Morpethroad

Alexander Jansson @DeviantArt

If you’d lived in the village of The Well you’d know full well what I am talking about.

For us Wellians Sunday afternoon was a time every villager loved to participate in. It was a time to relax and enjoy the recreation time we were all afforded from our respective busy lives.

We took the time to dress in our finest; we strolled about the village, spoke and conversed with the other villagers both high and low.

The tree of the tree people sat in the middle of the village. They loved the Sunday afternoon as it gave them a break from the silk making they pursued day by day and time to flit from neighbour to neighbour delighting everyone who wandered beneath their tree with the spectacle of them jumping from spot to spot, their rotors twinkling, their houses lit with the most dazzling of lights.

Of course some still worked or rather took up their Sunday job, Jord loved to ride his unicycle, Curd fiddled for anyone interested to hear his oft-times off key rendition of The Wells favourite tune, ‘Flit Around the Tree With Me.’

But probably the most engaging place to go on your Sunday outing and one we always gravitated towards was Zord’s House of Weird Stuff.

Now Zord was not your typical Wellian. Zord had spent a lifetime compiling his weird stuff. It help that he was in fact the weirdest of all his weird stuff. His many bottles of preserved leeches, platypus eggs and bogong moths were all of interest but ones visit was never complete unless you waited around for Zord to begin his Sunday speech.

It was so like an occasional address and we loved to come in to his house and take up a seat near to the front, as you didn’t want to miss a word he said. That he said a lot and most of it was indecipherable nonsense took nothing away from this wonderful method of delivery.

You knew when he was about to begin because he would come out from his back room, resplendent in his red and gold cape and take up a position on a small green box at the front of the room. He’d always have one glass jar in his hand that was to serve as the topic for his talk that day.

In his very nasal accent he would begin:

“ Dear friends we are gathered here today to talk about the strangest and weirdest of all the weird things you see here before you. The cactablasto berry, a unique berry that fruits once every twenty years in the bottom of Vort Torts dairy. I happened to be there the day it fruited and I have it here for you to marvel and wonder at………..I said to myself at the time that you Wellians will love me for preserving this one fruit for you all the marvel at……..”

The fact that the cactobalsto berry looked remarkably like a strawberry, and despite the fact that Zord was seen loitering near Fort’s strawberry patch the previous week never entered the conversation as we Wellians are a patient and forgiving people.

It was Zord’s right to collect weird stuff and his right to make up whatever story he chose about it. For us it was part of our Sunday entertainment. That his story of his defeat of a Coaro Dragon and the jar containing a part of the dragons tail looked more like a wiltered carrot, was not for us to dispute.

We all knew that if we disputed anything Zord said we would lose one piece of our precious Sunday afternoon that we all took upon ourselves to nurture.

For most of the time we all worked decidedly hard.

There was the never ending struggle against nature to grow all we could to feed ourselves, there were the smiths who laboured all year in hot and tedious conditions to smith all our smithing needs, there were the traders who travelled about the countryside trading our stuff for their stuff.

Added to that there were the spell makers, Hort and Cort, spell makers extraordinaire. Their spells were much sort after all around the countryside mainly because they claimed to and did cure most things. Their place of work was on the edge of town, as most people knew spell making was also a smelly occupation. Though we did forgive the smells for the spells were a great source of income for the village.

The village of The Well was in the main a prosperous place and we wanted it to stay that way. Harmony amongst the villagers was always of paramount concern as we all recognised to need to work together.

Hence Sunday afternoons were important.

Today you have seen us in our time of relaxation. Hopefully you will understand now the importance of this time to our village and maybe drop by again sometime. Sunday’s are best for on any other day we have barely the time to bless ourselves. Have a good one.

Written for: http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/fairytale-19/