When You Wish Upon A Post In The Ground

 

At 2.12 a.m (according to my watch which appears to have galloped through an hour at speed whilst I’ve been enjoying a large hot chocolate with whipped cream, nuts and a chocolate flake, along with a deep filled mince pie with extra orangey filling) the team from ‘A Wing And A Preyer’ return, having efficiently delivered presents to the entire population of children on the North AND South American continents. Job done!

The bald eagle hands back the red button gadget and Father Christmas’s present sack with another curtsey and I thank him.

‘It has been an honour, Your Royal Highness,’ says the bald eagle, offering another curtsey.

‘I’m not actually Princess Anne…’ I say, and then ‘Ouch!’ as Bambino Bobble Wilson delivers a quick and sharp kick to my shin.

The bald eagle smiles at my apparent regal eccentricities and takes his leave, his entourage flying close behind. Bambino and I stand on the docks and watch them head off into the starry night sky.

‘I don’t suppose such a service exists for the other continents, does it?’ I say, hopefully. ‘Because if it does, we can be home and dry by sunrise.’

‘Oh, if only it was that easy,’ says Bambino.

‘Couldn’t we, oh, I don’t know, hire an albatross and train it to use the red button gadget?’ I say.

‘Don’t be silly,’ says Bambino. ‘That would never work.’

‘Well, I’m sure if a bald eagle is capable…’ I say.

Bambino interrupts. ‘You’ve never hear of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?’ he says.

Actually,’ I say, ‘I’ve taught it. Back in the day it was on the A level syllabus. It’s VERY long-winded and grim, if I remember rightly.’

‘Then you will know that it is bad fortune to kill an albatross,’ says Bambino.

‘I wasn’t planning on killing it,’ I say.

‘You would if you gave it Father Christmas’s present sack to cart around,’ says Bambino. ‘Albatross have weak ankles.’ And he gives a knowing tap of his nose.

I fail to see what weak ankles have to do with anything. I can see by the way Bambino is settling himself back onto his cushion that the conversation has come to an end and we must be on our way. Checking my watch, I see it is now 2.22 a.m.

‘Where to now?’ I say.

‘I think we need to head for Fenny Drayton,’ says Bambino. ‘There’s a farm there called Lindley Hall Farm which is the geographical centre of England. Something magic is bound to happen there.’

Off we go, then, into the night. It is quiet on the roads, thank goodness. I wonder what is happening back at Much Malarkey Manor and whether the hens have managed to send Inspector Spectre packing, having turned him into a gibbering wreck with their wily chicken ways. I also hope they have managed to deal with the elephant in the room i.e the ex-Father Christmas in the body bag in the kitchen.

We arrive at the geographical centre of England in no time at all because, once again, I don’t want to be here doing this and it has put the passing of time back into drag mode. The geographical centre of England is marked, rather uninspiringly, by a modest wooden post.

‘You’d think they’d have come up with something a bit more ornate, wouldn’t you?’ I say as Bambino and I inspect the site. ‘Like a statue, or a sundial maybe. Or a wishing well. That’d be nice. A wishing well…’

‘Who’s they?’ says Bambino. He reaches out a paw and gives the post an experimental wobble.

‘They…them…the people who decide these things,’ I say. ‘Government. I don’t know. To be honest, I am at a loss to know who is in charge of anything these days.’

It is clear Bambino isn’t listening to a word I am saying. I don’t blame him. Sometimes I don’t listen to what I’m saying either.

‘I think,’ he suddenly announces, ‘that a wishing well would be an excellent idea.’ And he sets about pushing and pulling and swinging around on the post until it becomes looser and looser and eventually pops out of the ground.

We peer down into the resulting hole. It is about 10 inches square and a couple of feet deep.

‘It needs to be rounder and deeper to be a wishing well,’ I say.

‘We can do that,’ says Bambino. ‘You start digging and I’ll be operations manager.’

‘That seems an unfair division of labour,’ I say. ‘Especially as you haven’t told me the purpose of creating a wishing well. You know I’ll only do something if I can see a purpose to it.’

‘Fair do,’ says Bambino. ‘What I think is this – we make a wishing well. Doesn’t have to be huge, just an approximation of a wishing well. Fairy-sized, if you like. And everyone knows that the purpose of a wishing well is to make wishes, yes?’

I agree. Never mind the whole ‘it’s a source of water for communities that aren’t mains supplied’ malarkey. Wishes are the order of the day, and this day especially.

‘So, we make a well and we drop the sack of presents and the red button gadget down the well, and make a wish that someone in the southern hemisphere will collect them and deliver to all the children who are below the equator!’ says  Bambino.

‘I like the simplicity of your plan, young kitten-m’Bob,’ I say. ‘But are you seriously expecting the well to extend all the way through the earth’s mantle, crust, outer core and inner core – which is VERY hot, I might add - to the other side of the Earth? Where is the direct opposite of this site on the other side of the Earth anyway?’

Bambino shrugs his shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘You’re the one with the Geography ‘O’ level.’

I can’t argue the truth of this fact. It’s only a ‘C’ grade, although I’m surprised I achieved even that when it became apparent during the exam that we had covered barely half of the examinable syllabus because our Geography teacher, Miss Smith, had been far too busy telling us about the latest adventures she’d had with her boyfriend rather than the essential stuff regarding tree canopies in the Amazon and plate tectonics.   Pre-Ofsted days, you see. Teachers were more inclined to go off-piste in those carefree times.

Anyway, I say as much to Bambino. ‘You seem to have a solid understanding about the structure of the earth,’ he says.

‘I learned that at primary school,’ I say. ‘We made volcanoes.’

Bambino has no interest in volcanoes, not even papier mache ones that spewed pretend lava. ‘You carry on digging,’ he says, ‘and I’ll get some rocks. I’ve always fancied having a go at dry-stone walling.’

Soon we have a small wishing well on the site that marks the very centre of England. It is just big enough to squeeze the present sack into. Bambino balances the red button gadget on top and gives it a firm stamp with his Regency footwear bedecked foot, the kind one would apply to a newly planted tree sapling.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Make a wish!’

And we both close out eyes. And wish…

The earth beneath us quivers and trembles. The present sack and red button gadget vanish.