Gnome and Away
My phone rang at 10.15 one Monday morning while I was watching a particularly enthralling presentation on "Getting Ready for Global Desktop". I turned it off and quietly fretted my way through a ten-minute explanation on how to move documents from the z drive to the m drive, thinking, what's happened? Who's died? My aunty, you see, rarely phones me, and never during the working week. She'd left a voicemail imploring me to call her back, and I tried to read between the lines, wondering if I was mistaking her usual tone of voice for anxiety.
She picked up immediately.
"I was wondering if you could be really kind and do me a bit of a favour."
Of course, I said, relief that if this was the conversation opener it was unlikely anyone had died.
"I need you to send a postcard to a friend of mine. It needs to be a London postcard, with a famous landmark, like the Eye or something like that, because it needs to be obviously from London. Let me give you the address," she continued, before I had the chance to ask anything about it, and reeled off a name and address in Clayton.
"Ooh one thing," she said. "It's actually from a gnome."
Of course it is, I thought. A gnome. Right.
"He's called Algernon" she continued, as if this explained everything. "He's travelling round the world and he's just got back to London so he needs to send a postcard and it needs to say "having a lovely time in London, see you soon, Algernon."
She went on to explain that Algernon had lived with them until some time in the late-90s, when the recipient of the postcard - I'm going to call him Dave - apparently snapped and admitted he didn't actually like gnomes, he found them creepy, and he would be perfectly happy if he never saw him and his silly red hat again. So poor old Algernon packed up his fishing rod and went off into the Big Wide World (though I suspect in reality Mrs Dave had a hand in this and he only got as far as a Cleckheaton car boot sale). There was more to it than that, though if I'm honest I was only half-listening, as I was writing an email about the pros and cons of the Student Visitor route of entry to the UK at the time. Apparently Algernon was more than just a gnome, he was a sort of therapist, called in to mediate on all sorts of family disputes involving Dave and Mrs Dave's children in what seems to be a flagrant abuse of his right to gnomic self-determination, and frankly if I was him I'd think twice before sending a postcard to my old tormenters. But anyway, apparently Algernon is one to forgive and forget, and, having been in Paris a few weeks back, he did the logical hop via Eurostar and is now in London.
I did send a postcard, which I'd been instructed to write in childish script, because apparently this is how gnomes write, and who am I to argue? I don't know if it got there, and I don't know what Dave's reaction was. I also sent a book of zombie cupcake designs to a friend in Hounslow, a sketch about Jesus working in a chip shop to a writing competition in Newcastle and a birthday card to my old boss bearing the slogan "Congratulations on still being alive." I really do hope, in these uncertain times where the threat of a terror attack remains high, that someone somewhere is monitoring my mail.
She picked up immediately.
"I was wondering if you could be really kind and do me a bit of a favour."
Of course, I said, relief that if this was the conversation opener it was unlikely anyone had died.
"I need you to send a postcard to a friend of mine. It needs to be a London postcard, with a famous landmark, like the Eye or something like that, because it needs to be obviously from London. Let me give you the address," she continued, before I had the chance to ask anything about it, and reeled off a name and address in Clayton.
"Ooh one thing," she said. "It's actually from a gnome."
Of course it is, I thought. A gnome. Right.
"He's called Algernon" she continued, as if this explained everything. "He's travelling round the world and he's just got back to London so he needs to send a postcard and it needs to say "having a lovely time in London, see you soon, Algernon."
She went on to explain that Algernon had lived with them until some time in the late-90s, when the recipient of the postcard - I'm going to call him Dave - apparently snapped and admitted he didn't actually like gnomes, he found them creepy, and he would be perfectly happy if he never saw him and his silly red hat again. So poor old Algernon packed up his fishing rod and went off into the Big Wide World (though I suspect in reality Mrs Dave had a hand in this and he only got as far as a Cleckheaton car boot sale). There was more to it than that, though if I'm honest I was only half-listening, as I was writing an email about the pros and cons of the Student Visitor route of entry to the UK at the time. Apparently Algernon was more than just a gnome, he was a sort of therapist, called in to mediate on all sorts of family disputes involving Dave and Mrs Dave's children in what seems to be a flagrant abuse of his right to gnomic self-determination, and frankly if I was him I'd think twice before sending a postcard to my old tormenters. But anyway, apparently Algernon is one to forgive and forget, and, having been in Paris a few weeks back, he did the logical hop via Eurostar and is now in London.
I did send a postcard, which I'd been instructed to write in childish script, because apparently this is how gnomes write, and who am I to argue? I don't know if it got there, and I don't know what Dave's reaction was. I also sent a book of zombie cupcake designs to a friend in Hounslow, a sketch about Jesus working in a chip shop to a writing competition in Newcastle and a birthday card to my old boss bearing the slogan "Congratulations on still being alive." I really do hope, in these uncertain times where the threat of a terror attack remains high, that someone somewhere is monitoring my mail.
posted by RLS at 8:00 am
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