Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon This past week, I wandered down to the bottom of my garden to see how the fairies were getting along. What with the lack this year of anything you might have called a rainy season, I had left them to their own devices.
In the “new” South Africa, fairies, like everyone else, were certainly in line for the better life Mr Mandela had promised them. They needed little help from me.
However, I was in for something of a shock. For a start, there were far more fairies living at the bottom of my garden than ever before. Previously, when I went in search of fairies, I knew I’d be lucky to even catch a glimpse of one. I’d take a book, settle down on the mossy bank beneath the big bent oak tree and try be as quiet as possible.
Sooner or later, if I was lucky, there would be a rustle here or there, a few whispered voices, faint laughter, twitched spider webs. I’d raise my eyes slowly from my book to see inquisitive little faces peering mischievously at me from inside the petals of some wild gloxinia, or peeking merrily out of a crack in the roots.
It would always take some time before they showed themselves. However, this week, before I had even reached the bottom of the garden, I could hear the cursing and the grotto-blasters.
Peering cautiously around the corner of a clump of reed bamboos, I saw that a veritable horde of homeless fairies had moved in. Pigwidgeons, trolls, dwarves, elves and fancies, peris and leprechauns. A great mass of rustling fairy-life.
Their encampment stretched all the way from the wisteria hedge – or what was left of the wisteria hedge – to the delphiniums.
Clearly with so many additional fairies to accommodate, there hadn’t been nearly enough mushrooms under which to hide, or flower patches in which to scurry about.
Instead, these new fairies had used what they could find. Their settlement was made of discarded margarine containers, sawn-off milk bottles, plastic egg-trays, old cardboard boxes, bits from a derelict fridge.
I called over to one of the flibbertigibbets I recognised from the original dwellers.
He was assembling a collection of six- packs. “Who are all these hundreds of extra fairies, Hennie?” I demanded. “They weren’t here a couple of months ago.”
Hennie sighed. “Who knows, meneer? These days its getting harder and harder for previously disadvantaged fairies to find anywhere to slap up an informal enchanted garden.”
He looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I wish you’d throw them out and let us go back to the way we were.”
I can’t say the thought hadn’t already crossed my mind, especially when I’d looked across and seen how the plumbagos had been cut down for fairy firewood.
“I think I might just do that,” I said.
Hennie smiled grimly. “They’ll say you can’t because Mr Derek Hanekom says it’s their democratic right to be here,” he said. “Apparently these days you’re not allowed to go on shoving little people around.”
“Well, they weren’t here before the nomadic Khoisan desert goblins,” I said shrewdly.
“I’ll tell them they have to move on as I’m holding the bottom of my garden in trust for the Khoisan goblins. They own the traditional fairy garden rights.”
But Hennie’s thoughts were on other more practical matters.
“You don’t happen to have any old sardine cans lying around, do you?” he enquired. “We use them as basic solar heating units.”
“No, I don’t,” I replied more sharply than I needed to have. “And don’t start dragging cabinet ministers into the argument. That only makes matters worse.”
One of the plumper trolls swaggered up. “I am a delegated legal adviser to the South African Federated Fairy Workers’ Union,” he announced loftily. “I am giving you formal notice that the union is planning a march onto your back verandah next Monday to demand improved water supplies and better overhead lighting down here.”
“That’s easily managed,” I said hastily. “I’ll run a length of hose down here and that old extension light. Anything else?”
Somehow I think I shouldn’t have given in that easily. I’m now faced with the new Fairyland Equity Act in all its complexity, there are now endless rounds of negotiations I have to attend with groups like the Peri and Pigwidgeon Empowerment Forum or the Gremlins Representative Committee, and words fail me when it comes to the Hob Health Department. It’s all dreadfully tedious.
At least they’ve agreed to consult with me before they start moving onto the croquet lawn.