Monday, 15 April 2013

Fools, Fiends, and the Faithful Phone Box.

My mind has been going round and round this evening, constructing an essay with the title ‘Compare and Contrast the Present Government with Laurel and Hardy.’

It kept getting out of hand; it kept going down too many roads; it kept ending with me spilling bile. Frankly, I’m tired of spilling bile over the nasty, misconceived actions of ignorant fools – and dangerous fools at that. I just hope we can get through the next two years without any more riots or too many more people being rendered destitute, and then sweep them into the wilderness. It didn’t get written.

Let’s do the walk instead.

*  *  *

I was struck again tonight by how plaintive that lighted telephone box looks in its little dark place at the bottom of Bag Lane. It’s still doing its job, you see, as it has for maybe six decades. It’s still doing its duty by lighting up every night as the darkness falls, standing ready to facilitate the needs of the Shire folk. Only nobody comes any more. And I’m sometimes persuaded that the genius loci is a credible and literal concept. I saw Poltergeist 2 (or was it 3?)

But then I got a little spooked in The Hollow. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt spooked down there. A place that grows swathes of wild garlic on its embankments has to be a friendly place, right? Well, as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, those embankments are steep and rise to around fifteen feet in places. At night, it’s very easy to imagine a large, unidentified shape skulking along the top of them. Could it be heading for a spot where ambush would be easier, you wonder. I switched my imagination off and thought of Laurel and Hardy.

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