The Eyeballs In The Sky.

It is a dull windy Sunday afternoon and threatening to rain. I will not be venturing out today. I peer out of the kitchen window at my little garden which is getting quite overgrown. I will have to do some serious tidying up next week. My sunflowers are starting to bloom and look nice against the blue of the wall. When the weather is sunny at this time of year I enjoy the ritual of the evening watering the plants, and feeding the fish. Recently I have noticed a couple of frogs lurking in the undergrowth down near the pond. I made the pond about seven years ago with my mate Smithy. We made it out of an old bath which we sank in the ground and put in a sheet of rubber pond-liner. Smithy found some rocks to put around the edge to make it look natural. My shubunkins seem quite at home in it.

I call the pond the Pooliverse. I got that name from a comic strip I used to read as a kid. It was called The Perishers and was in the comic strip page of the Daily Mirror. When my dad got home from work he would be pushing his bicycle up the yard and I would run up and pull his folded up Daily Mirror out of his jacket pocket eager to read the comic strips. There was Andy Capp, Buck Ryan, Garth, The Larks, Romeo Brown, Jane, The Flutters and my favourite which was The Perishers.

They were a gang of children who lived in a concrete pipe on a building site. Later on, after Dr Beeching had closed down most of Britain’s railways, they moved into a disused railway station. They were Marlon who wasn’t very bright, Maisie who was a little tyrant and had a crush on Marlon, Wellington who was the philosopher and got his name from his footwear and Boot who was an old English sheepdog and owned by Wellington. There was also Baby Grumpling who was Maisie’s brother. There was a whole host of minor characters as well, such as a bloodhound called B.A. Calcutta (Failed) and two insects called Fred Beetle and the Caterpillar. The caterpillar couldn’t turn into a butterfly because he had stunted his growth through smoking. It didn’t matter though because he was scared of heights. Another bunch of characters that reoccurred every year were The Crabs and it is them that I want to talk about.

Every summer The Perishers would go on holiday to the seaside. While the others were happily swimming in the sea Boot would wander off for a walk. He always visited the same rock pool every year which was inhabited by a colony of crabs. He would stick his head in there to see what was going on. This would cause great consternation to the crabs who called this visitation The eyeballs in the sky. One crab was the self-appointed religious leader who tried to exploit the situation by standing on a rock to give sermons and taking collections to appease the gods. There was another crab though who thought there must be a simple scientific explanation to the mystery of the pooliverse. He would start making telescopes out of old tin cans in order to study the phenomenon. The great debate about the eyeballs in the sky would go on for about two weeks until Boot would just wander off until the following year. That is why I call the little pond in my garden The Pooliverse. I’m sure my fishes view me in the same way as the crabs saw Boot. I am their god, It is me who feeds them. I just noticed the sun has come out. That is enough nonsense for one day. See you later.

My Pooliverse.