by Rachael Long
“That explains a lot!” said Holly jokingly.
The three friends moved away from the roundabout to the far end of the park where a new, albeit short run, zip wire had recently been installed. At least here they would be safe from the toddler group.
After swinging back and forth a few times the three sat down on one end of the zip wire’s small platforms and began to plan a campaign to clear Moggy’s name.
“I think,” began Ryan, “we need to write down just what you remember about the accident…”
Holly agreed, “I’m impressed, Ryan. Yes, let’s get what really happened written down.”
“Then all we need to do is, somehow, find out the real name of this Castrol Polly, get his address and go round and see him…” Ryan was clearly on a roll.
“Yes and then,” said Holly, not wanting to be out done by Ryan, “we get him to put an apology in the village magazine, under his own name and…print what really happened!”
“If we can get his name, we can really pester him, until he gives in!” Ryan smiled. “Now I think I may be getting brain fade!” He rubbed his head.
“Yay! Pester power!” cheered Holly. Adding that perhaps they could threaten to unleash the Kiddies Klub on Castrol whatever!
Moggy nodded and pulled out his e-tab and passed it to Holly. “You can type really well, at least you’ll be a lot quicker than me at the moment,” he waved his plaster-cast arm.
Holly took the e-tab then suggested they return to the scout hut; “probably be easier to sit at a proper table and do this,” she said.
Moggy and Ryan agreed and over the next hour, in the scout hut, the three friends honed, polished and typed up and then retyped Moggy’s version of events. When it was finished, it was factual, readable and honest.
Neil Millar
Concerning my accident in
Gallows Tree Lane
It was afternoon and I had been out in the fields that back onto Gallows Tree Lane. I was with my friends Holly and Ryan. We had been up as far as the top fields next to the old Phiskers Farm and Hector’s cow shed. I had my binoculars with me as I have recently become interested in bird watching.
It was getting near teatime and we decided it was time to go home. I was running ahead of Holly and Ryan, chasing after a butterfly. I got to the fence by the gallows tree and as they seemed to be lagging behind, I thought I would hide in the split part of the tree and then jump out and surprise them both. I stood in the split part for a couple of minutes or about long enough to notice the trunk looked as if it had been recently refilled with mud. The tree is still alive but has had a partly hollow trunk for a long time, having been split apart by lightning sometime in the past. I couldn’t see Holly or Ryan and thought they may have spotted me and were going to try and creep up on me. I found out later they had taken a longer way back because of a bull.
I climbed out of the tree and then over the fence into Gallows Tree Lane. The lane was empty of traffic and people. I stepped away from the fence and turned to scan the field with my binoculars, looking for Holly and Ryan.
The next thing I remember, I was lying on the ground in pain. I saw whatever had hit me driving off down Gallows Tree Lane toward the school end. It looked red and seemed like a giant or bigger than normal, mobility scooter-type-thing. Whatever it was and whoever was driving it, did not stop.
Holly and Ryan found me lying in the road and ran to a nearby house to call an ambulance and my parents. I suffered a broken right arm and left leg. My binoculars were also broken. I gave a statement to the police when I came out of hospital.
“I think that sounds absolutely fine,” said Holly, taking care to make sure she’d saved it to the e-tab’s memory. Moggy agreed, it did sound good.
“It sounds just fine to me too,” added Edna, eaves dropping. “Mind you, I hope you got out of the Gallows Tree the same way you got in,” she paused for a moment then continued, “they used to hang bad-uns from that tree before it got struck by lightning and split in half. Of course that was three maybe four hundred years or more ago… Some said it was the devil that split it for hanging his followers and if you stepped through the split, you could summon him up.” Edna winked at Holly, Ryan and Moggy, tapped the side of her nose and wandered back to the kitchen.
Holly shook her head. “That only works on a full moon and you need to say some sort of spell, at least that’s what my mum told me one Halloween and I don’t think they can be worried about it being hit by lightning anymore, as they put those two big steel bands round the trunk, to hold it together.”
“And filled the trunk with clay from the old clay works…” it was Edna again, back from the kitchen, she continued before returning to the kitchen once again; “That was back in the 1950’s. I’ve got a photo of it at home; all the workmen standing around the tree. They put a fence round the Hanging Tree that’s next to your school, at the same time too. ”
“Have you heard anything from the police?” Ryan asked Moggy, ignoring Edna and changing the subject. Moggy shook his head.
“Nah, PC Grearson told my mum, as there weren’t any witnesses, and as no one had come forward and admitted knocking me over, there wasn’t much hope of doing anything.” He shrugged his shoulders.
Holly suddenly clapped her hands together. “Whoa!” she exclaimed. “Brilliant thought! That snotty woman in the Parish Rooms won’t tell us who Castrol Smallpox is, so we’ll put in a Freedom of Information thingy.”
“A what?” said Ryan and Moggy almost in unison.
Holly explained that whenever some organisation annoyed her dad, he’d think of some useless or obscure piece of information he wanted to know and send off a Freedom of Information request. By law they had to answer, no matter how odd or weird. “Don’t you see,” she said excitedly, “they’d have to tell us just who the writer is!”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Ryan “and like I said earlier; when we get the name, we can annoy whoever this Castor Oil bloke is, ask why he made up the article, get an apology put in and then have Moggy’s real version of what happened printed!”
Moggy smiled, double, double triff he said.
Holly leaned over and playfully mopped Ryan’s forehead with a paper napkin. “I expect you have mega brain fade now…no, wait…I feel it’s gone past that…you now have brain meltdown!”
Ryan pushed Holly’s hand off his head. “I do have some good ideas, you know…sometimes.”
The three friends all laughed and after some idle chat, agreed to meet back at the scout hut café the next morning. In the meantime, Holly would speak with her dad about putting in a Freedom of Information request to the parish magazine.
~~~~~
two
The Wednesday after Easter ~ late morning
Trove Village Scout Hut
Ryan stood at the door of the scout hut looking out at the road. He turned and called back to Holly who was sitting at a table inside; “I still can’t see him.”
Holly tutted and told Ryan to come and finish his hot chocolate. As he sat down, Moggy came through the door on a crutch.
“Hallo, Jim, lad,” Edna grinned at Moggy and made ‘arrr!, arrr!’ pirate noises as she delivered a tray of tea and biscuits to the Trove Ladies Sewing Guild who were occupying two tables and nearly all the chairs in the hut. Moggy sighed and leaned his crutch up next to the hut door and walked over to Ryan and Holly. He raised his eyes and nodded back at the crutch: “my Mum told my gran I have to use that crutch, in case I lose my balance and fall over,” he paused and pulled out a hanky, wiped his forehead then blew his nose and replaced it in his fleece pocket. “She watched me all the way down Church Road, my gran, just to make sure I was using it!”
Edna brought over a cup of hot chocolate. “Here you go, Long John,” she laughed. ‘Carrot smoker’ Moggy mumbled, then as Edna made her way outside, he called out to her, “International Speak Like A Pirate Day isn’t until September!”
“Arrr! I be practising!” came the unbelievabl
e reply.
“I’m sure it’s only because she’s worried about you having any more accidents,” said Holly.
“Who? Edna?” queried Ryan, a little puzzled. Holly playfully slapped him on the back of the head, “no, Moggy’s gran, duh!”
Ryan blushed then nudged Holly and told her to show Moggy the letter.
“See what you think of this,” she passed Moggy a folded piece of paper. “I told my dad last night about that snotty Mrs Pitch in the Parish Rooms, that’s her name by the way and about Custard Pollock or whatever he’s called and he did a Freedom of Information letter for us.”
Moggy read the letter and grinned. “This is really good, really triff. Your dad knows how to sock it to people. He really goes for it; public interest, legally obliged and…” Moggy let out a low whistle, “parish councillors personal email correspondence regarding the article!”
Holly slapped the table with her hand, “bang to rights, as they say. My dad said whoever wrote the article might have emailed it to the magazine editor. So no harm in mentioning email correspondence…” she sipped her hot chocolate and added, “it doesn’t take much to get him wound up; he put the letter through the Parish Rooms letter box last night. This is a copy.”
Ryan tapped the table to get Moggy and Holly’s attention, “I’ve been thinking. We should be a gang, the three of us. Like sort of crime fighters or investigators. Seekers of justice!”
“He’s off again,” laughed Holly.
No, wait suggested Moggy. “That might be a good idea. We could use the gang name as a sort of pen name, instead of using our own names. Like this Castrol Porter, except we’d be on the side of truth. ”
The three friends mulled the idea over while they finished their drinks. Then Holly said, “what about, The Easter Gang?”
“Sounds good,” Ryan nodded his head and repeated it to himself, “The Easter Gang”.
“What about after Easter though?” Moggy wasn’t quite so sure about the name. “I mean, if we carry on with it, we can’t call ourselves, The Easter Gang, in the middle of summer…sounds a bit untriff and gang always sounds a bit, you know, ‘yeah, what’s up bro’, sort of thing...my Mum hates all that, she calls it, rap hop!”
“I like the sound of that. Rap-hop. Red-hot, rap-hop. Get down with the Easter Gang crew.” said Ryan standing up and pretending to rap. He suddenly stopped when Edna began clapping. “Call yourselves a group instead of a gang,” she suggested in an unusually helpful, possibly sarcastic way, before adding, “Oh I just saw Jo Pitch going round to the Parish Rooms to open up. Eleven o’ clock. Wish I had a job like that. That’s half-time, part-time hours, that is.”
“Come on,” said Holly, “Lets go and spy on her from the car park and see how she reacts when she reads the letter.” For a moment she paused and thought; “what about, TEG Group? You know, The Easter Gang Group, but just use the initials.”
Ryan and Moggy agreed, it sounded better.
“Come on then, TEGG-ers, off we go!” said Holly.
The three members of the newly formed TEG Group, or at least Holly and Ryan, ran out of the scout hut, turned right and jogged down a short distance of Church Road before slowing to a walking pace by the Parish Rooms small car park. Moments later Moggy caught up.
“Nice bunny hopping,” smirked Ryan.
“Kangaroo hop, actually,” Moggy corrected him, “as used by the Apollo astronauts…” He paused, “I have of course changed it a bit. Moving quickly with a plaster-cast leg is not that easy.”
“Come on,” said Holly, “over there, behind the scout’s van. I’ll go first, then Ryan and then Moggy, I’ll wave you across.” Ryan followed Holly and they both crouched on the far side of the 1st Trove Scouts’ battered, white van. The last person to use the van had parked it across the marked parking bays, taking up three spaces, instead of parking it normally, in line with the bays. More importantly, though, the van was parallel and about twenty feet from the front of the Parish Rooms. Holly looked across at the Parish Rooms door and window then waved for Moggy to join them.
“Now, you stay here, in the middle.” Holly spoke quietly to Moggy, “Ryan go to the rear of the van and I’ll look from the front end. The way the van has been parked, we should be able to get a good view of inside the Parish Rooms, without being seen.” Moggy and Ryan nodded.
Meanwhile, in the Parish Rooms, Mrs Pitch, having propped the front door open with a small metal waste paper bin, turned on the lights and looked at that morning’s mail. She decided to begin with the envelope marked, ‘By Hand’. She unfolded the letter and began to read it…suddenly she exclaimed, “Freedom of what!” and threw her arms in the air. Already in a bad mood because the previous night she had lost her position as Chair Person of the Trove School Fifties Plus Fund Raisers Charity Association, Mrs Pitch was in no mood for any more of what she often termed, ‘petty time-wasting nonsense’.
“Ryan, can you see?” Holly whispered. Ryan nodded, then realising Holly couldn’t see him, whispered back, “yes. I think she’s getting ready to explode,” then added, “Moggy, you can’t miss this.” Moggy shuffled along the ground on his bottom and peered around the rear of the van with Ryan.
Suddenly the metal waste paper bin flew out of the Parish Rooms doorway, propelled by the foot of Mrs Pitch. “Freedom of Information! I’ll give you my left foot for free!” She shouted.
Holly muttered, oh dear, and joined Ryan and Moggy at the rear of the van. “I don’t think she took that very well,”
Ryan shook his head, “I’ll say not. She’s lighting up a cigarette…”
“Indoors as well…” Moggy tutted. Then having a sudden thought, he pulled his e-tab out from his fleece and passed it to Ryan. “See if you can get a picture of her smoking. Use this here to zoom in.”
After two attempts, Ryan had one quite reasonable picture and a few seconds of video of Mrs Pitch smoking outside and inside the Parish Rooms.
“What’s she doing now,” asked Holly, craning to get a better view between the boys. “Looks like she’s on the phone. Do you think she’s seen us and is phoning the police?”
Moggy shook his head, “She’d come and give us an ear full first, if she’d spotted us. Besides, if she had, she wouldn’t have started smoking inside.”
Mrs Pitch placed the phone down and slowly inhaled on her cigarette. Moments later, the vicar arrived, breathless.
“Useful things, mobile phones;” he said. “I was about to knock on the door of the Gunter twins. You saved me from having to suffer their terrible, teeth destroying marble cake. I do wish at their age they would consider moving into a home, seems odd to keep calling them twins given that they are now in their nineties.” He looked at Mrs Pitch and gave a little cough.
“Are you smoking indoors? Isn’t that against the law?” The vicar began wafting the air with his bible. “You need to put that out straight away, Mrs Pitch, I suspect this is not the first time, is it? And why is the waste bin outside?” He put his hands, his left one still clutching his bible, on his head. “Let me guess, you set the bin on fire!”
Mrs Pitch gave the vicar a withering look. “My smoking indoors is the least of your problems…the bin is outside because I kicked it in a pique of anger. You better look at this.” She handed him the letter.
The vicar stepped outside and read quickly through the letter. He shrugged and looked at Mrs Pitch. “The problem is..?”
Mrs Pitch, in defiance of the vicar, flicked her cigarette across the car park and snatched the letter from him.
“Ooh, this is getting good,” whispered Holly. The friends watched as Mrs Pitch had a very much one-sided argument with the vicar…
“…and mark my words,” Mrs Pitch waved the letter in the air, “this will only be the start of it,” she carried on, not pausing for breath, “before we know it, some bright spark will be Freedom-of-Informationing the Parish Rooms accounts! Thank goodness I’m only the secretary and not the treasurer, that’s all I can say.” She s
topped and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the vicar.
The vicar was quite red faced and frightened by now. He knew Mrs Pitch had a temper but had never realised how forceful she could be. He gave a worried little cough and asked, in as matter-of-factly a way as possible, if there was a problem with the accounts?
Mrs Pitch snapped back that it was not her area but she had noticed that he, the vicar, seemed to be claiming travel expenses for an awful lot of visits to the south coast, especially during the summertime.
The vicar smiled nervously. All church and parish business he said, a little unconvincingly. Then, changing the subject, “what about this, erm, letter? Are you going to reply or do we need to get the Parish Rooms committee together to discuss it?”
Mrs Pitch lit another cigarette and began coughing. “See, you’ve got me agitated now. I only ever cough when I’m under stress,” she coughed again, clearing her throat. “I suppose before we do anything else, you’d better go and tell Mister Castor Pollux about the letter. He’s only been in the village six months or less and has certainly made his mark.” She shook her head and stifled another cough. Before the vicar could protest, not that he really would have, far too scared of Mrs Pitch to do that, she added, “I can’t do it, I can’t go and see him. I have to stay here.”
