There’s a bit of a kerfuffle in the wings of the stage
during the change of scene and Mrs Miggins goes to investigate.
‘What’s happening?’ she says. ‘Where’s William Shakespeare?
He’s supposed to be telling the story of Brian, the last ghost.’
‘He’s locked himself in the shepherd’s hut library and is
refusing to come out,’ says Mrs Poo. ‘I’ve tried beating the door down with a
stick so I can drag him out by the ears, but he’s blocked it with something
heavy. He keeps wailing that he isn’t a cat murderer and he’s sorry about
Francis Bacon.’
‘Oh, good grief,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘Now what? The last
thing I need is a self-pitying bard.’
She can see the ghost of Brian the Caveman already on stage,
clearly eager to hear the recounting of his story. He is looking towards her,
eyes bright and expectant. She knows she can’t let him down. He is the oldest
resident ghost of Much Malarkey Manor and so, more than most, deserves to be
heard because his roots to the land are much deeper and stronger than anyone
else’s. She lets out a sigh.
‘Where’s the story book?’ she says. ‘I suppose I shall have
to go on stage and do the best I can, although without a rehearsal it’s going
to be a bit of a lack-lustre finale to this year’s story.’
‘STAND ASIDE!’ comes the shout of a familiar voice. ‘You
told me I was the star this year and the star I shall be!’
It is Kenneth the Phantomime! The Malarkey crew don’t know
whether to laugh or cry. If he goes on stage to tell Brian’s story, he will be insufferable
at the post- performance Christmas party. If he doesn’t go on, the ghost of
Brian will be lost forever. Everyone looks to Mrs Miggins for a decision.
‘Oh, go on, then,’ she says. There really was no choice to
be made.
Kenneth the Phantomime grabs the storybook and sweeps onto
the stage.
‘It was the days before clocks and calendars, when the
passing of time was measured by the waxing and waning of the Moon, and the
transit of the planets and stars across the skies. It was the time when strange
creatures wandered the Earth, when life was harsh and the fight for survival
was strong. It was the time waaaaaaay before the Internet, Doc Martens and free
public transport for the over 60s.’
The audience gasps. Some of the youngest audience members
can barely believe what they are hearing. A time before the Internet? But how
did people manage without the Internet? Listen, youngsters – we just did, all
right? And jolly well, too.
Brian, who is sitting on the stool at the front of the stage
and smiling wisely at the audience, nods. But actually, he quite likes the
Internet and will spend hours on Ebay seeking out additions to his collection
of novelty egg cups. But he also knows that life without the Internet was
better and one day he hopes he will discover where the Internet is plugged in so
he can unplug it, fry it with garlic, herbs and butter, and serve it with mashed avocado and a poached egg on
sourdough rye bread toast for a jolly nice breakfast.
The Phantomime, now in full performance mode, continues.
‘As you can imagine, Brian has seen thousands of Christmas
times come and go. More than Santa Claus even. In fact, Christmas as a modern day concept is a
relatively new experience for him. He’s tried it but some things confuse him.
Trees inside houses for one. Covering a perfectly good cake with marzipan for
another. And don’t even get him started on setting fire to a pudding. He tried
that one year and his eyebrows have never recovered.’
Brian nods again and lifts his hair to reveal his forehead.
His mono-brow is definitely a bit scant on the left-hand side. But Brian is
pragmatic about these things. It’s all part of the ups and downs of life. He is
very tempted to show the audience what happened to his left buttock when he got
into a scrap with a beaver about which of them would look better in a beaver
fur gilet, but decides against it.
‘It was early Winter a few hundred years ago, and snow lay
thick and heavy upon the ground,’ says the Phantomime. ‘Our Brian, by now a
ghost – killed outright when a frozen-solid owl fell out the sky and clanged
him on the head thousands of years prior to this time - had been watching the
activity upon the lands where he lived with great interest. Until this point,
the lands had been a mix of meadows and marshlands, abundant with wooded areas
and the tracks made by animals traversing from one area to another over
hundreds of years. But now, since the early Spring, something new was emerging
from the land.’
‘Was it a monkey puzzle tree?’ whispers Mrs Slocombe.
‘No,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘Far more poignant than that.’
Mrs Slocombe finds this very hard to believe.
‘A building was rising from the ground,’ says the Phantomime,
waving his cloak around in a dramatic fashion. ‘Human beings had been swarming
all over a particular plot of ground with all the industry of bees building
their comb. Some were crafting together huge lengths of timber, some were
slapping around great piles of sludge and straw…’
‘Wattle and daub,’ says Mrs Poo.
‘And you,’ says the Phantomime, crossly. ‘Do you mind? I’m
the star here.’ He clears his throat and continues. ‘And some were carving
stones and more wood, and slowly all the pieces had been coming together and a
house was being born onto the land.’
‘Much Malarkey Manor?’ says Mrs Pumphrey, coming over a bit
misty-eyed.
‘Yes,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘Brian witnessed the building of
our very own home.’
‘Yes,’ echoed the Phantomime, crossly, thinking if there
were any more interruptions he might just flounce off once and for all, ‘Brian
witnessed the building of Much Malarkey Manor.’
The audience let out a ripple of applause and Brian stands
and takes a bow.
‘A lot of deliberation went into the naming of the new
building,’ says the Phantomime. ‘Favourites included Constant Calamity Cottage,
Twittering Tales Towers, Hollering Hoo-Ha House, and Brian listened carefully
to these arguments growing about what the new house was to be called. At night,
when the arguing people disappeared off-site, the decision still unmade, Brian
would go into the entrance hall of the house and sit on the bottom step of the
grand staircase. And there he would listen carefully to all the wood and straw,
and clay and stone that went into the building of this house, because he knew
that the energy of these things would know what name would make this house into
a home.
And one Christmas Eve, the house told him.
Now, around the 3rd century A.D, Brian had
learned to read and write. Well, there wasn’t much else to do and he took
rather a fancy to the Runic alphabet mostly because it was easy to make with
twigs, what with it being all straight lines and no curves. He liked, too, that
each rune had a symbolic meaning that linked to the Earth and the Universe. His
favourite symbol was Mannaz, the shape of a fancy M. It represented ‘man’, which was
what he was, but it also symbolised divine union and manifestation.
And the more Brian listened to the house, and the more he
thought about the symbolism, the more he thought yes, this new building
symbolises a new union between the Earth from where the house grew and the
future of the people who would settle on this land.
The new house, then, needed to be called something beginning
with M…’
‘Mouse House?’ said Mrs Pumphrey.
The Phantomime, fortunately, did not hear this latest
interlude.
‘Brian set about creating the Mannaz symbol throughout the
house,’ said the Phantomime. ‘He left ‘M’ shapes created with twigs in the
centre of each of the room and in every doorway. He used a flint to carve ‘M’
in the walls. And, just before dawn as he left the house, he left three large M
shapes on the path in front of the main door. And the people who were to live
in this new house and who had been arguing about what to call it, saw all the M
shapes and were inspired to call their new home…’
‘Marshmallows!’ shouts Tango Pete from the wings, because
he really couldn’t help himself.
‘Oh, for GOODNESS sake!’ shouts the Phantomime. ‘They
called it Much Malarkey Manor, as you jolly well know.’
The Phantomime looks at Brian. ‘I do apologise for all the
interruptions, my dear chap,’ he says. ‘But at least now everyone knows your
most important story – that it was you who named Much Malarkey Manor.’
Brian smiles at the Phantomime. ‘It’s all right,’ he says.
‘Although Marshmallow would have been quite a good name, too.’
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