One Day at the Zoo... Picture of the Week, 14 June 2012

two lions are rather old...

Freddy Jones has been unemployed for several weeks when he is surprised to be offered a job at the zoo. He has to start at the bottom but he doesn’t mind, he quite likes animals. He had a hamster once. He puts on his rather impressive zoo-keepers cap and his new boss gives him a large wheelbarrow, a yellow plastic bucket, a rake, a strong broom and a shiny new spade. Freddy is told he has four jobs to do on his first day. He soon realises these are the jobs that none of the old hands want to do.

The first job is to clear the piranha fish tank of slimy weeds. As he begins to haul the weed out with his rake, a shoal of piranha swims up and try to bite him. To show them who’s boss, Freddy beats the water with the rake, killing several.   

            Realizing his new boss won't be best pleased, he uses the rake to pull the corpses out of the pool. He hides the dead piranha under some weed in the yellow bucket until he can dispose of them by pushing them through the feeding hatch into the lion enclosure, as the boss has told him lions will eat pretty much anything.

Short story - The Hill Where Goats Cry

Father told them never to take the goats onto the hill. Goats would eat the berries and there would be none left to harvest. Then father went off to his fishing boat. Brother said the hill was a good place for goats, they liked it up there and wouldn’t run off. This was true. The goats stayed on the hill.

He liked it up on the hill too. He could see across the fields and houses to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. On the hill-top, Brother showed him a game. They lay on their backs and looked up to the blue, where clouds rolled and rushed. The clouds were very fast. Brother told him the clouds were galloping horses and fiery dragons and warring gods. Soon he could see the dragons and even the angry faces of the gods.

After a time the goats were unhappy, they ran about, holding their heads high. Then they were climbing on top of each other and crying. Brother said they were bad goats and he hit them with his stick.

There was a big noise inside the hill and the world moved.

The Gledholt Fault

The Estate Agent is from Frankley, Bland and Co, situate at Market Street and comprising two spacious office suites, one delightful chamber with built in valuations expert and hot and cold running surveyors, plus amenities. There are adequate parking spaces for two Ford Montessoris, a Nissan Somewhat and a Landshover Discovery.

‘Have you heard of the Gledholt fault?’ She asks me.

Is that a problem caused by a more than usually defective local builder, I wonder, or is it more fundamental, more potentially earth shattering? A West Yorkshire version of San Andreas, waiting to pitch us all to our doom, deep beneath the pothole rich streets of Huddersfield.

The Estate Agent’s name is Julie Street. Quite a good name for an Estate Agent really, but it can’t compete with the drama of The Gledholt Fault.

‘No, I haven’t heard of the Gledholt Fault,’ I say.
 

I look up at the massive beech and chestnut trees which loom above the rooftops all along the street. Luckily they’re on the North side of the street.

Then I look down and imagine the seething mass of white hot magma, dozens of miles below our feet, as it presses upwards a little harder, the rock above it begins to shift by an infinitesimal degree. It will be days or weeks before the effect reaches the surface and another hairline crack appears in the wall outside the bay window at the front of 61, Grimescar Street, Gledholt.

‘It affects several houses in this street, but this one’s meant to be sorted, there’s an engineer’s report,’ Julie Street struggles with the locked door. ‘I’m sorry about this wretched door. I’m sure this is the right key.’

How can she be so sure it’s the right key? Estate agents offices hold dozens of keys. It only takes one anxious junior estate agent, carrying his fifth cup of coffee of the morning. It only takes one hastily pushed, five-wheeled office chair. The cinquipedal obstruction precipitates the junior estate agent, who we shall call Darren Grimshank, into the freestanding metal cabinet that holds the keys. The cabinet lurches sideways, a sharp deluge of metal clatters onto the striped carpet. Why do estate agents offices always have striped carpets? Don’t their clients have enough headaches?

Some of the keys land in Darren’s coffee. Darren lands on top of the coffee and all the keys. Once they were all on carefully labelled hooks, now they lie beneath Darren, impaling his midriff, separated from their identities. The keys to number 11, Park Drive, overlooking the manicured rhododendrons and burgeoning prunus sylvestrus of Greenhead Park are tangled up in the large, sticky bunch that came from the boarded up terrace of back-to-backs overlooking the gasworks, between Kilner Bank and a trolley strewn stretch of the canal.

‘Perhaps the Gledholt fault has warped the doorframe,’ I say to Julie Street. I don’t mention Darren. He’s probably still running around town in his 1997 blue Fiesta, which he isn’t allowed to park in the company parking spaces, desperately trying to match up any keys to any properties. 

Poor Darren. He can tell a yale lock from a mortice and a rim lock from a bolt, but he can’t possibly know that the key he is trying to fit into the green, stained-glass front door of 12, Salmondbury Terrace, Moldgreen will never go in. It belongs to that boarded up pub opposite, the Olde Greene. 

Alan Newsome, who was the last landlord of the Olde Greene before he was declared insolvent, had barred Geoffrey Moore, the last inhabitant of 12, Salmondbury Terrace, before said Geoffrey Moore was declared insane. Barred him for life, for throwing darts in an unsporting and hazardous manner, so as to pierce the said Alan Newsome in the gluteus maximus. Three times.

The accused, Geoffrey Moore was then said to have shouted, ‘One hundred and eighty!’ The victim, Alan Newsome, shouted something more fundamental than numerical. The court case lasted eight days. Alan Newsome was laid up for eight weeks, with tetanus. Geoffery Moore was locked up, so was the Olde Greene.

It’s not that Geoffrey Moore’s house knows that the key which Darren is trying to insert is an enemy key and is therefore trying to repel boarders. The magma below ground may have that kind of power, but plain old Salmondbury Terrace doesn’t. It was built in 1870, the plaque on the wall says so, to house workers at the nearby Lucitania Mill. And it wasn’t built on the Gledholt fault, a long forgotten ley-line. However, before his incarceration, Geoffrey Moore had more or less filled all his locks up with porridge, mixed with Polyfilla. Darren only knows that none of the keys will even go in the keyhole.

But Julie Street is a more experienced estate agent than Darren. She has been waging unarmed combat with recalcitrant locks for twelve years. Pull the door, turn half a twist, a swift push as she finishes the twist. A judicious kick for luck, and we’re in.

Number 61, Grimescar Street shows the signs of its own combat with the forces below. Unlike Salmondbury Terrace, it was built in 1890. There’s no builders plaque, but then this was a house built for the upwardly mobile, not mill workers. The Art Nouveau lead-work in the original sash windows and the sinuous writhing of the iron fireplaces date it. Below the window in the front room, the Gledholt fault shows, deep fissures break through the yellow and cream flock wallpaper. I don’t feel like pushing my fingers into the solid darkness in there, although I should, to feel the depth of the cavity.

Elsewhere, the house is charming, with tall ceilings, attractive mouldings and a huge Victorian bath with lion’s feet. I could lie here, at full stretch in the generosity of hot water that its strong enamelled depths would hold, and watch through the stained glass as the long limbed beech tree in the garden, reaches out for the house. But in the basement, the darkness is tangible. The earth around presses in, the walls seethe with fine white crystals.

I say thank you to Julie Street. We both know I won’t buy this house. I decide to view 12, Salmondbury Terrace, I might even look at the Olde Greene. Darren is still there, struggling with the keys, but I’m sure Julie Street can open that door. I just need to ask her one question.

She laughs, ‘No, there’s definitely no Moldgreen fault! Not even any disused mine works under here.’

So, no excess of bright hot magma, just an absence of dark coal. And the Gledholt fault itself is probably just due to the roots of the chestnut trees. Sad really, we could do with some excitement in Huddersfield.

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Nina and the Free Insulation

Nina bought a house. It wasn’t a posh house and it wasn’t a grotty house. It was a very sensible, plain, practical house built by a sensible, reliable developer called Mr. Barrett. It was in a sensible, practical Yorkshire town called Huddersfield, where lots of sensible houses were being built.

Nina moved into her sensible, practical house with one husband, two guinea pigs, three teenagers, heaps of furniture and dozens of boxes, bags and cases. Oh yes and two large, old fashioned trunks. One trunk was blue, with black studded corners and metal handles and had belonged to her father. Her father had been in the British Army and had travelled all over. The other trunk was brown, with large brass locks and leather handles and had belonged to her grandfather, who had been in the Indian Army. He had travelled even more all over.

The trunks were old fashioned, but useful. They contained all Nina’s clothes, even old ones that she never wore any more but still liked. But as Nina and her family gradually unpacked their boxes, bags and cases and distributed their heaps of furniture, they kept banging their shins on the heavy corners of the trunks. The trouble was, the sensible, practical house had been so sensibly designed that there was no spare space, or not for such big, old fashioned trunks.

the Curious Case of the Elephant in the Cabin

There are ever so many brands of modular buildings, O Best Beloved Some of them stand on the banks of a great, grey, green, greasy river all set about with olive trees, not to mention elsewhere. For there are very many, all over the place. 

And once upon a summer's day, or so the story goes, an ever so strong and well built steel framed module was being lowered ever so carefully into its desired position by an extremely tall crane, when an ever so enormous crocodile emerged from the grey, green, greasy waters of the great river.

now the enormous, but rather shy crocodile was angry...

Now the crocodile was angry, because he wanted the river to himself, so he could bask on the green, grey, gritty sandbanks and catch the multitudes of fishes which swam in the grey, green waters, without being stared at, especially by the numerous people who would come and work in all the modular buildings. For an ever so enormous crocodile, he was rather shy.

So, because he was rather shy, taking care not to be seen by the crane operator, or the ground crew, or the foreman, or even the baby elephant who had crept into the module for his afternoon nap, the ever so enormous crocodile opened up his ever so powerful jaws. He grabbed the nearest corner of the suspended module and he began to pull.

Now every wise, wise man, not to mention every even wiser woman, who has access to libraries full of wise, wise books, knows that if you unexpectedly apply a heavy weight to one corner of a suspended object, something just might unexpectedly give.

And so the ever so powerful jaws of the enormous, but rather shy crocodile made a weld in the corner of the suspended module go PING! And the baby elephant, who we shall call Jimbo, because he is too small to be a true Jumbo, woke up with a start at the sound of the PING! Jimbo found that his once safe and peaceful cabin was swaying ever so scarily and tilting even more scarily. Jimbo called it a cabin because he couldn't spell the word module.

Now when Jimbo stretched out his baby elephant trunk to brace himself against the swaying and the tilting, he noticed that the lowermost corner of the no longer safe and peaceful cabin smelled ever so slightly of crocodile. Elephants notice these things and besides, his gigantic uncle Alphonse had warned him about crocodiles. Jimbo was therefore in a great hurry to reach the opposite, uppermost corner of the cabin, away from the smell of crocodile.

Jimbo

As Jimbo scrambled upwards, the weight on the ever so well welded corners of the steel frame of the cabin became less unequal and the cabin began to tilt back towards the horizontal. The crocodile, who couldn't spell horizontal, unexpectedly found himself lifted vertically, straight up out of the grey, green, greasy water of the great river and he didn't like it. He liked to be horizontal, even though he couldn't spell it. So he let go and with a great big splash (you must never say 'great big', O best beloved, because it is otiose) he fell back into the grey, green, greasy waters and submerged. 

Of course this was when the cabin unexpectedly tilted in the opposite direction, sending poor Jimbo rolling and tumbling unexpectedly into what had once been the uppermost corner, far faster than he had intended. And as every wise, wise man, not to mention every even wiser woman knows, if you unexpectedly apply a heavy weight to one corner of a suspended object, something just might unexpectedly give. And as poor Jimbo unexpectedly reached the formerly but no longer uppermost corner at high speed, the weld in the corner went PING!

The crane driver could tell something had gone wrong, by the swaying. The ground crew could tell something had gone wrong by the tilting. The foreman could tell something had gone wrong by the swaying and the tilting and they had all heard the PINGS! So they lowered the now ever so slightly wonky module as quickly as possible into its desired position and they went to have a refreshing beverage, or two, and discuss their next course of action. Funnily enough, none of them had heard the great big splash, as the ever so enormous crocodile plunged back into the river, not to mention the rumbling as Jimbo tumbled unexpectedly across the cabin floor.

Gigantic Uncle Alphonse

Now poor Jimbo, who was a little bit bashed up but much more scared than hurt, decided that the cabin was no longer the safe, peaceful place he thought it was when he had crept in for his afternoon nap. As you know, O Best Beloved, all babies need an afternoon nap, even baby elephants. So Jimbo left the cabin, through the now ever so slightly wonky door and he went in search of his gigantic uncle Alphonse, to tell him all about the cabin that swayed and smelled of crocodile and went PING! in all the corners.

And the crane driver and the ground crew and the foreman all spoke to the owners. And the owners called in lots of brilliant expertise. There were the wise, wise men, with their wise, wise books, not to mention the even wiser women. And then there were the strict, strict officials, with their sensible, sensible rules, not to mention the clever, clever councillors with their deep deep legal knowledge. The trouble was, O Best Beloved, none of them could agree exactly what had happened, or whose fault it was. But we know, don't we?!
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                                                                                                                 (photos from ms clipart)