| Milligan's Mill by Hazel Goodman |
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First Slice
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A Sunday in mid September and the sun shone down on an old tree stump in the |
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| middle of Cheesewich Wood. Just an ordinary old stump, you might have thought. | |
| But this one was…SPECIAL! | |
| “Grammer” sighed Tansy Mouse, as she swung by her tail from a stray root that | |
| had poked its way through the kitchen ceiling. “I’m bored.” | |
| Grammer, (whose real name is Elsie) looked up from the old rocking chair,where she | |
| sat busily knitting another pair of socks. | |
| “Bored…you don’t know the meaning of the word; come down from there now. How | |
| many times must I tell you not to practice gymnastics in the kitchen? Run and find | |
| Gramper and tell him to bring his ladder. I don’t like roots in my ceilings.” | |
| “All right Grammer. I’m sorry.” | |
| Tansy did a couple of swift tail swings, a perfect double summersault, and landed, | |
| light as a feather, at Grammer’s feet. Planting a swift kiss on the old mouse’s nose, | |
| she scampered off through the kitchen door. | |
| Grammer smiled and shook her head. She loved her granddaughter dearly, although | |
| it had been hard work bringing her up, even with Gramper’s help. | |
| She wiped away a little tear, as she remembered Tansy’s parents. | |
| Bill, her only son and his pretty little wife, Bertha. They had gone into Bargate | |
| one day, leaving their baby daughter with her, and NEVER CAME BACK! | |
| Pulling a lacy handkerchief from her pocket, she blew her nose. That was all stale | |
| crumbs now. Tansy was growing up fast and tweenage years were always difficult. | |
| Picking up her walking stick, she pulled herself out of her chair and hobbled over to | |
| the stove to give the blackberry jam another stir. She poured a little onto a saucer | |
| to see if it was ready to pot. Not quite..just a few minutes more, so, while she | |
| was waiting, she started washing salad to go with the cheese pie for lunch. | |
| Tansy had scampered out of the kitchen and up the twisty stairs to the back door. | |
| “Gramper” she called. “Where are you?” | |
| There was no reply. | |
| “He’s in the shed she thought, “Having forty winks.” But he wasn’t. | |
| There were his woodworking tools, laid out neatly on the bench. There was the | |
| great tub of ginger beer, softly bubbling to itself under its muslin cloth. And the | |
| dusty shelf, with its cobweb covered bottles of ‘VERY OLD WINE’, all carefully | |
| labelled, which no-one except Gramper was allowed to touch. Not that he ever did. | |
| “I’m saving them for a Special Occasion,” he would say, if anybody asked. | |
| The wine had been given to him, many years ago, when he was young and sprightly, | |
| as ‘Payment for Services Rendered’. | |
| Although he had never yet told Tansy what those services were, or who he had | |
| rendered them for. In fact, it took the young Tansy Mouse AGES to find out what | |
| ‘Rendered’ meant. For a long time she thought it was something mysterious and was | |
| a little disappointed to discover it just meant ‘something given or done’. | |
| The only thing missing from the shed, apart from Gramper, was, not surprisingly, | |
| the lawn mower. As he wasn’t mowing their lawn, Tansy knew exactly where to find | |
| him. | |
| She did a quick back-flip out of the door and ran down the garden path into the | |
| wood. Hurrying through the fern patch, she soon came to a clearing between | |
| the oak trees. | |
| There was Gramper, pushing his mower around and around the Faery Ring. | |
| “Gramper” called Tansy, “Grammer wants you to come and bring your ladder to the | |
| kitchen, please.” | |
| Gramper (whose real name is Bernard, or Berni for short) stopped his circling and | |
| smiled at her. “Right , young lady. I was just about finished here anyway.” | |
| He lifted the mower carefully over the young toadstools that grew thickly around | |
| the circle he had mown. “What’s all the fuss about then?” | |
| Tansy explained about the tree root as they walked back to the shed. | |
| “All right” said Gramper. “You can help me by cleaning the mower, while I sort out | |
| the kitchen”. | |
| Once inside the shed, he pulled a flat, wooden knife out of a box under the bench. | |
| “Use this to scrape the grass off the blades. Very carefully, you understand. You | |
| are old enough now to be sensible. Then throw the grass on the compost heap, and | |
| put the mower back into its corner. Rinse the knife in the bucket outside and put it | |
| away. Then come back to the house. I should think lunch will be ready by then”. | |
| He took a short ladder from its hooks on the wall, and disappeared up the garden. | |
| Tansy did as she was told. She was mostly a very obedient mouse, although she did | |
| sometimes forget herself when it came to gymnastics! Grammer was always having | |
| to tell her off for walking upstairs on her hands, or doing back-flips into the bath, | |
| because that made everything VERY wet, as you can imagine. | |
| Tansy’s problem was….nothing ever happened! | |
| Well, apart from school, which was held every morning in the mouse-hole at the | |
| back of the barn on Home Farm. | |
| The teacher was Professor Archibald Mouse. | |
| He wasn’t as old as Gramper, but he was very clever, living as he did under the | |
| skirting-board of the Farm study. | |
| Late at night, when all the humans were asleep, he would creep out and read from | |
| books like “Market Gardening”; “How to save our Woodland”; “Arithmetic for | |
| Beginners”; and his very own favourite, “The World Atlas”. | |
| But school wasn’t a Happening, any more than housework or gardening or fruit and | |
| berry picking. Life was boring…… If only Something would Happen……. | |
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| copyright © Hazel Goodman 2003 - 2008 | |