A Village Publication!

 

Tally Ho Journal

    The Village is a place where people turn up……well they don’t simply turn up, they are either abducted because people who work in a certain job or environment have certain information inside their head that needs to either be extracted, or protected. And then there are the interim No.2’s, each one assigned to the village for one purpose or another. One can only imagine from where each of them in turn has been seconded, possibly within the Civil Service, and in one or two cases their selection can be questionable, or dubious to say the least!
   And then there are those who came to work in the village of their own free will, such as the Professor and his wife, and those recruited through Labour Exchanges, as well as employment bureaus. Specialized people, electricians, scientists, technicians, painters, decorators, craftsmen, gardeners, plumbers, administrators and all the others who were brought in to run the village behind the scenes. Me? I remember the day when I was brought here, I was taken to the Labour Exchange, I asked the manager why I was here? He told me to get a job, then looking at my file and told me that I would be put to work on The Tally Ho. I was surprised; I thought I would be doing something important. The manager told me each of us are put to the tasks of our profession, you’re a journalist he said, so you can work in the offices of the village broadsheet The Tally Ho, they said, reporting on everyday life in the village, commenting on social matters, on important events, carrying out opinion polls. But first you will begin with Tally Ho Journal, they said.
 

   As a matter of fact there is something I can write about straight away, a strange occurrence which I and a number of citizens witnessed. It took place in the Piazza, everyone was enjoying themselves promenading around the pool and fountain, when all of a sudden this thing appeared, a round white sphere made of membrane. Someone told me it was the Guardian. Do you know I do believe this village is full of eccentrics, what with the old Admiral sailing plastic boats in the Free Sea, I mean to say, what’s the Free Sea all about? Anyway there was this dinghy in the Free Sea and a chap dressed for Henley regatta sitting in a dinghy being pulled along on a rope by another chap. Suddenly everyone was ordered to “Be still” by Number 2, and suddenly everyone was frozen to the spot, well almost everyone. There was this young man in sun glasses and striped jersey who wasn’t trying to run away, he was just dodging about, simply not being “still” I suppose. And I guess it was for that reason why the Guardian was set upon him. It was awful to see that thing smothering that young man’s face and suffocating him to death, or at the very least into unconsciousness! And the queerest thing of all, the Guardian is capable of making sounds, either a blood curdling roar, or something like a Gregorian chant, crossed with a noise of a bicycle pump, crossed again with someone breathing through an aqualung. No, that’s not the queerest thing, the queerest thing was that as the Guardian moved away, presumably resuming its patrol and leaving the body lying in the Piazza, everyone there was suddenly able to move again, and simply went on promenading in the Piazza just as though nothing had happened. In time an ambulance arrived and two medics carried the body away on a stretcher.
    True the village is a picturesque place, where people are permitted to enjoy themselves and at times in a most peculiar way, such as scrambling about the deck of what I can only describe as a folly, the stoneboat, clambering about her rigging. While others spend time relaxing, sunbathing, swimming in the public Lido. There’s even a regular brass band concert, and croquet played on the village green. And if you don’t feel like cooking breakfast, and you’re not eligible for certain privileges, like having your breakfast delivered by a personal maid, then you can always have breakfast at the café, and enjoy afternoon tea on the lawn of the Old People’s Home. Everyone is catered for, for as long as you live, you are then gracefully retired into the Old People’s Home! And yet there is a dark underside to the village if the use of that amorphous membrane thing called the Guardian is anything to go by.  And was that a demonstration? Because there was this chap in a charcoal grey suit, who was obviously a new arrival here, so the demonstration, if that was, was possibly for this chap’s benefit as if to say if you step out of line look what will happen to you! And of course there is another way of looking at it, the powerful manipulative ability No.2 demonstrates over the citizens of this community. “Be still” he ordered and not one person moved, only that poor young man, who was so badly used that day.
    I suggested to the editor that I might carry out some investigative journalism; after all that is what I used to do in my former life, and that I might write a piece on No.2. He told me not to worry about No.2, as any such No.2 has never been here long enough for anyone to get a handle on him! Other than that I am free to write about any aspect of village life, and perhaps a few features on less prominent figures in the village. I understand there is a couple here who took ages to settle down, and that now they wouldn’t leave for the world……..I wonder why that was?