Grandad Patches’ Bedtime Fables: The Two Earwigs

 

Grandad Patches’ Bedtime Fables: The Two Earwigs

 

Not so long ago, but long enough, I once heard about a scrawny young Earwig who lived with a magnificent long-haired leopard. An ancient and wonderful beast, proud, fierce and possessing an ironic glint o’ the eye, which made him look rather like a pirate.

Although he didn’t have an eyepatch.

Our long-haired leopard, who, hereafter we will refer to as simply ‘leopard’ – for convenience - had eschewed the usual leopardly practice of eating meat, in favour of meat substitutes such as fungus burgers or tofu toffee tarts.

It therefore follows, my dears, that leopard, whom henceforth we shall refer to as Timothy – for that was his name – was okay with living alongside an Earwig. Having passed on meat, he was in no way partial to a lite insect-flavored snack of an evening, d’you see?

Now the Earwig he shared his cave with also had a name.

She was called Dolly Bintire and, as fate would have it, had just returned from visiting a very deep lake near Pencader. But that wasn’t really on her mind because, to be honest, she did not have too much of an attention span.

Earwigs don’t, on the whole.

She cast aside vague fluttering memories of a stork that did and tottered, high heeled into the cave they shared, her phone in one hand and a Starbucks iced latte in the other.

“Alright, Leopard? It’s me.”

Timothy looked up from a jotter and scowled. He had been busy making entries, doing his accounts – he ran a fairly successful milliners in town and the tax returns were due. A beastly job that required all his prowess as an accountant.

“You’re back, then. How was the lake?”

But Dolly was looking at her mobile phone, on one of those messaging apps. As she scrolled through countless alerts, her phone made those sharp, electronic shrill signaling noises. And each time it did so, Timothy started, until eventually he snatched the phone off her.

“Put that wretched thing on silent. I’m trying to work.”

“Give me my phone back.”

Timothy ignored her, switched it to silent himself and tossed it into a shoebox that sat on a very high shelf indeed - far too high for earwigs to ever reach, although you could see that Dolly was thinking about it.

“You can have it back when I’ve finished my work and not before.”

“That’s completely unfair,” pouted Dolly, swishing her coffee over ice and sucking it loudly through the plastic straw.

“No, it isn’t,” snapped Timothy. “I have tax returns due and, if I get them wrong, we will be out of pocket and, since I pay all the bills around here, that will most inconvenient.”

“How?”

“No more iced latte delivered to the cave for a start. You’ll have to learn how to use the kettle.”

Now Dolly was partial to that delivery driver turning up with her coffee of a morning, so for an instant she paused and thought about it. It didn’t last long though, and her brain returned to the phone.

“I could phone him. What is his name?”

“Who?”

“That one who delivers the coffee on the motor scooter. Send him a message.”

“Shut up. I need to finish.”

“But…the delivery driver…”

“Don’t you ever stop to think about the cost?”

“Sure. It’s about two pounds fifty. You can afford that.”

Timothy threw his pen down upon the jotter, where, of course, it bounced, rolled sideways and fell underneath his table. “No, Earwig. The cost to the environment. I’ve lost my flipping pencil, now.”

“Oh, that,” replied Dolly, snorting in disdain, still focused on the phone so tantalizingly out of reach. “Tell you what. I’ll look it up on the internet. No, better, if you pass me the phone, I can help you with your accounts. It has a calculator, you know?”

Timothy sighed. He wasn’t falling for that one again.

 

 

Later, just before bedtime, Timothy was relaxing with a cocoa and a book in his hand, squinting a little, because his eyesight wasn’t what it was, you know. He sighed and lay his book on the small table, feeling a little sorry he’d been grumpy with Earwig.

In fact, he’d felt so guilty earlier he had let her have a go through the rejected hats box – the ones that he hadn’t sold because they hadn’t quite cut the mustard. It happens, even if you have an occasionally  talented team.

Dolly was strutting up and down in a rather nasty, brown, oversized leopard skin pill box hat and taking photographs of herself, using the (now returned) phone’s camera. These she was posting all over social media, gleefully counting the ‘likes’ she got. She even put a few on ‘Sheep-Tok’.

Timothy smiled indulgently. “Why are you doing this, Earwig?”

“I’m trying to go viral.”

“Virus? Why?”

“No, no. If these go viral, I will never have to work again.”

“You don’t work anyway.”

“Shut up. You wouldn’t understand.”

Rolling his eyes, Timothy picked up the book, agreeing in his head that, yes, he certainly wouldn’t understand. These young zoomers were all at it, even at his work, where he’d started to ask them to give him their phones before any meetings. It was the only way to be sure they were concentrating.

Suddenly, Dolly threw down her hat in disgust. A message had flashed onto the screen of her phone, illuminating her eyes in green.

“That’s disgusting,” She shouted, at Timothy.

“What is?”

“Tuppy McGoorock has just messaged me to say you put his phone in a shoe box.”

“Oh, yes? What makes you think I’d do that?” replied Timothy, his whiskers bristling. Tuppy, you see, was a notorious gossiping dung beetle who was always up to his ears in it, with few, if any, hat making qualifications.

Indeed, it was he who’d designed the filthy brown pill box hat that Earwig was posting all over the internet, no doubt ruining any prospect of sales. Possibly it was this that had triggered the message.

I have to confess that Timothy was more than a little browned off by Tuppy’s contributions to the business and he had considered giving him the sack. In the event, he had contented himself with a stiff telling off. And put his phone into a shoebox.

“He disrupts the meetings by always being on the phone. I have to repeat everything twice.”

“That’s no reason to put his phone in a shoe box. For one thing, his phone is in a shoe box. For another thing there might be shoes in there. For yet another thing, what if somebody wanted to put shoes into the box and there was a phone in there taking up the room for shoes. They wouldn’t be able to.”

“Sorry, Earwig.”

“Well, don’t do it again, Leopard. Or else I’ll leave you.”

“Where would you go?”

“Tuppy says I can live with him.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Not really, he smells a bit.”

I have to tell you that just for a moment, Timothy looked as though he was weighing several possibilities over and over in his mind. But, you know, he was at heart, a kindly old leopard who couldn’t really change his spots as often as he might have wished. In fact, the whole shoe box thing made him feel rather a heel.

“OK,” he replied, eventually, “I’ll think about the shoe box situation…if he stops his constant piddling about on social media and taking photographs of himself.”

“Hell, yeah. Everybody does that,” snapped Dolly, emphasizing the ‘yeah’ and ‘that’ in a rather petulant way.

 

 

A few days after this, several extraordinary things happened in quick succession.

Dolly, determined to better herself, was off on one of her trips. This time to Llanelli, to see the world’s biggest ever slag heap. She’d strutted out in her high heels, mobile phone in one hand, iced latte in the other, waving a cheery goodbye and had boarded a bus full of wood lice.

Timothy waved absent mindedly in reply, his face buried in the newspaper prior to another day’s work. His eyes widened. He could scarcely believe what he was reading.

Tossing the paper down, he ran after the departing bus, but it was too late. “Earwig, wait!” he shouted after the thick, viscous smoggy exhaust.

Turning around, he almost bumped into the furry figure of Mr Lupus himself.

The two eyed each other suspiciously, each prowling close, but not too close – for both were very big beasts indeed.

“Timothy,” purred Mr Lupus.

“Lupus,” replied Timothy.

Mr Lupus was clutching his morning edition of ‘The Valleys’, the same one that Timothy had thrown to the floor in amazement. “You have read this, I take it?” queried Mr Lupus, stabbing at a column on its front page.

“Poor Tuppy McGoorock. Electrocuted by his own mobile phone.”

“Yes. The ambulance spirited him away, late last night.”

“What is his condition?”

“I don’t know, Timothy, I don’t know. Didn’t you put his phone…in a shoe box?”

Timothy spluttered. “But…surely, you can’t think my putting a phone in a shoe box had anything to do with this, Lupus?”

Mr Lupus laced his fat fingers together and grinned in his vulpine way, his tongue flickering over his whiskers. “Ah. Who can say? I’ve heard they spy on you.”

“Who spies on you? What do you mean?”

“Was it yesterday? Yes, I casually remarked to my nephew, Choppi, how good it would be to have a meat feast topping on my pizza and within two minutes, four messages from ‘Crunchy Bugs’ advertising that very thing…at a reasonable price, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And just think, now you have a vacancy at your work. Mobile telephones. Amazing. They listen to your every word. You might say they – are - earwigs.” And with that, Mr Lupus snorted as though he’d been very witty and strolled away. Then, as if something had suddenly occurred to him, he turned back. “My nephew, Choppi. Very into hat making. Loves a nice chapeau. Call me.”

“But I don’t have a phone,” replied Timothy, scratching his head.

But several times at work that day, Timothy Leopard wished he did have a phone so he could call Earwig. For some reason he felt a little worried by Mr Lupus’ words. The way he had said ‘earwig’ had seemed somewhat sinister to him. But he shivered and shook it off.

Timothy had wanted to raise some money for Tuppy Mc Goorock, annoying though he was, so he called an extraordinary meeting of his remaining employees.  It didn’t get very far though, because the majority of them were too busy on their phones and couldn’t hear him on account of the white plastic pegs they insisted on putting in their ears.

“They’re called pods,” Dolly had snapped at him, that time he’d asked. So, as usual, he’d shrugged and put it down to his lack of youth. Timothy sat at home, waiting for the ‘Eco Tours’ bus to return from Llanelli Slag Heaps, determined to talk with Dolly, once and for all.

Now, my dears, he didn’t have long to wait. In fact you could see the plumes of exhaust smoke from several valleys away, getting ever more thicker, as the bus chugged its way back, coughing and spluttering, the way these tour buses often do.

Upon arrival, it opened the doors and spat Dolly Bintire onto the pavement where Timothy was waiting impatiently.

“Earwig,” he cried, “I simply must talk to you. It’s urgent.”

But Dolly was in no mood to listen. In fact, she flounced back to the cave, iced latte in one hand, phone in the other, all high heels, bouncing pillbox hat and checking messagey. Timothy followed in her wake, not easy, considering there disparate sizes, but he did his best.

Once in the cave, Dolly hopped onto a table and twirled around to face her feline friend. She was in a frightful temper, I don’t mind telling you.

“What’s wrong, dear? Was the slag heap not big enough? You didn’t meet that snail again, did you?”

“Worse than that,” snapped Dolly. “My phone has a fault.”

“Well, that’s what I was trying to tell you my dear. It’s about your phone. It’s an earwig.”

“No, you stupid spotted dick,” snapped Dolly, in an extremely rude way. She glared at Timothy, waving her phone. “THIS is an earwig, THIS is a phone and THIS…” (and she pointed at her phone’s screen) “Is Mr Lupus.”

Timothy reached for his monocle and scrunched into his better eye, in order that he might determine what was actually on Dolly’s screen. He gasped at what he saw. “That’s disgraceful.”

“Disgraceful? That’s a fabulous piece of work, that is.”

“Did this go virus?”

“Of course, it’s all over The Valleys.”

“Show me again.” And Timothy gazed in horror at what unfolded before his eye.

I’ll try to describe it for you.

In front of him was Tuppy Mc Goorock. He was, believe it or not, jiggling along to some dreadful hip hop music, dancing in a rather lewd way, accompanied by the sound effects of very high-pitched giggling and ‘boing, boing, boing’ noises. In his hand, he held a gigantic bone which he was waving suggestively. After 15 seconds or so a caption appeared which read: ‘Old Lupus uses his bone for a phone, bone for a phone, bone for a phone’.

And then the sequence repeated itself.

What made it worse was that he had clearly filmed this in Timothy’s meeting room at work. So, after taking it all in, Timothy looked at Dolly, his paw clapped over his mouth in horror or anger - or both.

“Earwig? Did you send this to all of your friends?”

Dolly looked back at him sarcastically. “Well, of course I did. It was very amusing and not in the slightest bit offensive.”

“But the phone. It’s an earwig.”

If Dolly knew what he meant, she clearly didn’t care very much. “There is such a thing as free speech, you know,” she snapped, and she shoved her pill box hat on her head, picked up her latte, snatched the phone from Timothy and tottered towards the cave’s entrance.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m off to the phone shop. I’m furious. My phone isn’t working properly. Some of my apps are blocked. I’m going to give them an earful, believe me. Laters.”

And Earwig stumbled off purposefully in the direction of the Lupafone store.

And that, my dears, was the last that Timothy Leopard ever saw of Earwig. He asked after her once or twice, as you do, but all he heard was that she’d gone on a walking tour of Inner-City Concrete Cancer, or something like that.

At first, he missed her a little, but it was certainly quieter in the cave, you know?

And as for Choppi, he turned out rather well. He does, to be fair, have a phone which he occasionally uses, but he is most attentive at meetings, taking everything in carefully and making a lot of notes.

And he has designed one or two pill-box hats which are number one best sellers amongst the rest of Timothy’s team.