Tale To End All Tales
Once upon a time there was a little gopher called Jemima. Her neighbour, Jeremy, was a gophim and they didn’t really get along. In fact, in the dark tunnels under the scorched California earth, often they would try and ambush each other with deadly intent in the manner of Kato and Inspector Clouseau, only less hilariously so. Up on the surface, a trembling copselet of flowers here or there, or a few barely audible squeaks were all that indicated the epic struggle beneath.
One day, after a tussle, as both gopher and gophim lay bleeding and exhausted in the dim light of the tunnel, a mole with a deerstalker and a pair of penny-rounders passed by.
“Good day to you, thar, ya bleeders,” he said, for he was indeed Oirish.
“I’m a very busy mole but m’heeart is woise and true so if you’re needin’ a bit of advoice about how to be getting along and living in hermony like, Oi can spare you a bit of me valuable toime.”
“Well, see now, Mister Mole, it’s him,” said Jemima, pointing at the scuffed and wounded Jeremy, and wondering why she too was now speaking in a County Roscommon accent.
“He’s an ersehole so he is, and he infuriates me so my stomach is as a boiling cauldron of rancid chip fat into which a grubby grey oice-cube’s bin thrown”.
“Ah, choild, but why… why is he an ersehole? Why does he vex you so?” said the neat little chap, who they now noticed was wearing a smoking jacket and white gloves but no trousers, like in Disney.
Trying not to notice the lack of trousers on the mole, despite the fact that he himself had no clothes on save his god-given fur, Jeremy cut in,
“It’s true, but I am an ersehole; Oi can’t help mehself. My mammy and daddy before me were erseholes and we’ve been wrang’uns al the way back through history. But she, that Jermoima hoor, is a numptie who irritates each and every follicle of my body until I’m screaming to get out of my own fur. We two were meant to be at war and to not be would be a denoial of our very natures. It is written, so must we foight ’til one must surely doi.”
He sounded a bit more Dubliney.
“Oi see,” said the mole thoughtfully, leaning back and lighting a strange pipe with many curious shapes carved into its ebon stem. He took a few puffs and sat in silence for many minutes, occasionally re-lighting his poipe, pipe and muttering “Oi see, uh-huh…(long pause)…Mh-hmm. Oi see.”
Jeremy and Jemima, still too puffed and bruised to get up, glanced at each other in puzzlement from time to time, wondering what this mysterious wee creature with no breeks might say next.
After a long time had passed, for most of which the mole appeared to be sleeping, the peculiar little critter arose and said,
“Oi have the solution to all yer troubles, see! Oi come from a long loine of seer moles who possess wisdom beyond the far mountains where…” he paused, “Hey now, the snow appears to be melting as Oi’m doing me Far-Seein’ thing… well… Oi never! Huh… And…where was Oi m’dears? …Oh, and into the very souls of rodents, m’far-seein’ goes there too.”
“What is it?” cried Jeremy, jumping to his feet. “Tell us, O Mole Who Is Well Met! Tell us the solution to all our troubles, for we are tired of battle but don’t know how to stop!”
“Yes, do, Gentle Mole, Sweetest ‘Mongst Rodents!” exclaimed Jemima, now inexplicably talking in a Bedfordshire accent.
“Perhaps now we’ll be able to live as neighbours should, trading our roots’n’ bulbs with each other, not pinching ‘em; and ride-sharing; and getting together once a year for peace festivals with guitars and cheap Goth jewellery stalls, and food on sticks. Do, do tell us, DO, you dear little fellow!”
The Mole, smiled kindly and, with impossible twinkly oldness at the eager young pups before him, said, “First you must stop all this gopher/gophim gobshoite. Shake hands now and cease first this ludicrous battle of the sexes. Troi asking her out on a date, Jeremy lad, go wan!”
Jeremy blushed furiously saying, “All roight, Oi haaave always loiked that little wrinkle by her left whiskers, and Oi do loikes a foiesty lassie, loike… But what else? How can we stop our senseless hatred, one troibe for another? And how can we get those damn sand-gophers to give us the oil we need for our frivolous, unthinking loifestoiles? We chust can’t agree on how dat’s to be done and Oi’ve got moi bran’ new four-bih-four arroiving Tuesday week, like.”
“Relax, wee Son Of Alasdair, wee Daughter of Evelyn, I will give you the key to solve all your stroife. Hehrmony shall be yours, and peace reign ferever. Here’s what you do: Gurgle. Gurgle splee, something unpronouncable, gulg,” said the wise mole.
“Oh. Plehggle!” said Jemima, in cut glass Queen’s English.
“Plshforl” said Jeremy.
And that is where the story ends, dear readers. See what the venerable wee mole couldn’t quite see with his Far-Seein’, peer as he might, was that global warming had caused the snow caps to melt, high in the California mountains, leading to unseasonable water torrents and flooding all over the garden under which the story is set.
The wise mole’s secrets passed with him and we shall never know them because we ersed arsed around when we had the liberty to work on them and now we face even moightier (Damn!) mightier challenges to our very survival as a species and we won’t have the time to figure out how to be nice to each other. Noone will emerge unscathed from climate change, and many more stories will end like this: not with a bang, but with a gurgle, and maybe a shattered pair of penny-rounders.
I am just the disembodied Narrative Voice here at Problemchildbride but as soon as I figure out how to locate my incorporeal wrists I’ll be right off to slit them at the horror and shame at what we’ve done.
What? You wanted a happy ending? Can’t happen. We’ve seen the height of civilisation and we still couldn’t make it work. Now it’s all going down the plughole.
Shoite.
February 8th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Racist!
*runs away*
February 8th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Only in a lovely way, Sweary.
(Runs after you)
February 8th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Didn’t St Patrick chase all the moles out of Ireland – must have all gone to California.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Hello JohnMc! Ole St. Paddy just wasn’t visionary enough. He didn’t foresee the rise of the modern golf course otherwise he would have driven the moles out of Ireland and the snakes out of California. I hope they fired the useless angel they had delivering him his visions. Welcome! Come in, take your boots off and have a cuppa.
February 9th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Those bloody Irish get everywhere, well at least they weren’t Mexican, I hear 10,000 mexican moles enter california everyday, I blame Global warming.
February 9th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I’ve just purchased a .357 Magnum and 2000 rounds . The moles must die before it’s too late for mankind.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
But what can we do o wise one? Every time we switch off a light we are told it is ineffectual. Your story is a ;ovely way of passing on a serious message.
February 9th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Clever.
Very.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
hmm, hm, hm…
got another lesson in English, nice though (as a foreigner and life-time learner I appreciate every one with vigour)
walking the dogs that evening I bet I met an Irish mole, looked reddish. Seems they’re everywhere.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
If all the icecaps melt then sea levels will rise a maximum of 80m. So, make sure you live in a place more than 80m above sea level. Of course an awful lot of the world’s population don’t.
Just don’t buy property in Norfolk is what I think I’m trying to say
February 9th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Sam I am, (couldn’t resist, you have kids – you get the reference), thanks for the invite. A cuppa sounds good. Been lurking for a while.
You know – when i lived in Ireland I don’t think I ever saw a mole. Lots in San Francisco though, the nemesis of the Golden Gate park grounds keepers. Maybe the Irish moles, like meself, got Greencards and left for richer climes. Maybe now that things are better back in the auld so, they will head back – as long as they aren’t afraid of tigers, of the Celtic variety.
February 10th, 2007 at 1:28 am
Aha! If you’ve ever read that scientific journal Viz, you’d know that the terms ‘erse’ and ‘ersehole’ belong to Morrissey, who is most definitely Scotch and not Irish. So there.
I’m too stupid and naff to comment properly and most of my blogging takes place against a background of either Monty Python sketches or 70s and 80s hard rock music, so please ignore all of it.
February 10th, 2007 at 6:20 am
Knudson, “I hear 10,000 mexican moles enter california everyday,”
You’re right, and when they’re not picking fruit and cleaning houses, the women of Orange County are making coats out of them because real fur is the only thing to wear when it’s 80+ degrees outside.
Kav, you’re obviously hopelessly naieve about the moles. It’s gonna take a kalashnikov at least, and a couple of surface-to-air missiles (they’re using bats as mercenaries)
February 10th, 2007 at 7:34 am
Pat, I gave my husband a “Turn the f**ing lights off!” switchplate in his stocking at Christmas. This was the height of hypocrisy as he is much better at that than me. I hadn’t heard that there was no value in it. Over here people are starting to buy carbon credits to offset their lifestyles until the technologies are in place for cleaner fuels. The idea is to maintain a zero emission balance by working out your carbon units or “carbon footprint” as they call it and purchasing “credits” in the form of investing units of money in the most promising alternative energy research fields. Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” will scare the bejeezus out of you but I recommend it thoroughly if you haven’t seen it, in part because at the end he says there are a whole lot of things we can do. Trouble is a lot of them involve leadership and policy change from the government and, in the US at least, the creaky giant of government just takes too long to catch up with the changing mood of the country. The British and European leaders seem to me making more decisive, committed noises; maybe they’ll lead the way; although the noises so far haven’t really translated to much.
SamD, welcome! In your line of work I think I should introduce you to my pal, Mr. Foot Eater. He’s in my links in the sidebar.
Jenpen: yes, it’s the rapidly spreading Celtic Tiger Mole aka The Mole That Roared. They’re popping up all over the shop and aren’t to be feared if you buy them the first round.
Kim: The Norfolk might soon be a people of the past that we can only look at in picture books. Perhaps we should stuff a few for the British Museum or preserve some DNA or something. We could grow a whole new bunch of Norfolk up in Snowdonia or Rockdonia as it’ll be known when global warming gets it.
JohnMcC: Sure but back in Oireland, don’t the wee fairy folk use the moles for their chariot-races? That’ll be why you never see them. I wouldn’t like a fairy to hear me say it, but they’re shocking cruel to their animals, these little people.
Foot Eater, you don’t mean EverydayislikeSundayeverydayissilentandgrey Morrissey? Do you? He always used to be on about his Irish roots and his similarity to Oscar Wilde and daffodils and stuff. I loved it. That Morrissey is appearing in LA soon and is a whole other post – mainly going on about how it’s a bit unbecoming for a man of his age to still be doing the whole angsty, bedsit thing. He’s not even skinny any more and you have to be skinny and tortured to do the bedsit thing. It doesn’t work to be tortured with a paunch; maybe in real life it does but not on a stage with hot lights and daffodils making you look an extra 2 sizes bigger. Daffodils add 10lb – ask Alan Titchmarsh.
February 10th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
How delightfully Duncton Wood of you! Eeeeeee, I’m in. Back to the lovely place I like to visit. Huzzah!
February 11th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Morrissey used to stick daffodils in his ‘erse’ on stage, allegedly. Every Day Is Like Sunday is a great song, and I heard a rock band in Mexico City covering it just last month. Morrissey also apparently used to send the Queen Mother a cabbage on her birthday each year. I presume he stopped this practice after 2002.
February 11th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Very T.H. White-like, Sam. I’m a fan of White, by the way, so that’s a compliment.
Footie, I haven’t heard the cover you mentioned, but I heard a cover of “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” done in Spanish, back in the early 90’s. You know Siouxsie’s big in Mexico, as she sings in Spanish there.
On a side note…. Years ago, one of my friends used to get rid of persistent mariachi serenaders in Mexico by asking them if they knew “Stairway To Heaven.” Defeated, they would then retreat. I wonder if they’ve gotten wise since then.
February 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Sam: I’ve never met a husband yet who didn’t approve of turning th f—–g lights off but usually their motives are parsimony not ‘Save the Planet’
My mindset is – as about most things: every little helps.
PS I’m sure PCB hubby has higher motives:)
February 11th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Yup we’re doomed, which I don’t mind, we’ve had a unfair crack of the whip, it’s just a shame we’re taking the planet with us, and well before its time.
The tumble dryer is the worst by all accounts. So have damp bottoms and save the world.
February 11th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Fmc! For Joy! I’m glad you’re back, sweetheart – the ould place wasn’t the same without you. Voted for you today in the Irish Bloggies. 3 of my pals are nominated; you and Sweary and Kav. It is very cool indeed.
Foots, I only saw Morrissey once at the Barrowlands. There were daffodils there, sure, it was a crazy time, but i never saw anyone smoking any. From what you say the daffodil pushers had an altogether different sort of daffodil pushing in mind.
Sparrow, I hope you’re on the mend hun. Mariachi bands are all right but you get the feeling they could achieve a better effect with fewer band members. I guess you let your cousin join and then your aunt makes you let his little brother join too and he knows someone who’s better than your guy on the guitar but you can’t get rid of your guitar guy ‘cos he’s another cousin with an even fiercer auntie and, soon, your lean mariachi garage 4-piece that was going to tinker with the form and fuse it with punk is a 20-piece headache playing weddings at the weekend; relatives’ weddings so you don’t even get paid properly. It all makes it hard for an earnest young mariachi to break out and go wild.
Pat, it’s most certainly parsimony with the PH. He put energy saving lightbulbs all over the house one weekend and the savings have been even better than we expected from that but at the same time he’ll keep the A/C at 66-68 all summer thereby ploughing all the savings – and more -right back into keeping the house in a condition of semi-permafrost. The girls and I walk round the house looking like Laplanders in mid-July and sweaty, be-shorted callers at the door can only wonder why we ever moved from Minnesota. In his defence, he is getting better and we have reached a sort of cold war( har de har har) arrangement with the temperature. He walks by and cranks it down a degree or two, I walk by and crank it up a couple notches. We’re not extreme for fear the other will Push The Big Button and send us careening into either a Narnian winter or an Indian summer.
Apprentice, it’s a shame also that we in the west have had our bite of the apple and second and third world countries might never have it as good as we did. Particularly as a lot of these same countries are in areas of extreme weather anyway and Global Warming predicts more extreme weather all over the planet. If the Gulf Stream reverses with the changing ocean salinities caused by glacial meltwater, Western Europe as we know it will just have been a brief carnival that got snowed on. It’s a damp bottomed future we face, right enough. Didn’t know that about tumble-dryers being the worst but its good to be aware of it. Gloom.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Ummm this has got nothing to do with moles.
But following on from the comment you left on my site have you seen Kristin Hersh’s blog?
http://www.throwingmusic.com/blog/
I’ve been poorly so am only just catching up with everything!
February 12th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Erse, as you know, was a word used by English folk who couldn’t be arsed saying Gaelic or, more accurately, Irish (Gaeilge). No moles in Ireland, unless they’re of the MI5 variety. It must have been a pal of Darby O’Gill. Incidentally, he’s now roidin’ the back off the Celtische Tigger in a brond neu SUV.
Keep your eye on Greenland… it’s 99% ice and it’s melting… most of Ireland (and the Isles) will succumb to water.
February 12th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
That’s a very pretty parable, Sam, but someone will benefit from climate change, even as the ancestors of apes and humans benefitted from the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. We just don’t know who it will be.
As the individual is mortal, so is the species, if not from climate change then from something else. God-willing, the end will come many thousands of years after your twins have lived their blessed lives.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Erseholes are bad for the environment: they mess up the ozone layer.
And a gophim sounds biblical, like something God might have set to guard the Garden of Eden against attempted re-entry by A & E (the first casualties of sin). Only cuddlier and without the flaming sword.
February 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Delightful story, dear. I’m glad you’re back. Too bad about the mole. I would have advised basketball, having sat through a tournament this past weekend, wherein the OD played on the only Lutheran school teamamong seven all girl Catholic schools. It was quite pleasant. No one blew himself or anyone else up.
Cheers.
February 13th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
With an accent like that the mole had to be an alcoholic.
Was he?
February 13th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Birchsprite – thanks for that! I was surprised to read that the Muses split up because it wasn’t financially worthwhile any longer. I guess you assume that, because they’re famous, these people are rolling in money. Glad to hear you’re on the mend.
Greenland! The bastards! So they think they can flood us, do they? Well it shouldn’t take much organisation to float some giant sponges round our coasts, airlift them up to their so called “Greenland” and wring them right out again over their green little houses.
Nanas, it will all make sense in the larger story of the species, I know, but it is the enormous human suffering and individual tragedies that will happen on the way that get me down. I do feel guilty about what we’re leaving for the girls’ generation. It just seems like we could have done a better job and there’s much to regret in the way we’ve abused the planet’s systems. It’s like we were given a beautiful statue and we smashed it like spoilt children. I’m guilty – our family produce so much trash in a week we can hardly close the bins on it come collection day. I drive a hybrid and recycle but my two girls could have filled a football stadium with the amount of disposable nappies they went through in their first years. I could have used cloth ones but I was tired and disposables were easy. I told myself it was actually better because the amount of water and detergent needed to clean cloth diapers would, in fact, be worse. I doubted that then and do now but I was too modern and lazy to do what women have been doing for all the centuries before Pampers. What my granny with 7.
Rob, their is nothing cuddly about the gophims round here. Flaming swords are the least of it – it’s the increasing number of subscriptions to Guns & Ammo magazine that keep coming to the garden. We find them under the bushes in the morning with empty bottles of 40 proof Dandelion Water and used needles. It’s a disgrace and there ought to be a law.
Randall, I agree there’s nothing worse than carnage at a basketball tournament – and they always seem to happen just as you’ve got settled comfortably with your nachos.
Hello to you Dario, and welcome. It was the Far-Seein’ thing that tipped you off wasn’t it? All alcoholics do the squinty Far-Seein’ thing. sometimes they’ll wax deep and lyrical with it, but more than likely they’re just trying to work out how many more staggers it is to the off-licence.
February 13th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I haven’t yet given up on humanity. There are movements and rumblings out there that are beginning to show promise. However, if things do take a turn for the worse and housing developments start popping up on the sunny beaches of the arctic wilderness, you may as well get used to the idea that “soylent green is people.”
February 15th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Please sir, I’ve never seen a mole. Not in real life, anyway. Save me one, won’t you?
February 15th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
A mole that talks like Lord Denning? How appropriate when describing an appalling vista.
February 15th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Slaghammer, hi. I think the movements and rumblings are the sound of America’s collective indigestion from the news and hoping we can just take a giant Tums to make it go away. Me too. If there was a giant Tums I would be gnawing my way through it as fast as I could gnaw. Tums are good for the bones too and that’s important in the battle against osteoporosis so, you know, it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.
Carolyn, welcome. Moles are 8 feet tall and breath like the very devil. They like to hang around in golf courses and jump out to scare the golfers who then don’t manage to make important business deals over a quiet game and the knock on economic effects are horrendous. People go out with bows and arrows to shoot them. I clicked on the link and had a lovely time over at your’s; Thanks for stopping by.
Bock, you know it’s odd but Lord Denning was exactly whom I fashioned Mr. Mole after. An appalling vista to an appealing vista is only two letters difference. You’d think mankind could manage that, eh? What with space tourism and cloned sheep, you’d really think we could, wouldn’t you?
February 16th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
He can’t have been from Dublin – sure they say “dat” not “That “there – I know, I’ve been there twice … we didn’t use to have any wee moles up north – either that or we had another name for them?