(**) The Fairytale Conspiracy
Ok - day two of the creativity challenge. Today it's a bit of writing, I'm not exactly sure if it counts as fic - but a lot of the characters mentioned should be familiar. To set the scene - I come from a town in Southern England called Gloucester. For some unexplainable reason Gloucester always gets a lot of flack in fairy tales and nursery rhymes - obviously there's Dr Foster who fell in his puddle (and had a pub named after him), Dick Whittington before he became famous for having a talking cat and was made Mayor of London left Gloucester and a little known fact is that Humpty Dumpty was actually a canon that fell off the walls during the Siege of Gloucester. So yep - conspiracy obviously. Anyway, this is just a silly scribble inspired by that. I enjoyed writing it - especially as some of the characters bizarrely decided to take on the voices of my favourite comediens. (Also I feel the need to add that Beatrix Potter's Tailor of Gloucester - actually paints the city in a nice light and is a lovely story).
The Fairytale Conspiracy (**)
“And so it seems that nobody anymore is willing to hang around in grotty Gloucester. Whether it’s the horrendous rate of injuries, poor health service or the mutant rodents - the crowds are flocking away. Even the city’s most famous son, Dick Whittington, is now refusing to talk about the city. So to all travellers we say - visit Gloucester at your own peril.” The Mayor lowered the travel guide and scowled at the council.
“Well?” They sat silently for a while, refusing to meet his eyes. At last the Police Captain, who by the slowly encroaching pinkness of his face had been determinedly working himself into a frenzy, threw himself to his feet.
“Well! Well it’s rubbish, isn’t it! Complete rubbish! Worse than rubbish - it’s libellous. We should sue!”
“You always want to sue,” the Mayor sighed and the Captain sank back, reluctantly, into his chair.
“Well we should sue, it is libellous.”
“And what exactly is there in this report that you would call libellous?” The Mayor was keeping his voice dangerously low, the others would have probably taken the hint but the captain had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“Well all that about injuries for starters. We don’t have a lot of accidents - in fact I can’t think of one serious injury in the last five years…”
“What about Dr. Foster?” The Mayor lent forward, he always enjoyed the affect that the Dr’s name had upon the Captain.
“Foster! Foster!” The man spluttered. “That’s unfair Mayor, completely unfair. One accident - one accident! That’s all and nobody would have even remembered it if it hadn’t been for that blasted poem. And what sort of fool falls into the Docks anyway…”
“It didn’t help that you had taken down the barriers…”
“It was the only way we could get the tarpaulin laid out!”
“… Or that somebody had covered the water with a tarpaulin so that he didn’t see it.”
“We wanted to keep the water clean for the mans speech, how should we know that he would step on it - the damn fool…”
“As for nobody remembering it,” the Mayor raised his voice so he could be heard, it was never a food idea to let the Captain build up too much steam. “I find it hard to believe that people would have forgotten a distinguished man like the Dr. plummeting through a thin layer of tarpaulin into the dark depths of Gloucester docks in front of a large crowd of interested bystanders, who just happened to be to be waiting to hear him give a speech on the need for greater safety in this dangerous modern world,” he took a deep breath conscious of the fact that he should have breathed at least once during that last sentence. “Especially as it took you three days to get him out.”
“He broke the crane,” the Captain responded in a small voice.
“We know that, we all know that. In fact, as some of the lesser members of the cities populace have been keen to point out - ‘it was the best bit of the whole affair’.” The room was quiet for a few moments as, the Mayor presumed, the council members all relived the excruciatingly funny moment that had seen the large from of Dr. Foster disappearing in a flurry of curses and a flash beneath a pile of the cities worst carpentry. The reverie was broken once again by the voice of the Captain.
“Still it wasn’t right of them to write that poem, having everyone laugh at us like that,” he said looking around the rest of the room for sympathy.
“I think, Captain, you should be grateful that people only seem to remember the first verse - I personally think that the verse about you was much more catchy,” the Mayor replied.
The councillors, seemingly caught between indignation and sniggering, resumed their dedicated study of the table. After a while a steady drumming began to fill the room. The Mayor’s eyes sought out the culprit and found the head of the cities hospital looking agitated.
“Is something wrong Lionel?” He asked sharply and was pleased to see the man jump.
“Well no, of course not… although I… well I must admit that the report sounded rather derogatory you see. About the hospital.”
“And you found that surprising?”
“Well yes, yes Mayor. I mean you have to admit that after we got Dr. Foster out of the Docks the hospital did give him excellent service.”
“You gave him a towel,” the Mayor said bluntly.
“And a pair of dry trousers,” Lionel added with a wistful smile.
“Yes and a pair of trousers which, if I remember rightly were rather too small and very difficult for him to put on as he had lost all feeling in his legs.”
“Yes but it was service - it hardly seems fair for them to paint us so poor.”
“What about the accident with Humpty Dumpty?”
“I’m sorry Mayor I’m not sure what you are talking about,” Lionel replied uncomfortably.
“The egg, Lionel, the giant egg that fell off the wall.”
“Pushed! Pushed!” The Captain spat, “he should sue.”
“Could somebody stop giving the Captain whisky,” the Mayor frowned.
“Well, there, you see Mayor, there’s another case of us being misrepresented in rhyme.” The Mayor groaned, “I mean - all the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty together again - well the king’s horses and the king’s men we may not be, but we certainly put the egg back together.”
“You put him together wrong.”
“I’m sorry!” Lionel said indignantly.
“You… Put… Him… Together… Wrong! His nose was where his eye should have been, he had an ear for his mouth and I can’t even say in polite conversation where one of his eyes ended up. Everybody thought Picasso had taken up egg painting for Easter.”
“Well… Well… I never expected a man like yourself would be able to see the true artistic… no, no the heroic… the miraculous nature of my work,” Lionel spluttered.
“If that is the nature of miracles they are not what I was led to believe,” the Mayor snapped back. With a loud harrumph, Lionel turned his head away from the Mayor and pouted stolidly into the distance.
“Does anyone have anything else they would like to add, anything sensible?” The Mayor asked.
“My mice aren’t mutants,” a small voice muttered from the corner. For the twelth time that day the Mayor cursed the unions that had managed to put a deranged man like the Tailor on his council.
“What?” He snapped.
“My mice aren’t mutants.” The Mayor wondered how long that thought had been mulling over in the mans mind.
“Let’s see, shall we, the general description of mice - small furry creatures, scurry around, squeak, hide from cats and humans, eat cheese, get into the grain, get eaten by owls. Don’t do a huge amount else beyond that really. Do you think, I mean really think that that is like your mice?”
“They’re not mutants,” the Tailor repeated stubbornly, “they’re just a little odd.”
“Odd? Odd! They sew! You’ve bred the blasted things to embroider!”
“I’m sorry Mayor,” the Tailor interrupted, “I didn’t breed them, they’re wild little mice who come out at night to help me.”
“You keep them in cages, they wear collars, you train them with very small electric cattle prods…”
“Very well, Mayor. I see there is no point preaching to the unenlightened.” In the almost silence that descended on the room the Mayor could hear the Captain muttering steadily to himself.
“It’s the fairytales… hic… all ganging up on us, ganging… hic… up on us, that’s it. And the… hic… damn nursery rhymes, them to… hic… a conspiracy that’s what it is… hic… sue ‘em…”
“Does anybody have any suggestions for what we should do in response to this article.”
“… sue…”
“Not you,” the Mayor snapped at the Captain.
“Perhaps,” Lionel said rather sniffily, “we should get Dick Whittington back to be Mayor. I’m sure he’d be able to sort all this out easily enough.”
“Dick Whittington,” the Mayor said brandishing the travel guide at them, “won’t even talk about Gloucester.”
“Well his cat then, at least we would get rid of those mice then.”
“You leave my mice out of it,” the Tailor snapped.
“It’s the one thing that the guide got right, its disgusting - those filthy little creatures scurrying around…” Lionel said angrily.
“My mice don’t scurry…”
“No,” the Mayor muttered under his breath, “they skip.”
“You… you… brown nosing toff…” the Tailor spat.
“Son of a drunkard!” Lionel replied.
“Whiny little rich boy.”
“Lionel and the Tailor,” the Captain sniggered, “sitting in a tree K.I.S.S.I.N.G… hic…”
“Shut up!” The pair yelled at him.
“All of you shut up!” Roared the Mayor. “Sit down! I very much doubt that either Dick Whittington or his cat will be giving up the gold leafed glory of London to come back here. Now has anyone got any sensible - not sarcastic, not stupid - sensible suggestions for how we should deal with this apparently startlingly accurate account our city?”
“It’s not completely accurate, Sir,” said the Secretary speaking for the first time.
“What?”
“Well it says we’re grotty Sir, I don’t think we’re grotty. I’ve always thought we’re very green, Sir. Oh I love it, Sir, the greenness that is - it’s so very green, Sir.”
“Well I suppose we’re not that grotty - or at least no more grotty that the rest of the cities in England. But as he didn’t say we were the Grottiest Grotty city in all of Grotty Grottland - I can’t really see how that’s going to help.”
“But Sir, if we could just show everyone how not-grotty we are… we should invite celebrities, Sir, of everyone loves celebrities,” the Secretary gushed and for a moment the Mayor eyed the possibility suspiciously. It was only a moment before the massive flaw emerged.
“After what happened to Dr. Foster, none of them would come.”
“But we wouldn’t have it in the Docks, Sir. We could have it in the Forest of Dean, Sir. That’s very green, Sir, very nice.”
“Oh yes,” Lionel said enthusiastically, “we could invite Little Red Riding Hood.” The Captain sniggered again but Lionel ignored him. “And the Three Little Pigs. Mayor, they’re very popular at the moment.”
“Brilliant, yes brilliant,” the Mayor’s voice was unnaturally high, “we’re going to take a small girl dressed in bright, bright red and three pigs into the woods. Where, given our track record they’ll probably all be eaten by wolves. While we’re at it we might as well invite the wicked witch of the east and drop a shed on her. Then we can shoot a few baby deers mothers to celebrate and dance off naked into the sunset, snogging some toads in the hope they’ll turn into princes…” He trailed off, spotting the shocked looks on the others faces.
“Are you alright, Mayor?” Lionel asked cautiously.
“I think,” said the Secretary taking hold of his shoulders and guiding him out of the room, “that’d it’d be a good idea if we went for a break now, Sir.”
The Fairytale Conspiracy (**)
“And so it seems that nobody anymore is willing to hang around in grotty Gloucester. Whether it’s the horrendous rate of injuries, poor health service or the mutant rodents - the crowds are flocking away. Even the city’s most famous son, Dick Whittington, is now refusing to talk about the city. So to all travellers we say - visit Gloucester at your own peril.” The Mayor lowered the travel guide and scowled at the council.
“Well?” They sat silently for a while, refusing to meet his eyes. At last the Police Captain, who by the slowly encroaching pinkness of his face had been determinedly working himself into a frenzy, threw himself to his feet.
“Well! Well it’s rubbish, isn’t it! Complete rubbish! Worse than rubbish - it’s libellous. We should sue!”
“You always want to sue,” the Mayor sighed and the Captain sank back, reluctantly, into his chair.
“Well we should sue, it is libellous.”
“And what exactly is there in this report that you would call libellous?” The Mayor was keeping his voice dangerously low, the others would have probably taken the hint but the captain had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“Well all that about injuries for starters. We don’t have a lot of accidents - in fact I can’t think of one serious injury in the last five years…”
“What about Dr. Foster?” The Mayor lent forward, he always enjoyed the affect that the Dr’s name had upon the Captain.
“Foster! Foster!” The man spluttered. “That’s unfair Mayor, completely unfair. One accident - one accident! That’s all and nobody would have even remembered it if it hadn’t been for that blasted poem. And what sort of fool falls into the Docks anyway…”
“It didn’t help that you had taken down the barriers…”
“It was the only way we could get the tarpaulin laid out!”
“… Or that somebody had covered the water with a tarpaulin so that he didn’t see it.”
“We wanted to keep the water clean for the mans speech, how should we know that he would step on it - the damn fool…”
“As for nobody remembering it,” the Mayor raised his voice so he could be heard, it was never a food idea to let the Captain build up too much steam. “I find it hard to believe that people would have forgotten a distinguished man like the Dr. plummeting through a thin layer of tarpaulin into the dark depths of Gloucester docks in front of a large crowd of interested bystanders, who just happened to be to be waiting to hear him give a speech on the need for greater safety in this dangerous modern world,” he took a deep breath conscious of the fact that he should have breathed at least once during that last sentence. “Especially as it took you three days to get him out.”
“He broke the crane,” the Captain responded in a small voice.
“We know that, we all know that. In fact, as some of the lesser members of the cities populace have been keen to point out - ‘it was the best bit of the whole affair’.” The room was quiet for a few moments as, the Mayor presumed, the council members all relived the excruciatingly funny moment that had seen the large from of Dr. Foster disappearing in a flurry of curses and a flash beneath a pile of the cities worst carpentry. The reverie was broken once again by the voice of the Captain.
“Still it wasn’t right of them to write that poem, having everyone laugh at us like that,” he said looking around the rest of the room for sympathy.
“I think, Captain, you should be grateful that people only seem to remember the first verse - I personally think that the verse about you was much more catchy,” the Mayor replied.
The councillors, seemingly caught between indignation and sniggering, resumed their dedicated study of the table. After a while a steady drumming began to fill the room. The Mayor’s eyes sought out the culprit and found the head of the cities hospital looking agitated.
“Is something wrong Lionel?” He asked sharply and was pleased to see the man jump.
“Well no, of course not… although I… well I must admit that the report sounded rather derogatory you see. About the hospital.”
“And you found that surprising?”
“Well yes, yes Mayor. I mean you have to admit that after we got Dr. Foster out of the Docks the hospital did give him excellent service.”
“You gave him a towel,” the Mayor said bluntly.
“And a pair of dry trousers,” Lionel added with a wistful smile.
“Yes and a pair of trousers which, if I remember rightly were rather too small and very difficult for him to put on as he had lost all feeling in his legs.”
“Yes but it was service - it hardly seems fair for them to paint us so poor.”
“What about the accident with Humpty Dumpty?”
“I’m sorry Mayor I’m not sure what you are talking about,” Lionel replied uncomfortably.
“The egg, Lionel, the giant egg that fell off the wall.”
“Pushed! Pushed!” The Captain spat, “he should sue.”
“Could somebody stop giving the Captain whisky,” the Mayor frowned.
“Well, there, you see Mayor, there’s another case of us being misrepresented in rhyme.” The Mayor groaned, “I mean - all the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty together again - well the king’s horses and the king’s men we may not be, but we certainly put the egg back together.”
“You put him together wrong.”
“I’m sorry!” Lionel said indignantly.
“You… Put… Him… Together… Wrong! His nose was where his eye should have been, he had an ear for his mouth and I can’t even say in polite conversation where one of his eyes ended up. Everybody thought Picasso had taken up egg painting for Easter.”
“Well… Well… I never expected a man like yourself would be able to see the true artistic… no, no the heroic… the miraculous nature of my work,” Lionel spluttered.
“If that is the nature of miracles they are not what I was led to believe,” the Mayor snapped back. With a loud harrumph, Lionel turned his head away from the Mayor and pouted stolidly into the distance.
“Does anyone have anything else they would like to add, anything sensible?” The Mayor asked.
“My mice aren’t mutants,” a small voice muttered from the corner. For the twelth time that day the Mayor cursed the unions that had managed to put a deranged man like the Tailor on his council.
“What?” He snapped.
“My mice aren’t mutants.” The Mayor wondered how long that thought had been mulling over in the mans mind.
“Let’s see, shall we, the general description of mice - small furry creatures, scurry around, squeak, hide from cats and humans, eat cheese, get into the grain, get eaten by owls. Don’t do a huge amount else beyond that really. Do you think, I mean really think that that is like your mice?”
“They’re not mutants,” the Tailor repeated stubbornly, “they’re just a little odd.”
“Odd? Odd! They sew! You’ve bred the blasted things to embroider!”
“I’m sorry Mayor,” the Tailor interrupted, “I didn’t breed them, they’re wild little mice who come out at night to help me.”
“You keep them in cages, they wear collars, you train them with very small electric cattle prods…”
“Very well, Mayor. I see there is no point preaching to the unenlightened.” In the almost silence that descended on the room the Mayor could hear the Captain muttering steadily to himself.
“It’s the fairytales… hic… all ganging up on us, ganging… hic… up on us, that’s it. And the… hic… damn nursery rhymes, them to… hic… a conspiracy that’s what it is… hic… sue ‘em…”
“Does anybody have any suggestions for what we should do in response to this article.”
“… sue…”
“Not you,” the Mayor snapped at the Captain.
“Perhaps,” Lionel said rather sniffily, “we should get Dick Whittington back to be Mayor. I’m sure he’d be able to sort all this out easily enough.”
“Dick Whittington,” the Mayor said brandishing the travel guide at them, “won’t even talk about Gloucester.”
“Well his cat then, at least we would get rid of those mice then.”
“You leave my mice out of it,” the Tailor snapped.
“It’s the one thing that the guide got right, its disgusting - those filthy little creatures scurrying around…” Lionel said angrily.
“My mice don’t scurry…”
“No,” the Mayor muttered under his breath, “they skip.”
“You… you… brown nosing toff…” the Tailor spat.
“Son of a drunkard!” Lionel replied.
“Whiny little rich boy.”
“Lionel and the Tailor,” the Captain sniggered, “sitting in a tree K.I.S.S.I.N.G… hic…”
“Shut up!” The pair yelled at him.
“All of you shut up!” Roared the Mayor. “Sit down! I very much doubt that either Dick Whittington or his cat will be giving up the gold leafed glory of London to come back here. Now has anyone got any sensible - not sarcastic, not stupid - sensible suggestions for how we should deal with this apparently startlingly accurate account our city?”
“It’s not completely accurate, Sir,” said the Secretary speaking for the first time.
“What?”
“Well it says we’re grotty Sir, I don’t think we’re grotty. I’ve always thought we’re very green, Sir. Oh I love it, Sir, the greenness that is - it’s so very green, Sir.”
“Well I suppose we’re not that grotty - or at least no more grotty that the rest of the cities in England. But as he didn’t say we were the Grottiest Grotty city in all of Grotty Grottland - I can’t really see how that’s going to help.”
“But Sir, if we could just show everyone how not-grotty we are… we should invite celebrities, Sir, of everyone loves celebrities,” the Secretary gushed and for a moment the Mayor eyed the possibility suspiciously. It was only a moment before the massive flaw emerged.
“After what happened to Dr. Foster, none of them would come.”
“But we wouldn’t have it in the Docks, Sir. We could have it in the Forest of Dean, Sir. That’s very green, Sir, very nice.”
“Oh yes,” Lionel said enthusiastically, “we could invite Little Red Riding Hood.” The Captain sniggered again but Lionel ignored him. “And the Three Little Pigs. Mayor, they’re very popular at the moment.”
“Brilliant, yes brilliant,” the Mayor’s voice was unnaturally high, “we’re going to take a small girl dressed in bright, bright red and three pigs into the woods. Where, given our track record they’ll probably all be eaten by wolves. While we’re at it we might as well invite the wicked witch of the east and drop a shed on her. Then we can shoot a few baby deers mothers to celebrate and dance off naked into the sunset, snogging some toads in the hope they’ll turn into princes…” He trailed off, spotting the shocked looks on the others faces.
“Are you alright, Mayor?” Lionel asked cautiously.
“I think,” said the Secretary taking hold of his shoulders and guiding him out of the room, “that’d it’d be a good idea if we went for a break now, Sir.”