We keep the gardeners locked away, have done ever since they got too carried away at the hedge maze competition of '65. It wasn't really their fault, I think. Anyone can get too excited and around here you aren't meant to show just how much you're feeling or how many feelings you're capable of.
It upsets the town council, you see, what with them not being human and all. Come to mention it, I don't think anyone quite knows what they are or how long they've been our town council. I can't recall there ever being an election for them nor any mutterings about one down at the Goat's Eye Pub - and that's where everything that you need to know is talked about.
Like how you don't look directly at any member of the town council cause it'll only give you a headache and it's not like you'll remember their faces afterwards. Can't think of even a single business round here that takes "I looked at a councillor" as an excuse to skip work neither, if you do it then it's your own damn fault is all.
I remember that the gardeners were able to look at the town council, Mr Simperly flaunted it from time to time and claimed they had all sorts of unnatural facial features and whatnots but then again these gardening types are all an odd bunch. It takes a special sort of person to be able to build and navigate a hedge maze in under an hour, much less fill it with dangerous oddities on the way out.
Oh, that reminds me of the competition of 1961, mind you I was only a nipper back then but I remember running around that maze. I was so desperate to get out I started bawling the absolute second I turned that first corner and looked back to find the entrance had gone. It's such a classic gardener thing, to put their hedges on rotating platforms. Almost as classic as the poison ivy along the walls so you can't feel your way back to the entrance if you get hit in the face by the peeping blinder gas!
Now this may all sound grim but that's just how it was back in my day - and a fine time it was too!
It upsets the town council, you see, what with them not being human and all. Come to mention it, I don't think anyone quite knows what they are or how long they've been our town council. I can't recall there ever being an election for them nor any mutterings about one down at the Goat's Eye Pub - and that's where everything that you need to know is talked about.
Like how you don't look directly at any member of the town council cause it'll only give you a headache and it's not like you'll remember their faces afterwards. Can't think of even a single business round here that takes "I looked at a councillor" as an excuse to skip work neither, if you do it then it's your own damn fault is all.
I remember that the gardeners were able to look at the town council, Mr Simperly flaunted it from time to time and claimed they had all sorts of unnatural facial features and whatnots but then again these gardening types are all an odd bunch. It takes a special sort of person to be able to build and navigate a hedge maze in under an hour, much less fill it with dangerous oddities on the way out.
Oh, that reminds me of the competition of 1961, mind you I was only a nipper back then but I remember running around that maze. I was so desperate to get out I started bawling the absolute second I turned that first corner and looked back to find the entrance had gone. It's such a classic gardener thing, to put their hedges on rotating platforms. Almost as classic as the poison ivy along the walls so you can't feel your way back to the entrance if you get hit in the face by the peeping blinder gas!
Now this may all sound grim but that's just how it was back in my day - and a fine time it was too!
An extract from "Living Irregularities: Interviewing the town of Gristlehill Upon Stour"
Subject: Edith Ward (aged 65)
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