handle of an ancient gardening tool.
“It’s my social distancing stick,” said Ben. “You suggested I should get one. It was among the junk you threw out of Persephone’s shed.”
“It bloody hurt,” said Clovenhoof, rubbing his knee.
“Ninety-nine, a hundred! Coming ready or not!” came twin shouts from across the landing.
“You’re playing hide and seek?” hissed Ben. “I thought your life was in danger!”
“Don’t be such a drama queen.” Clovenhoof dithered as there came the sound of heavy juvenile footsteps on the landing. “Help me hide.”
Two bodies collided with Ben’s door and the door handle creaked.
“Bugger it all!” cursed Clovenhoof. In a moment of panic he tried hiding behind Ben’s distancing stick.
The door flew open. The sudden draft brushed at some of the postage labels. Ben threw himself over the fluttering bits of paper in time to stop them blowing away. Spartacus and Bea barrelled in, both in T-shirts and underpants.
“There! There! That’s him!” shouted the young girl.
“No, I’m not,” said Clovenhoof in a small voice as he tried to make himself thinner.
“That’s a crap hiding place,” said Spartacus, disappointed.
“Crap!” agreed Bea loudly.
“I’m not hiding here,” persisted Clovenhoof. “This is one of them optical illusions.”
“Bloody useless,” tutted Spartacus.
“I’m a lampstand!” said Clovenhoof, suddenly inspired. “An artfully shaped lampstand.” He grabbed the raffia fruit bowl from Ben’s sideboard and, discarding apples everywhere, plonked it on top of his head.
“Twat,” said Spartacus.
“Twat!” agreed Bea.
The door swung open again. Ben dived to prevent his book labels flying away. Nerys came in, looking distressed.
“Jeremy! Ben! Have you been watching the briefing on television?”
“Watching politicians talk boring stuff when I could be playing hide and seek?” scoffed Clovenhoof.
“You don’t know how to play hide and seek,” huffed Spartacus. Bea huffed too.
Nerys opened her mouth to say something more, but she stopped and pointed at the children in their underpants. “Why aren’t these two wearing trousers?”
“Mom says we don’t have to wear trousers unless we’re going out. Saves on doing the washing.”
“I thought it was a brilliant idea, so I joined in,” said Clovenhoof, waving at his own semi-dressed state.
Nerys grimaced at the sight of his faded and threadbare boxers.
“Ordinary people wear trousers,” Ben said.
“Even indoors?” asked Spartacus.
“Even indoors.”
Spartacus nodded grimly. “I thought they might, but mum said…” He shook his head. “This is what you get not having decent male role models at home.”
“No decent male role models here, either,” grunted Nerys. “Anyway, the briefing.”
“What about it?” said Ben.
“We’re on lockdown.”
“It’s not a massive surprise, is it? Pubs closed. Schools closed.”
“But real proper lockdown,” she said, evidently distressed. “Everyone has to stay at home.”
“What? Everyone?”
“Everyone. You’re only allowed out to buy food, seek medical treatment or get one daily bout of exercise. That’s the law. And the police can fine you if you don’t follow the rules. It’s terrible.”
“It will defi
nitely be a change,” said Ben.
“Do we have to go out and get exercise?” asked Clovenhoof, who was generally not a fan of such things.
“Don’t you see what the big problem is?” said Nerys angrily.
“The fact that our country is facing the biggest social upheaval since the Second World War?” said Ben.
“No, numpty,” she spat. “I’m starting my new job tomorrow! I know I’m supposed to be able to work from home, but I thought I’d at least get a chance to see my office and my team. How on earth am I going to manage?”
“That’s the big problem?”
“How can I stamp my authority on people if I’m not physically present to do the stamping?”
Spartacus raised his hand. “Isn’t there a bigger problem?”
“What?” snapped Nerys.
Spartacus took his sister’s hand. “Are we going to be allowed to go home again?”
The three adults considered this.
“If Grandma Stella’s in the vulnerable category—”
“If we’re meant to stop the spread of infection—”
“If we all have to stay at home—”
“I’ve got some emergency plans to make,” said Nerys. She left, stirring up another breeze that threatened to mess up Ben’s postage labels.
“We need to get some trousers on and work out what we’re going to do,” said Clovenhoof.
“No trousers!” declared Bea firmly.
“It’s probably best if you do,” said Ben. He stepped forward, trod on an apple that hadn’t been there five minutes before, and with a loud “Waah!” slipped over. His upper body came down on the extended leaf of the dining table. It snapped under his weight. Ben fell to the floor, followed by piles of parcels and a snowfall of labels.
Ben was clearly torn between exclamations of pain, and bitter misery at having his parcels and labels thoroughly mixed up. He came out with an anguished mixture of ‘Ow!’s, ‘Oh!’s and ‘Ooh!’s which made him sound like a ghost in search of acting lessons.
“This is not good,” he managed to say eventually.
“You’re telling me,” said Clovenhoof. “Spartacus and Bea are trapped here with us for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m not trapped in here with you,” said Bea with a grin. “You’re trapped in here with me!”
Clovenhoof shuddered. “That sounded proper creepy,” he said, impressed.
Spartacus shrugged happily. “I know. No idea where she gets it from.”
9
“So lockdown means we can’t mix with our friends, but we can go outside?” said Spartacus as they sat in the back garden, enjoying the fading evening sun and the company of chickens.
“Outside, yes, but you can’t leave the house,” said Ben, who was lying down on the grass to ease his injured back.
“That makes no sense,” said Spartacus.
Clovenhoof shook his head. “He’s right. No sense at all.”
“It seems straightforward enough to me,” said Ben. “I don’t know why you’re making it difficult.”
“So I can go in the garden like this?”
“Yes. The back garden is fine,” said Ben.
“And the front?” said Spartacus.
“If you must, but you need to be careful of people walking past on the pavement.”
“I guess we can lean out the windows, or go on the roof?” Spartacus mused.
Nerys shook her head in horror. “Of course you can’t! One thing you don’t want to do at the moment is end up in hospital because of stupidity.”
“I just wanted to make sure I understood the rules. So we can have an hour’s exercise. An hour is quite a lot, really. I could walk a long way in an hour.”
“Don’t forget the coming home part,” said Ben. “If you walk for an hour and you’re miles away, then you’ve got a problem. Either walk in a circle, or walk for thirty minutes and then come back.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you walking,” said Clovenhoof to Spartacus.
“I can walk,” said the boy, staring at Clovenhoof as if he was stupid.
“Walking!” agreed Bea and marched around the garden to demonstrate what walking was.
“Yes, but you mostly just slouch around out of necessity. Much the same as me, if I’m honest. I’m trying to imagine just walking for an hour without having some other purpose.”
The two of them gazed into the middle distance, their brains wrestling with this new concept.
“Can we get back to me?” Nerys asked.
“Were we talking about you?” said Clovenhoof.
“What am I going to do about my new job?”
“What does your new job involve, exactly?” asked Ben.
“It’s customer satisfaction management. Apparently, there’s a lot of communication involved, so I will be taking a lot of calls. They already gave me a laptop and a headset, so I can do all of that from home.”
Ben shrugged. “Sounds as if you’re sorted, then.”
Nerys didn’t expect Ben to understand the importance of establishing oneself in a new job. Stamping the Nerys brand onto the role was critical. She needed to understand the office politics, get to grips with the basics of the unwritten rules and the invisible lines of influence. Who was shagging who? Who would cover for her and who would stab her in the back? Most importantly who was hot and who was not? She could not possibly do all of these things while working from home. She grunted in frustration.
“Well there’s one thing,” said Clovenhoof. “You only need to wear decent clothes from the waist up if you’re on video calls all day.”
Nerys paused. Was it possible Jeremy had made a good point? No, of course it wasn’t – but he had inspired a cool idea. “Huh. I bought a load of new work clothes that arrived yesterday, but you’re right. I only need to keep the upper half of each outfit.”
“Yes…” said Ben, who couldn’t see where this was going.
“It will save me loads of money!” Nerys beamed. “Spartacus, I have a job for you. Come up to mine and you can parcel up the trousers and skirts, then take them to the post office when you go for your exercise.”
10
Nerys worked through the mandatory online courses that formed her induction with Dukoko. She had a solid morning of them, so she was wearing her terry towelling onesie as a treat to herself. The first course was mostly comprised of ticking boxes which said she had understood the importance of sitting correctly at her desk, although it took forty-five minutes to do so, meandering as it did via questions about her eyesight, and where her elbows were in relation to her wrists.
“This is not my first rodeo, you know,” she said to the imaginary course instructor. “I’ve spent hours at this particular work station. Those firemen won’t rate themselves!”
She moved onto the part covering the company’s operation. At least it was a bit more relevant to an actual job. Although when it came to high powered strategy meetings, Nerys probably wouldn’t need to know the ins and outs of their returns process; but she battled on, keen to get top marks in the evaluation.
Spartacus appeared as she was doing the knowledge test.
“Can’t stop now, it’s on a timer,” she called. “You’ll see them in the bedroom. Remember to gather up all of the bottoms.”
She scored top marks in the quiz and punched the air with delight. Next up was another course about the employee appraisal system. She was off to a flying start with her test results so her confidence was high. This course was interactive: as she started a section it asked her questions to establish her base knowledge. Excellent! She would be through it in no time.
Recognise the difference between a goal, an outcome, and a vision.
Nerys nodded, a little less certainly than before. She could hear Spartacus leaving her flat. She almost called him over to see if he knew the difference, but decided that he probably wouldn’t.
Match up the statements on the left with the descriptions on the right.
N
erys stared at the options. The difference between a goal, an outcome, and a vision? Surely they were all the same thing? She had a go at matching the four statements with the four descriptions, but they all sounded more or less the same. She hit the submit button, and was told she was wrong. She tried again, wondering how many attempts she could make. Her second attempt was wrong. It was certain to be three, it was always three, wasn’t it? She had to get it right this time otherwise she’d have a failure on her hands. She spent ten minutes parsing each sentence carefully, trying to imagine which looked the most goal like, the most outcome like, and the most visionary. She made her choices and hit submit. She was wrong again. It did not tell her she had failed though, so maybe she could just keep going with her attempts. She switched a couple round and tried again, only then realising she’d lost track of her previous attempts. How many combinations were there in total? She thought about it for a minute before giving a quiver of disgust and thanking her lucky stars it was not a maths question. She started making notes on the jotter beside her keyboard. She systematically matched the first answer against all of the statements, but of course there was no partial feedback so she had no way of knowing which was correct. She blasted through combination after combination, thumping the table in exasperation after each rejection.
Then: Congratulations! You now know the difference between a goal, an outcome and a vision.
She sat back, wild-eyed, breathing heavily as if she’s just been in a physical altercation. She hadn’t the slightest idea which combination had succeeded, but she had broken through question one. She looked at the progress bar: it was at five per cent. She needed a breather after that.
11
Spartacus and Bea went round to Ben’s flat. Staying at Jeremy Clovenhoof’s was fun, but there were a few minor things he lacked – like fresh milk for cereal, a sofa that didn’t have slimy and mouldy discarded foodstuff between the cushions, and a television with decent channel choices.
They sat on Ben’s sofa eating cocoa puff cereal and watching Tiger King on Netflix.
