The Magical Not That Far Away Tree

Will nobody tell me which tree it is?

''Oh Dick," Fanny retorted testily. "Please don't go all stiff on us again. You always do that at the first sign of excitement. No one likes a stiff Dick!"

nobody likes one that butts in either. Very rude. Its not polite to butt in without waiting to see if the other person has finished. But in the 1940s people were better brought up.

Mrs Figg wrote:Will nobody tell me which tree it is?

Maybe this one?

Looks like a soft wood to me.

[quote="David H"]

Mrs Figg wrote:Will nobody tell me which tree it is?

Maybe this one?

[


wowzer!

The rest of my body's behind the tree. lol

Just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction!

{{{And that there's a lot more to Chris than any of us knew! }}}

THE MAGICAL NOT THAT FAR AWAY TREE


6


"Nock that noo," Petty MacDougall cried in apparent annoyance. "Bairns-a-pain-in-the-bum stickeenozees inmabizniss! Wot! Pervy at me canoddlins wiv Figgimuffin? Leave off, yo bollickers!" And Petty glared at them with his tea towell thrust forward defiantly.

"What an amazing performance," Chastity giggled in spite of herself.

"Yes!" Fanny avowed. "You know, I think I can actually half understand him!"

"Hey, you nob!" Dick stepped sternly forward. "Put your abuse away, by gom."

Petty looked thoughtfully down of his tea towell.

"He doesn't understand," Randy rolled his eyes. "Hey! You Scottish git, we're here exploring. We didn't know you and Lady Figg was here. We weren't prying."

"Never mind him," Lady Julia said sauntering up. "He's upset because you interrupted us in the middle of a round of sausage in the hole, and just before the whistle blew. Never mind. I see you've found the Magical Not that Far Away Tree. Now, off you go. Up you climb. And you Petty MacDougall, back you come. We'll have to start again."

"Nock tha noo, nelly!"

"Yes - all of it!"

"Ock?"

"Yes! All of it! Now, shut it and come here."

"Aye, Muss!"

And Petty allowed himself to be taken by the hand and back through the door in the trunk. The door slammed with a decided emphasis behind them.

When they were gone, Chastity said, "There's someone hiding behind the tree."

"I saw him too," Randy said. "He just pulled back."

"I wonder if it's a beaver?"

"Chastity! It's not America, you idiot," Dick proclaimed pompously. "And it's not Narnia either, by the way."

"Oh I forgot... Anyway...." Chastity raised her voice. "Oh Sir, don't be shy. Out you come."

And out from behind the tree a bucket hopped. Well, a mop in a bucket, but only the mop part of the mop, not the stick part, and the mop was upside down and had eyes that peered over the top of the bucket.

"By gom!" Dick exclaimed. "What the....?"

"Oh please be nice," said the mop from an invisible mouth. "I mean no harm."

"Who are you?" Fanny wanted to know as the mop-creature in his bucket hopped over and peered scientifically up her skirt.

"I'm Mister Mopbuckets," he grinned.



to be continued....

THE MAGICAL NOT THAT FAR AWAY TREE


7


"What a dreadfully peculiar little creature," Chastity expostulated looking down upon Mister Mopbuckets scrutinizingly, her lips pursed, and her arms crossed in sudden consternation. "He seems to contradict the very Laws of the Nature."

"If you want to talk physics, just do it," the little chap snapped unexpectedly. "I'm only here because I have absolutely no choice about it. I'm a real Physicist by the way, forget poetic licence and never mind disclaimers about us being fictional and all that, and not based on anyone living or dead, totally fictional and all that guff, the fucking bastard."

"Who do you think he's talking about?" Fanny got out, quite shocked and quite confused.

"Anyway," Mister Mopbuckets grinned through his hair suddenly. "Let's climb the tree. At the top there is a revolving universe and it's spiffing good fun so long as you're reading about it and not anyone on the receiving end,"

"Do you think he's mad?" Dick whispered to Randy.

"I suspect he must be, he certainly sounds like it," Randy answered none the wiser. "Mind, he did say he's a Physicist."

"We must humour him, do you think." Chastity whispered. "I wonder if he's a wild animal."

"He's a moptop in a bucket, not some C.S. Lewis character!" Randy scoffed. "I wish you'd get your head it you stupid stupid girl. And, by the way, he's a Physicicst, as if he had one anyway - a sense of humour that is."

"Look, be the 'Eustace' character all you like," Fanny hissed at Randy. "But let's just get on with it."

"This is not Narnia!" Randy moaned.

"It may as well be," Chastity said under her breath.

"Snip snap!" Mister Mopbuckets cried out happily. "Off we go then!" (By now, if you have any common sense at all, you'll realize Mister Mopbuckets was as Mad as a March Hare, even though he'd tell you that March Hares aren't actually mad, which only goes to show how mad he was, don't you think? Anyway, it was almost like he was in his Ivory Tower, totally oblivious of what was happening in the real world all around him because of being all caught up with Wave Theory and Metereology and other arcane intellectual pursuits). So, with that, Mister Mopbuckets hopped over to the trunk of the Magical Not That Far Away Tree, proceeding to climb it in a fashion that obeyed the Laws of Fancy and definitely not the Laws of Nature.

Not really knowing what else they should do, the children followed him.

It was an easy tree to climb and they met all sorts of interesting characters who lived in that Magical Tree, but I think it's time we got to the actual adventures, don't you think? So....

to be continued...

THE MAGICAL NOT THAT FAR AWAY TREE


8


At the very top of the tree there was a ladder that went up through a hole in the ozone level via a big fluffy cloud. Mister Mopbuckets hopped up the rungs and disappeared.

"This is all quite impossible, you know," Fanny opined. "But Lady Julia did say this was a Magical Tree, so I expect something incredibly magical is about to happen to us."

"Oh I hope so," Chastity said. "I should be quite disappointed if something really amazing doesn't happen."

"Something brilliant and exciting is bound to occur I'm sure," Dick put in.

"Yeah, sure," said Randy, doing his 'Eustace' thing. "If what's happened so far is any indication."

As it turned out, Randy was totally wrong. For what happened to them was totally scintillating. Yep, scintillating! Well, at first anyway.

"Welcome to the Land of Libraries!" Mister Mopbuckets yelled as they came out onto a neat herringbone pavement that ran between rather spiffing redbrick buildings with Edwardian facades.

"Libraries!" Randy cried in joy. "I can't pretend I expected that."

"Look!" Chastity cried. "Over there! It's Madame Hush's Norweigan-English Library. How exciting."

"Have you heard of it?" Randy asked, scratching his head.

"No, but it must be though," Chastity answered gaily, relying presumably on female logic. "What I mean is, this is the Land of Libraries and everything must be fanstatic. Madame Hush! How deliciously evocative that sounds!"

Fanny gushed: "I want to see what it's like inside."

So Mister Mopbuckets led them into Madame Hush's Norweigan-English Library.

Once inside they saw lots of tables, booksheves and imps, goblins, poltergeists and banshees. The interesting thing was that all these creatures that R.K. Rowling invented (apparently) were all well behaved, sitting quietly reading books or fossicking through the shelves.

"Well, this is terribly exciting," Dick opined happily.

"Hush!" said a whispery voice. Up behind them came a rather attractive bespectacled lady of indiscriminate age with long brown hair wearing a two piece pantsuit. "Be quiet children, or else there will be consequences...." (Randy was quite unnerved by how she said consequences). "Now, children, don't run, don't crease the pages, and never never raise your voices."

"Are you Norweigan?' Dick asked, noticing an accent.

"I am. I came here a long time ago as a child and fell in love with the Land of Libraries. I never left. Remember: no raised voices."

And the Norweigan Librarian was gone again.

"She's doesn't sound scary at all," Fanny said.

"She is Norweigan, though," Chastity informed her, her expression thoughtful. But the her brow cleared. "But surely not all of them can have hearts of utter depravity - no, not all of them..."

"I don't know," Randy muttered uneasily. "She does remindme of one of those proper quiet Norweigan ladies, all gentility and poise, who kill children after work and on the weekends."

"Oh don't be silly. I've decided she's lovely," Chastity said. "But we must be very quiet - just in case - and it's proper library etiquette anyhow.... Oh how exciting! A library!" And Chastity tiptoed off to see if there was anything worth reading in the Home Decoration section.

"Locomotives," Dick whispered just as excited. "I'm off."

"Dressmaking and shoes!" Fanny said with quiet glee. "Oh this is a scintillating adventure."

But Randy wasn't so sure. Yes, the thought of checking out the shelves, and running his fingers down the spines of all those books with gold or red typesetting, and opening up a whole new world every time he opened the covers of a book, was all very exciting (who would dispute it?) but wasn't this all a bit too good to be true?

He was totally right as it turns out, but that must wait for the next chapter I'm afraid.

to be continued....

The Magical Not that Far Away Tree

9

"I feel like we've been here since June, 2013," Randy said quietly to himself. "Somehow it's like we're in a time warp, or as if Orwel Blyton has only just rediscovered a forgotten story, never finished, and has decided to write some more of it, for reasons only known to himself, or one or two others, and possibly not even him or two others, not if he's actually a girl and not a boy, oldish, and possibly a transvestite in this case, if they have been invented yet, it being just after the war. Anyway, for all that, and I'm sure it bears thinking on but not by anyone known to me, I guess I better find the others; especially as there are no nudist magazines anywhere that I can find."

Before long, he found Chastity sitting on a footstool flicking through the pages of a glossy home decoration pictorial.

"These pictures show what the home decor of Gay people will be like in 2016," she smiled, gaily, but slightly bemused. "How futuristic! It seems strange, but they will spell gay with a capital g in 2016. Amazingly curious and queer, what!"

"Well, enough of that. Something is wrong. I feel it in my crevices... I want to know why I'm feeling the heeby jeebies," Randy whispered insistently.

Suddenly, as if out of a puff of invisible possibly non-existent smoke, Madame Hush appeared before them in her crisp pantsuit, her eyes rather large, enlarged by the lenses of her glasses that, it just now occurred to Randy, were made of pink candy.

Randy felt immediately in danger.

"Heeby jeebies is it? Then you'll be wanting the heeby jeeby section, won't you dear," Madame Hush cooed languidly as she placed her soft strong hand on his trembling shoulder. "Come with me."

Then Madame and Randy were gone - poof! - in a blaze of invisible smoke.

Chastity gaped in shocked surprise. "Maybe Randy is right," she thought. Putting down her pictorial, she hurried off and found Dick engrossed in a locomotive pictorial.

"Oh Chastity, these pictures are magical. Look! This train keeps going into this tunnel, then out again, then in..... it's like a film... in and out in and out, exciting somehow.... it's like... I don't know what it's like. Maybe when I'm older... Fascinating, though, by gom!"

"Enough of that," Chastity said firmly. She then whispered an account of what had happened to Randy.

Dick's face paled. "Well, wouldn't that give you the heeby jeebies!" he gasped gaspingly.  

A voice, languid and moist, enveloped the situation.

"Well, you'll be wanting to attend the heeby heeby section, too, won't you then..."

And, poof!, Dick was gone too!

"I have absolutely no idea where this is going," Chastity thought aloud in horror.

Mister Mopbucket clunked up to her. "That's the trouble with this place," said he between thick hair. "No one knows what can happen here, not even the author by all accounts. What an imbroglio of perplexity!"

"A imbroglio of... what the.... ...." but Chastity stopped in mid-gasp.... for across the aisle.... "Oh my God! Mister Mopbucket, whatever is Fanny doing tugging vigorously on that hobelephants appendage....? And is that his snorklehand feeling inquisitively up her dress?  Surely this has not become a Wholesome Tale....."

"Truth be known, Orwell Blyton has always been fond of a good rollicking Wholesome Tale..." Mister Mopbucket offered, "or so it's said... but is this genuine inspiration or just plagiarism? Who can rightly say...."

Hurray, A story, & just in time for Christmas.......{{{ this year I hope }}}

Is the library in the far-away tree? I shall have to go back and catch up.

Yes, Orwell Blyton had to read back through to see where things were at. He couldn't help noticing a certain Wholesome Talesesque quality to the story... if quality is the right word...

10

Chastity hurried over and kicked the hobelephant firmly up the analbump. The hobelephant complained loudly making a grunting noise, something like a pig, and hurried off.

"Fanny! How could you!?"

"This is all about that tugging, isn't it... You see, I was tugging this piece of gluey fire fighting hose from where it had stuck to his fire fighting leg.... .... oh my a gawd! Did you think.... Chastity!"

"And what about the inquisitive upskirt business?"

"Well, you'll have to ask him about that. As if it's any of my business what he was up to, whether tickling or not."

"Yoo know, it's a lot like that episode with the deacon at Haileybury Church last summer. You'll soon get a reputation letting people, mortal or magical, doing things like that. But never mind. I have very disturbing news to impart."

"Dick and Randy haven't been caught doing something unnatural again, I hope."

"They have gone 'poof' and then been whisked away through thin air."

"What other kind of air is there?"

"Disappeared, Fanny. They are gone to who knows where."

"And this 'Who' chap. Where do we find him?"

"What?"

"Well, if you don't know where, we'll have to ask Who. That's logic."

"Who?"

"Yes."

"What are you talking about, Fanny?"

"About Who."

"Who?"

"Yes."

Chastity sighed. Her sister could be quite exasperating at times. "The point is, both Dick and Randy have disappeared. One minute they were here, then they were whisked away by Madame Hush."

"Whisked?"

"Yes."

"Do you mean, 'stirred'?"

"I'll kill you, you know!"

"My goodness! You've gone mad, Chastity! Stop it! You're giving me the heeby jeebies."

"Ha! Another one for the heeby jeeby section, I see..."

POOF!

11


Chastity was sitting on a stool in one of the many aisles of books, not only that, but also on a rather painful horn of a dilemma; though not the horn of a rhinoceros, thankfully, that would truly have been very painful, she supposed.

What was she to do? Zip off to get the help of an adult, or seek for her siblings who haid all been whisked off (not stirred) into the heebie jeebies section (apparently).

"I wonder if Uncle Oddy would know what to do? He seems a worldly older gentleman of virulent Tory stock. Surely he would know something of the heebie jeebies, if only to publicly criticise their many causes, and maybe he would be one to know where one might find it in a library, however magical and arcane the library might be."

A disembodied voice asked: "Were you just thinking about the heebie jeebies, girl?"

"Oh no," Chastity lied quickly. Lying, she was old enough to know, was never a good thing morally, but often useful. "Why would I be thinking of the heebie jeebies... Oh dear!"

POOF!

12

What a peculiar experience it was. One moment she was tumbling through a void, then gesticulating in a vacuum, then gyrating under a huge hanging kalaidoscope, then standing upside down at the bottom of the earthly globe like she was an Australian, and with a host of Europeans (of the worst kind) looking down her dress and (most of them) liking her bloomers (though some preferred black), and then she was sitting at an old fashioned desk in an old fashioned classroom straight out of an Enid Blyton or Charles Dickens story; and to top things off, up at the front of the class stood a most stern looking Madame Hush with a big whacking stick that the reader should know was made from the branch of a  nasty whacking tree from another story, which Chastity thought looked rather phallic, in a Greek Mythological sense.

In the classroom with her was Dick, Fanny and Randy, and several others: Pooh Bear (unmistakeable), Piglet (delightful), King Kong (down sized), the Marquis de Sade (looking hopeful) and Bugs Bunny - the real one, from Narnia. At the back the class wearing a dunces cap was Tom Cruise with that smarmy look he always seems to have on his face. Chastity had never seen Tom Cruise before (in fact, his presence was somewhat anachronistic) and what a lucky girl she had been, up to now....

"Now, children and animals," Madame Hush began. "Now that I have you all collected in my heebie jeebies section.... or, if you like, my heebie jeebie class, you need to know the rules.

'One. No sex with other species.

Two. If you have sex with other species you are unlikely to procreate.

Three. No sexual innuendos.

Four. If there are any Scot's here, leave now, as one can only achieve the possible, and heebie jeebies and the presence of Scots are immutable and unchanging and unrepressible, so I won't try.

Five. If you can't answer my questions, I will bend you over, pull down your trousers or lift up your skirts, and give you a great whack with this whopping great stick that may look like a whopping great penis but is a whopping great stick nonetheless, and, hard, very.

Six. If you can answer five questions correctly, I will give you leave to leave the class and go back to your factual or fictional homes, depending on if you are factual or fictional.

Is that clear?'"

Chastity found hersel answering along with the rest of the class. "Yes, Madame Hush in your sharp pantsuit."

"Good. Chastity? Where are you? There you are. Now come up the front please."

Nervously, Chastity did exactly as she was told and came to stand in front of class.

"We can begin with you, I think. Question One.

'Is my pantsuit red or cerise?'"

"I would say cerise, Madame Hush."

There was a pregnant silence. Then Madame Hush said. "Correct!"

"Question Two.

'What do two and two, when added together, make?"

"Four, Madame Hush."

Twin pregnancy pause... then....

"Correct.

"'Three. Would you ever get naked with your female head of teaching?"

"If I was told to, though I would not smile or even giggle, just accept it all stoutly like a good Tory girl and follow directions closely and in detail."

Longer pre-birth pause... then...

"Correct.

'Question Four. Is your Uncle Oddy a Respectable Tory or a Perfectly Degraded Liberal?"

"Publicly or privately?"

"Excellent answer. I can see my next question needs to be a bit harder if I want to whack your bare arse in front of class.

'What slippers are nicer, more appropriate, and actually not slippers at all; answering by colour."

"Ruby. No one likes silver. Not only is silver boring but totally unsuitable, filmically speaking, even in black and white."

"Oh what a clever girl you are," Madame Hush commented, a little sadly. "Okay. You are free to leave."

"But what about my siblings?"

"You must wait for them outside. They will be out presently. I presume with raging red bottoms, but who can say?"

So poor fretful Chastity went outside and waited in the street. She discovered she was outside a rather Victorian looking building, just outside the gate, over which hung a sign:

QUEEN VICTORIA SCHOOL OF EXCELLANCE AND DEPORTMENT

Chastity, a good Tory girl as mentioned heretonow, was reassured to see it. Maybe things would work out for the best after all.

But,.... not surprising,.....considering....look where we are ?......

13

Not long afterward, Dick and Fanny and Randy were out on the street with Chastity, one after another, and all very sore in the rump area, having been switched thoroughly for getting Madame Hush's questions wrong. (The one about what came first, the chicken or the egg, seemed in fact to have two wrong answers, and being Christians, loosley speaking, apparently they should have known the correct answer).

"So what now?" Chastity wondered aloud.

Mr Mopbucket turned up just then. "Well, if you don't want to be permanently trapped in Library Land, I suggest we run back to the tree top and get out of here."

"But you'Ve got no legs!" Fanny exclaimed.

"I was talking metaphorically," Mr Mopbucket complained. "Why must people people take me so seriously, even if I am a physicist by nature?"

The children, of course, couldn't answer that.

"Let's go," Dick said. "Frankly, i'm sick of this story. Library Land did not turn out to be anywhere as interesting as a Library Land should be. You know, worst still, these tales seem all the same after awhile..."

And so they ran back to the ladder and descended.

As they started the descrnt, Randy wondered aloud. "I wonder if there will ever be any wonderful tales in the future? Wonderful tales about beavers, or jelly rolls, or other exciting things like that."

"Probably not," Chastity said as she swung down from branch to branch.

Moonface popped his head out from his house in the tree. 'Ooh! I can see up your dresses!" he proclaimed in a crisp appreciative tone.

"I think I'm like Susan in the Narnia series," Chastity sighed as she dropped finally to the ground. "Silly Blyton creations looking up dresses! How boring! Just now I think, seeing I am about sixteen or thereabouts, it's about time I grew up."

Uncle Oddy was at the base of the tree waiting for them. 'And tonight, all going well, you shall, by gom," he smiled in an Uncly kind of way.



The End...

Or Beginning...

I expected perhaps, more to the story, but that's probably because I jumped in reading on the second page! Should go back to the beginning for it to make sense I suppose.

The tale was unfinished, so Ol' Anon thought to finish it. The great story telling days, when Wholesome Tales was at its zenith, seem to be waning, like the Elves in Middle Earth, I guess.

Ol' Anon even thought to complete The Hobwit. But he thinks he may do that off-forum. Especially as he might even try to get that published one day. Who knows?

Its like everything, you can dry up like an old prune left at the back of the cupboard Tho I really hope not !! The enjoyment & fun these stories have given me