Pierre’s scary request (for Andrea)
Most of the creatures described in the adventures of the JugginsVerse live in the Potting Shed, a rather shabby large Victorian wooden building by a disused stately home. (The picture may look more like an IKEA Duktig doll’s bed but this is a story and appearances can be misleading. It can be both an IKEA doll’s bed and a large creaking Victorian wooden potting shed.)
Alcock is the Chairman of the main Potting Shed administrative committee and so in a sense the head of the community. He has set up a very complicated committee structure.
When not off fishing, with his fishing spears, he likes a good committee meeting with agendas and minutes and terms of reference.
During one of its weekly meetings, however Alcock thinks he hears a slight knocking on the door, disturbing the formal business. Surprised and a little irritated he swings open the door to investigate the disturbance and barks “Who’s that?”
Outside is a small green frog: Pierre as we will discover. Pierre normally lives in the village of High Lorton but is staying at the Potting Shed to escape noisy building work. In a very quiet, slightly nervous voice, he says:
“Pouvons-nous envoyer des fleurs à maman. Elle est malade.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Alcock asks, a little more gently, but when asked further questions, Pierre becomes too shy to murmur anything more than “Andrea” and “La France” and “malade”. Clearly, knocking on the closed door of an important committee meeting was as far as his courage carried him and now he is quite nervous and scared
“Ah!” says pTravis, coming to the rescue, “Didn’t a woman called Andrea who lives in France have something to do with the Think Tank’s TARDIS?”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” says Alcock, decisively. “Can you get a representative of the Think Tank here on the double? Ask nicely, though.”
A few minutes later there is the grating whoosh, whoosh noise of the flying box which opens to reveal the members of the Think Tank.
“Can you shed light on who this Andrea is, TW?” asks Alcock. TW, a small elephant whose full name is Tenbury Wells, and who often seems to fly the TARDIS, looks a little shifty.
“Well, Andrea made the TARDIS.”
“And she gave it to you? How kind of her.”
“Well not actually. She gave it to Lois-the-human to keep her precious things in. We may have, sort of, stolen it.”
“And what of your very fine ‘exo-planet’ boat that you use to explore watery planets beyond the solar system? That looks to have the same high quality of craftsmanship to it. Did she give you that?”
“Well, again, not quite. She gave that, too, to Lois-the-human to keep her precious things in. We may have, sort of, stolen it, as well.”
“And what of your most recent ‘acquisition’? The flying carpet. That too looks to have been made with the same care, even if the method of fabrication is a little different” (Alcock is very observant about these things.)
“Well she did give us that!” says TW with evident relief.
But Lottie, the blue axolotl, interrupts.
“Actually, I was there when she handed that over, at lunch in a nice hotel overlooking a lake. And what she actually said was that there was not much point in trying to give that to Lois, as a pretty mat on which to keep her precious things, because you’d only steal it, too. I had a go on it with pTravis and ’Gill and it was quite fun!”
TW looks a little guilty.
“Well” says Alcock, turning to Pierre. “It seems that we do owe a debt to your ‘Maman’ and for more reasons than I thought. But I’m afraid, little Pierre, that no one at the Potting Shed has any money to post flowers to France, or in fact even to buy any. But why don’t you pick a rose from the Potting Shed’s gardens and we can send a picture of you and it to Andrea, wishing her all the best and good wishes on feeling better soon. That will get there much quicker too.
If a frog could smile, Pierre smiles. And shortly, this is the result. It is almost as though we can hear him say: “Bon rétablissement Maman!”
