Folio 3 ~ The Magic of Words and Pillar Boxes

The city looked wonderful dressed in its spring clothes. The sun hugged the sugar brown walls and made them smile. Birds perched on the teetering roof tops and sang to the tiny racing clouds. After a little while, Caroline remembered the pocket watch that the strange man had given to her in the park and she took it out and polished its big friendly face and put it to her ear. It was still silent and the thin second hand (with a little curly wave at the end) remained as still as a heron’s beak. She wound it up. It made a loud whirring noise; the same sort of noise that you get when you run a furled umbrella along metal park railings. It was so loud the bus driver turned in his seat and glowered and so Caroline hurriedly put the watch back in her pocket and concentrated upon looking out of the window.

People got on and people got off the bus and Caroline watched the city pass by outside. And then, on one corner, she noticed that a man was selling little toys made from old tin-cans. He wore a sky-blue coat (with tails) and a top hat and he had a wooden stall which could be pushed along on pram wheels. As the bus passed, he looked up at Caroline and then pointed down a little alleyway (full of cardboard boxes and splintered wooden crates) which was beside his little stall. Caroline peered down it and on the end wall, painted in large white letters, were the words, GET OFF AT... Caroline wiped the window, where she had huffed (when the driver was looking the other way), to get a better view.

‘Why would anyone want to write ‘get off at…’ on a wall?

'How odd!’ she thought

... and then she thought, ‘how wonderful.’

The bus drove on and more people got on and a young mother, carrying a big bag of shopping and a baby that looked like a hedgehog, got off. Then, on the next corner, there was the man in the sky-blue tail coat selling tin-can toys again! Once again he looked up, saw Caroline and pointed down an alleyway. Caroline leaned forward, her nose pressed against the glass (which made the driver glare at her). This time, at the end of the alleyway, there was another message which read, … THE NEXT…

‘I wonder what the ‘the next' will be?’ she thought. She looked around at the others on the bus. No one else saw. No one else was looking. People were reading the paper, knitting, texting on the telephones. Everyone was living in their small little worlds and none of them realised that somewhere outside something marvellous was about to happen.

‘Well,’ thought Caroline, pulling up her socks (because they had slipped down her feet and balled up under her instep in her boots - which is what happens when you wear socks and gumboots), ‘wherever it says I should get off, I will get off and have an adventure. Perhaps, it will take me somewhere that will mend my watch and give it back its taste for time, for this is like a dream, only it’s much better than a dream because I can huff on windows and snuffle my nose whenever I want to and you can’t always do that in a dream because you end up turning into an owl or a wardrobe or something.’

After three more stops, Caroline once more recognised the man with the tin-can toys. This time he was standing under a big umbrella with stars painted on it and selling a tin-can soldier toy to a little boy and his mother. He stood up and, once again, pointed to an alleyway. This time the words said, PILLAR BOX!!

'Get off at the next pillar box!’ Caroline repeated to herself.

And so Caroline wiped the rest of the huff off the window, for she was a polite young girl and she knew that grown-ups very rarely like to sit next to a bus window that has been huffed upon, and she got up and walked down the bus to the driver.

“I would like to get off at the next pillar box please,” she announced to the driver.
The driver puffed out his bottle-brush moustache.
“Pillar box?” he asked
“Yes, please. I would like to get off at the very next pillar box, if you don’t mind.”
“Pillar boxes are for letters and for parcels that are thin enough to squidge through the slot. Bus stops are for people and for little girls what wear gumboots and summer dresses,” retorted the bus driver unhappily, “You, missie are a young lady what wears rubber gumboots and a summer dress and h’is not, so far as I am aware, h’ay letter or a parcel – squidgey or h’otherwise. H’it is most h’regular for a bus to stop at a pillar box. What will all my passengers say h’if I start stopping at all the pillar boxes I pass?”

Caroline looked at the passengers on the bus. It did not seem likely that any of them would say anything. It did not seem likely that any of them would even notice. Then she had an idea.
“Well I think,” she said looking at the driver carefully, “that my 50 pence worth of a bus ride will run out at the next pillar box, don’t you?”

The bus driver glanced at Caroline with baleful eyes.

“Well it’s all very h’regular, young madam,” he said, his face creased in misery and his great watery eyes looking as sad as mountain mist, “ever since I heard the thwapping of your boots missie, I knew that things would be becoming all h’regular.”
“Yes,” said Caroline cheerfully and snuffling up the end of her nose with the back of her hand, “I always seem to have that effect on things.”
The bus driver sighed and said, “Odd.”
“Yes,” Caroline agreed, “but rather wonderful too.”
“Huuuuummmmmmp” said the bus driver who was not convinced that it was rather wonderful at all.

However, beside the very next bus stop that they came to was a bright red pillar box and Caroline, who was swinging on the handrail that helped little old ladies climb the bus steps and trying desperately not to huff on the bus driver’s shiny uniform buttons, let out a cry of excitement.
“Easy does it.” Grunted the bus driver as he drew into the little lay-by.

With a swishing hiss, the bus stopped and the doors swung open. With a hop and skip (well as much of a hop and a skip that big rubber gumboots will allow) Caroline leaped down from the bus without touching any of the steps.

The bus driver grunted, “Most h’regular, alighting in gumboots without using the steps therefore provided for the purpose of.”

It didn’t quite sound right, so he added another "of" at the end, but it didn’t sound any better.

With that, he pressed the large red button and the doors closed with a terrific whooshing sneeze.

Folio 2 ~ The 50 Pence Piece

Folio 2

The sun smiled and the spring breeze giggled among the leaves and bushes of the park. In the emerald cave of the horse chestnut tree, which overshadowed Caroline's bench, a blackbird sang. Its tune danced like the tumbling water in the fountain. When its song had finished, it soared into the air over her head and a jet-black feather from its wing, fluttered down in a lazy spiral and landed at her feet. Pushing the last little bit of Jaffa Cake into her mouth, Caroline bent down to pick it up and it was then that she noticed that the feather, glowing silky black, pointed – like an arrow – to a shiny, brand spanking new 50 pence piece. It felt smooth and warm and, although on one side (which coin collector’s call its ‘obverse’) it had the Queen’s head (which one would expect) on the other (the ‘reverse’) was the figure of a little girl caught in mid racing-stride, dressed in a summer dress and gumboots – and very sharp, jabbing elbows.
‘How odd,’ thought Caroline.
And then…
‘How wonderful.’
And she put the coin in her pocket, with the pocket watch, while she thought about how best to spend it.

After some thought and an immense amount of frowning she decided, what could be better than to ride round the spring city in a bus – particularly if that bus had springy, itchy seats next to windows upon which you could huff and draw smiley faces? And so off ran Caroline, thwap, thwap, jab, jab, past the old ladies and onto to the bus stop.

The bus was driven by a man who took pride in his bus and the shiny buttons on his bus driver’s uniform. He had a large white moustache and eyes made of water. Caroline couldn’t quite decide if he looked more like a walrus or an elephant. She climbed into the bus. It smelt wonderfully of bus tickets, and seats, and travel, and adventure. Putting her shiny 50 pence piece on the little counter beside the driver’s seat, she asked in a polite but firm voice, “A 50 pence ticket, please.”
The driver sucked in his moustache and looked at her through his watery eyes. Caroline thought that the driver might be deaf and had not heard her request, so she said in a voice that was still polite, but a little firmer, “A 50 pence ticket please, driver.”
The bus driver peered at the coin and then Caroline with his large watery eyes and said, “Where, young madam, would you like to go?”
“I want to have a 50 pence piece worth of a bus ride please,” answered Caroline.
“This is most h’regular, young lady, most h’regular. I need to know where you want to go.”
“I want to go for 50 pence worth,” replied Caroline, scratching her knee.
“Well,” said the bus driver, pursing his lips and making his moustache bristle like a bottle brush, “I have never known such a thing. I take people to all sorts of places; to the museum and the art gallery, to the big stores with windows full of bright colours. I take people to the dentist, to their aunts and to the big park with the boating pond. I even take people to their connubial diversions, if your young ears will pardon my directness, but I have never taken a young miss in gumboots to 50 pences.”
“Well,” retorted Caroline, “I do not know anything about connubial diversions, but I do know that I want to have a 50 pence worth of a bus ride.”

The bus driver fumbled with his ticket machine while sucking on his moustache and his eyes looked like huge oceans full of fish and weeping mermaids. “It’s all very h’regular,” he mumbled, “but if you promise not to huff too much on me windows, I’ll let you ride just this once.”

And with that, he reached down under his little counter, beside his seat, and pulled out a large old-fashioned microscope. It was wonderful and gleamed of polished brass and smelt of metal and strange chemicals. The bus driver slid Caroline’s 50 pence piece under it and he peered through the lens with one eye all scrunched up.

“That’s very old,” Caroline remarked, carefully studying the instrument.
“H’it might be, missie,” replied the driver not looking up. “The bus company supplies us with new, h’electrically operated electron scanning microscopes with two eye-pieces and a four foot length of h’electric cabling and plug, but I has no use for h’it.” He paused while he adjusted the big brass burled knob at the side. “H’it’s not electrons that I wants to h’examine. H’electrons, as a rule, don’t cause the problems.” He looked up and gave Caroline a look that suggested very much where he thought the problems usually did lie.
“Well,” said Caroline, not at all put out by the man’s glare, “I like it. It smells just as a microscope should smell.”
“H’exactly!” retorted the driver.

Caroline was on the point of turning to walk up the aisle to an empty seat near the window that looked particularly springy and itchy when the bus driver cried out in alarm.
“Hold you there young miss!! Most h’regular this is, most MOST h’regular,” The driver waved Caroline’s 50 pence piece in the air above his head.
“An’ what may you call this?” he demanded showing Caroline the reverse side upon which the running figure of the girl in rubber boots and summer dress could be clearly seen.
“I don’t know,” She replied honestly, “It was there when I got it.”
“Well, I have never seen anything of the like,” The bus driver scratched his head and puffed out his moustache.
“But it does have the Queen’s head on the other side,” Caroline added helpfully.
The bus driver looked at it.
“It has to be alright if it has the Queen’s head on it, doesn’t it?”
“W…e…e…l…l…” The driver was still unsure.
“Oh please!” begged Caroline.

“Most h’regular that’s what I call it, but just this once and mind you mind your huffing.” The driver relented. And, at that, Caroline happily slipped into the seat by the window.

“Hold tight,” called out the driver, as the bus pulled away into the traffic.