OAKFIELDS FARM At Oakfields Farm near Oddingley near Droitwich, Mr.John Stevens, watching television news of Hurlock's trial while waiting for any farming news, thought angrily: "Scuba diving! Another waste of time and fuel without doing anything useful! My son Peter, long after he could read and write and add up and could help me round the farm, he hung on at school, 5th form, GCE O level exams, 6th form, GCE A level exams, none of it any use on the land but plenty to make him town and paperwork minded; I buy this telly for farming programs , and his mother encourages him and his sisters to watch it all the time; try to keep him home for a few days for haymaking or harvest, and his headmaster comes round like the Gestapo telling me he's got to go to school regardless. Finally he's out of school and can earn - and he gets a job in town and uses the farm as merely a dormitory and wastes his spare time and money scuba diving instead of being some use here, still no fulltime second pair of hands round the place after all these years. `How much keep do you want?' he asked me, expecting me to charge him just a few pounds a week for his food! out of his pay. I told him: `It'll be your unopened pay packet each week!, to pay the man I'll have to hire to do the work that you should be doing for me through the day; and be more use evenings and weekends than you are now! Any over goes in the kitty and not spent on fancy clothes and taking girls out and going to the pictures and buying clutter. Anything to waste time with like stereos goes back to the shop, or to market. You won't need anything to pass the time with: if one job's finished, there's always another to do.'. He just refused and said that he doesn't get a pay packet, he's paid into the bank, and that he's a separate person, and every sort of defiance. He lied about how much he was earning; then one day he vanished to a friend's in town with a lot of stuff from the house. (And both of his sisters married and moved away, no help from .) The amount of money he's spent on himself: flashy great motorcycle, scuba diving holidays abroad, fancy stuff for his house, I could have bought a new tractor with what's gone up in a cloud of airliner exhaust and aqualung bubbles far away and all sorts that he should have put in the kitty. Instead I've got to pay a man at modern extortionate pay rates when there's a work rush; and they won't touch evenings or weekends unless I pay them fat overtime on top of that. Endless trippers leaving lane gates open, and if I lock them weekends the police are round moaning, or someone crashes them through with a lorry, until I've got to fork out to fence alongside the lane all the way ...". His angry reflections were interrupted by a sound of breaking wood and a thump and a scream and a cry for help outside. He ran out. By his haystack his current hired man, Ifan Griffiths, lay groaning on his back. Beside him lay Stevens's ladder, with more than half its rungs broken in the fall. "$#@ take your pennypinching!" Ifan moaned, "I thought that ladder was a new one like the Ministry man told you to get, not that dangerous old one bodged up and repainted! I've broken my pelvis! Ring 999! Get an ambulance!". John swore and went down the road to the next farm to phone. "Still too mean to have a phone of his own." Ifan said to himself. John phoned, fearing a huge damages bill from the Industrial Injuries Court, on top of having to find another man. "I can't afford to pay town factory wages for the good men. All I get are thickheads and moaners." he thought sourly. John came back and said angrily to Ifan: "Now look what you've done! I told you which rungs to be careful with. Can't you count? Now you've wrecked my ladder as well as your job at any farm round here, you thick ass. Ladders cost. Stuff costs.". "I told you," Ifan moaned, "I thought it was a new one like told you to get, not that old ...". "!?" John interrupted angrily, "New !? Not while I can mend the old one! They'll be telling me to buy a Porsche next.". "Well, mend my pelvis next." said Ifan, "Expecting me to use rickety old everything. My union'll fight this right through for compensation. There's laws about safety of work and tools.". "Oh!" John replied angrily, "You're in a %$# union, are you?, load of troublemakers. I'd better warn the other farmers round here.". John heard an ambulance's siren coming - suspiciously quickly, he thought. The ambulance was wedge-fronted, not with a short bonnet like most English ambulances. Only one man got out of it. "You were quick! Which way did you come?" John asked him sharply. "Lie still, let the ambulanceman move you." came a voice from the now empty ambulance, [208] which moved about although driverless, backed up to the stretcher, and opened its rear (which, unusually for Britain, had one big door, not two). Two long mechanical arms came down from its roof and out of its rear and helped to load the stretcher in. The ambulanceman got in and drove away. John wondered briefly about the ambulance's nonstandard shape and kit as its rear end and siren sped away, and realized: "And he hadn't milked the cows yet. One thing then another. Agh! Do the job myself while other jobs get left; ring the Labour Exchange for another man; I thought so! That ambulance's gone down the top lane instead of the proper way. I bet he came the same way and left the gate open - but no, if my self-closer's working, that's stopped a deal of nuisance and people cutting through - He has! There's Grange Farm's cows in my corn! If I had a pound for every lane gate I've shut after other people - the whole world's on wheels and in a hurry nowadays. The amount that farmers have had to spend on cattle grids and fencing alongside roads.". He drove the cows out of his corn back along the top lane to Grange Farm's land, and saw to his horror and amazement that the gate was broken, not merely rammed through by a heavy vehicle, but torn to pieces thrown far and wide, and the gateposts uprooted, concrete footings and all. "Looks like a giant did it!, except there's no such thing." he thought desperately, "What to do? If I just wire across the gap, someone'll cut it with pliers to get through, and the milktanker driver'll call the riotsquad. Trippers leave the gate open for the next driver, so I put a weight and rope on it as a self closer. OK, so that means that the driver needs a mate to hold the gate open while he drives through. People round here know that, and trippers needn't come. Someone cut the rope, so I put chain instead. People moan, I ignore them. Now this! All the barbed wire I wrapped round it and yet all this damage: whatever did it was armour plated or doesn't bleed anyway. I better take them right back to his farm.". The cows had to go back into Grange Farm's Long Pasture which they had been taken out of only 3 days before because the grass needed a rest. Grange Farm had to scratch together the money and materials and permission to put a cattle grid in there, and until then use winter feed on the cows. [209] While John was at Grange Farm, he telephoned the ambulance. "999 here. What service do you want?" came a girl's voice. "You sent an ambulance to Oakfields Farm earlier today and it shortcut down the top lane and rammed a gate through and smashed it, and there's cows one side and corn the other side.". "That's not an emergency. Ring their ordinary number." she said, and hung up. Directory Enquiries eventually answered. John rang the ambulance station: "Your ambulance that came to Oakfields Farm today. Wedge fronted, one big back door, moved by itself. Your man that drove it: did - he - ram - my - gate - through - or - did - he - find - it - like - that? That gate was all right first thing this morning! Grange Farm's cows in my corn, and now he's got to keep them in and use up silage on them and fork out for a cattle grid! I'm sick of this!". "OK, OK." the ambulanceman replied, "you forever moaning farmers featherbedded with your fancy EEC subsidies, why can't you fence alongside roads? You weren't very sympathetic to your man when he broke his pelvis! Seconds wasted matter on emergencies. Lives come before $#@'ing about with gates. OK, I'll call him.". "Hello?" said John when another voice came on the line, "You were driving that wedge-fronted ambulance that came to Oakfields Farm today? What about my gate?". "Yes, that's me." came the reply, "`What about your man's pelvis?', you mean. Straxus take your gate!, you too mean to buy a good ladder. What about !? `Butterfly' and wrenched left sacro-iliac joint, torn urethra, torn buttock muscles, and I end up picking up all the pieces! Him off work till @#$ knows when, and you ox-minded characters want us to mess about with gates!? That gate was like a gin trap, and I can't transform to mess about with gates when I've got a patient in me. So you've got to put a cattle grid in there? About time too! Emergency services don't like wasting time or having to go long ways round because of gates. Gates and doors with self closers are a pest. Someone was bound to lose his temper with that gate some time.". John was not pleased to get an earful of accusation and medicalese, and the talk of `transforming' didn't make sense to him, but one word jumped out at him. "Butterflies!?" he exclaimed, "You in such a hurry you can't open my gate properly, let alone shut it after yourself, and you stop to catch butterf-- unless you used the word as some medical jargon thrown at me to confuse me, the usual conspiracy of all sorts to cause me expense and expense. Fer-get it! Fer-get it! I'll be a good little boy and fence alongside the lane all the way along and get even further into overdraft. I don't want to know about him again, nor will the rest of the farmers round here. This has shown he's too thick or clumsy to trust with a lot of jobs, and he's in a union, load of troublemakers. None of it when my grandfather bought my land with that inheritance: men did what they were told to do, six days hard work a week including evenings and a full Saturday for bed and board and beer money and bits, and stuck at it. %$# the farm wages rate laws.". He hung up and went back to milk his cows. [Note: `butterfly fracture' is a sort of pelvis fracture.] The law ran its inevitable course. In Droitwich Magistrates Court the magistrate read out each charge in turn. "I told him which rungs to keep off. Typical thickhead like I get. I can't afford new this and that all the time. Anyway, I've got a farm, not a factory. `Industrial' means `factories'. Factories are big buildings in towns with machines in." said Stevens surlily. "Fencing along roads? I must save on things! Call the vet to a cow and he charges me so much that I may as well give him the cow. Lanes are for farm people to get to main roads, not for town trippers to drive about on wasting petrol and their time." he said. "What the $#@'s !?" Stevens exclaimed as a huge white steel face with a red forehead crescent appeared at a window. "Oo-er." said the magistrate, loosing his cool for a moment, "One of Wernicke's Transformers! Confusing, seeing the boundary between fact and fiction so casually transgressed. I believe that in the stories at oaths the custom is that all of those involved each run a little of their fuel into a cup together, then it is burnt. They call that `the Rite of Oneness'. But my body fluid won't burn, and this court is no place for big naked flames.". "OK, I'll swear in the usual human way." said Ratchet at the window, and said the usual court oath, and then: "-- severe pelvic fracture with urinary tract damage; buttock muscles torn; a nerve called the `left pudendal nerve' was crushed but its function should return -- expected 3 to 4 months before he can work again -- old ladder had been patched and tarted up to make it look new -- defendant was totally unsympathetic --", and gave an estimate of Griffiths's expenses and expected loss of earnings. "I can't afford a quarter of a fag end of that much!" Stevens exclaimed. "You should have thought of that before and bought a new ladder, and insured against employee liability." said Ratchet. "I can't afford new this and that, and I can't afford insurance. Insurance costs the earth. I'm sick of insurance men coming round wasting my time. My father and my grandfather didn't need insurance and suchike fancy new this and that." said Stevens. "How the %#$ do you expect me to buy a new telly on the money get? People won't pay me a decent price for the stuff I grow." Stevens asked angrily. "How much!? I need it for work to help feed people, not for idle trippering about! Leave it off! I'm not made of money like you lot with flashy cars that could just as well use the bus." said Stevens. "Help, the whole wolf pack's after me." said Stevens, "I'll pay them next market day, I've had expenses. That Algerson doesn't need the money that badly anyway, he's got his pay as a foundryman to keep him going. All I've got to live off is my land.". [210] "After you were warned that not keeping accounts is an offence," said the magistrate showing an old exercise book, "I see that at least you've kept something vaguely resembling an account book. Too many abbreviations and initials: for example, when does `S & M' mean Smith & Malton's (where you've run up a lot of machinery repair bills), and when does it mean Samuel and Mitchells (your previous feedstuffs suppliers)? `doing cows', `doing fence', `doing the elvets': Doing what to them? What's an elvet? You lurch from crisis to crisis getting deeper into debt, no clear idea where you're aiming at. You've got no family members living with you for me to have to consider. For example, what's this big bill for fencing materials? You say you're hard up, but you can afford beer on market day. That's not a necessity. Your endless `I'll pay you later, some excuse' must stop some time. I'm declaring you personally bankrupt and seeing what can be raised from selling your property. The people that you owe need the money themselves.". "The Elvets is one of my fields." said Stevens irritatedly, "I told you, trippers leaving lane gates open, my cows in Grange Farm's corn, Abbeygate's rams in my ewes and I get a load of lambs born in October and I've got to feed them through the winter instead of them being born in Spring for the new grass. I tried locking the end gate weekends and bank holidays and round come the Gestapo saying I can't because it's a public road.". "The who came?? Not since 1945 ..." said the magistrate, "I take it that you mean the police. Call people and things and organizations by their proper names in court and don't use accusing slang names. Carry on.". "Finally a lorry went along the lane crash crash crash through every gate, and that was enough. I just had to fence alongside the lane all the way. One of my fields cut in half, two others made smaller. I've not been `in the black' since." said Stevens. The case continued and finished, and the matter ended. John Stevens emerged shocked into the sunlight, stock gone, land gone, nothing to do but go round the farms looking for work. He looked up bleakly at Ratchet standing in robot form near the court building door. With a succession of metallic clickings and compressed air hissings Ratchet folded his arms and legs backwards, and pulled his head in, and thus became the ambulance that had arrived at Oakfields Farm on that fateful day. This explained several things that had puzzled John; but it was irrelevant. Ratchet drove away. A policeman and another man approached Stevens. "I take it you're the man the beak's told to sell my stuff off. I told them, I'll clear a lot off when I sell those bullocks." said Stevens, still somehow hoping to carry on his lifelong-remembered farm routine. "I'm Mr.Aikthwaite, the Official Receiver." said the other man, "Sorry, but your supply of delaying tactics has now run out. Bills and laws won't simply go away like a wasp if you ignore them. Your 30 acres simply isn't enough land to live off nowadays, the way you're running it.". "Get in his car with me and we'll go to your farm. The sooner this is over, the better. Get everything itemized for the auction." said the policeman. "OK, OK, it's over." said Stevens, "Take it all and do whetever you like with it. Likely the cottage sold to some town man who won't do a stroke of work at haytime and harvest. Land added to other farms who've got enough land already and all the fields made into one, or used for building on. Always the little man gets mechanized out of a job.". At the farm, Mr.Aikthwaite, thankful for his overalls and safety helmet, went into the cottage and soon realized that it couldn't be sold. The walls were cracked and bulging and subsiding; there was wet rot and dry rot; the roof was polythene sheet over ancient mouldy thatch; odd bits of wood nailed over holes; and the outbuildings were similar. He said so. "You haven't spent much on paint and preservative!?" he said. "I can't afford all that tarting up when there's work to do, on the money I get." said Stevens. "Pity. It'd have kept all this rot and woodworm out." said Mr.Aikthwaite, [211] and then, seeing some cattle in a field, "If these are the almighty breaking-the-slaughterhouse's-crane bullocks that you were going to sell for enough to clear no end of outstanding debts off, they haven't got much meat on them! Even I can see that!". "They've got to fatten up yet." Stevens excused. "While you run up yet more bills." Mr.Aikthwaite replied, "The court isn't going to wait that long.". "Not my fault." Stevens pleaded, "Lewison & Brown wouldn't send me any more feedstuffs, when the grass stopped growing in that dry spell. I told them I'd pay them after I sold the bullocks, but they wouldn't listen.". "They wouldn't. You say that excuse till everybody knows it." said Mr.Aikthwaite, "Why no poultry here?". "Sold. Garage wouldn't give me any more diesel for the tractor without cash in hand." said Stevens. "This machinery of yours won't fetch much more than scrap value." said Mr.Aikthwaite, and, hearing a motorcycle approaching, "Who's that coming?". "I told you I had more money coming in!" said Stevens triumphantly as a motorcyclist rode into the farmyard and stopped beside them, "Here's my son Peter with it. At last I've made him see where his responsibilities lie.". "Lets see how much money first." said Mr.Aikthwaite warily. I'll tell you how much!" said Peter angrily, "ZERO! Him trying to embarrass me into selling myself down to bare floorboards to bale him out of the inevitable! My stuff remains mine! I've just come to make some points clear. After I left school, I got a job in town to get away from being ordered about all the time unpaid farm labouring and having nothing of my own. He wanted all my pay as keep, so I moved to a friend's in town. He kept running up bills in my name and telling people I'd pay his bills, and that I was in partnership with him (which I'm not), all sorts of characters and writs arrived, he kept turning up at my house and my sister's husband's house to borrow money or tools; and now he organized a huge public sale of my stuff with press and the vicar and all sorts there telling them what a goody-goody person I was selling all my stuff off for `the family farm' - Not a family farm, just his farm and nothing to do with me! My wife rang me to complain, for they'd told her that I'd agreed to the sale; I explained the truth and told her to keep the house tight shut while I took time off work and went home. A huge crowd there including several who said they were ordinary people but actually were dealers hoping to buy stuff cheap and sell it for more. I don't care how many people it embarrasses or lets down their hopes, I simply don't honour disposals of my time or work or money or property made in my name without my agreement. It took ten police and a lot of arguing to move that lot on. I repeat, I'm not paying John Stevens's debts.". [212] "But surely, some loyalty to your father in need ..." Mr.Aikthwaite started. "Sorry," Peter interrupted, "but it stops short of me throwing all that good money after bad! This place'll never pay run as a traditional mixed farm. I've discussed it with my wife and my sisters and their husbands, and we all agree.". "`Wife'?" said Stevens angrily, "That slip of a floosie who couldn't make a cheese or milk a cow to save her life!?". "Save the insults please." said Mr.Aikthwaite. "Please, all paid off, then I can start again with a clean slate." Stevens pleaded. "Like last time, I suppose, when your uncle died and you got the bequest, and--" said Peter. "My uncle! I forbid you to mention that!" Stevens ordered as if Peter was under his command. "Or you'll spank me across your knee?" Peter replied, "Bequest, and you paid everything owing, which was a lot, same as now. You made fine promises that from then on you'd pay cash down for everything or go without it until you had the cash to buy it, no more unrealistic hopes of what produce would fetch, clean slate, clean mind - but within two years Mr.Malton of Smith & Malton's had to come here with a bailiff in tow before you'd pay a bill for repairs to your thresher, and you'd used up credit on one feedstuffs suppliers and you were on another feedstuffs suppliers. Back to square one; and ditto'll happen if I pay your current lot off!". "Why you telltale!" said Stevens with a betrayed tone, "I'd had a run of bad luck! These things happen!". "You still promised yourself and your creditors that you'd pay cash at once for everything and run up no more unpaid bills at all fullstop absolute no exceptions regardless of whatever happened." Peter replied, "You've had so much bad luck that it isn't bad luck but the normal way of things! This - land - is - not - enough - to - run - a - mixed - farm - on - nowadays! See sense!". Stevens angrily replied: "If I could, I'd blowtorch that Captain Blowtorch [= Mr.Malton] with his own backpack blowtorch! I'd locked everything away and hidden the keys, but up he marches in his overalls and riotsquad helmet and with blowtorch cylinders strapped to his back like a spray-pack or an aqualung and cuts a fence with wirecutters to get his van into my farmyard. Then instead of waiting till I go to market next he goes straight to my main store shed and lifted his blowtorch to ten quids worth of padlock to ruin it to get inside to see what was in there that he could take. Only one thing I could do, else he'd've taken fertilizer and all sorts that I need, and, I suppose, used it for his useless pretty flower beds in front of his works. `OK, OK, Save your gas and my locks!' I said and gave him my best bullock right then on the spot. `Now 's got the bother of selling it to get the money.', I thought, but he put it straight in his works canteen freezer.". "Oh yes. He gives one bullock the best of the feed, to get it fat, and at market sells that one first, hoping that the people'll pay the same for his other bullocks." said Peter, "I kept telling him: `Try selling some of the land to pay off your bills and put up greenhouses on the rest: market gardening or flowers? Think of something new.'.". "No!" said Stevens, "Vegetables are too much messing about. It's enough time waste growing the vegetables we eat ourselves. And as for telling me to grow `pwetty fwowers'! Cows, sheep, corn, hay, nothing wrong with the old way.". "If you had a lot more land." said Peter. "Bah!" Stevens replied, "Telling me to change at my age. If you'd worked your whack evenings and weekends and put your fat idle town job earnings in the kitty to pay for me to hire a really good man to do the work you should have been doing during the day--". "Me go back to having no money or time or property of my own?" Peter interrupted angrily, still sitting on his motorcycle, "And `kitty' means your pocket, I suppose.". "I'm afraid your son's right." said Mr.Aikthwaite, "You've no legal claim to your son's property or earnings.". "Bah!" Stevens exclaimed, "I raise three children and they all fly the nest on leaving school and set up on their own far away. It's a conspiracy! `Do the little man down'! is the rule nowadays. My life sold off to strangers because that clumsy %$# breaks my ladder and that performing talking ambulance won't keep its mouth shut.". "You should have bought a new ladder when the Ministry man told you to." said Mr.Aikthwaite. In a last desperate attempt, John Stevens tried in as a commanding voice as possible to get the unquestioning obedience which his son Peter had grown out of many years ago: "I brought you up! I as the head of the household demand that you repay me for bringing you up and help to keep the family farm running! instead of wasting endless money on luxuries.". "No!" Peter replied, "Principles only go so far! I've discussed this with my sisters' husbands, as I said, and NO! You have no legal rights over my property, and as regards cost of--". "Meaning that there's a conspiracy, like I thought!" John interrupted angrily, "And when I ring my brother all I get is his spoilt brat saying that Daddy says he's out.". "--cost of upbringing," Peter resumed, "you've had it already, by your father bringing you up, and I'm (re)paying it to my own children. I'm a separate household. How much money of me, and of your sons-in-law, and of your relatives by blood and by marriage to the n'th degree, do you intend to suck into this bottomless pit of a farm before you finally admit it won't pay its way!?". "`Your own children'?" John replied angrily, "Meaning that after a hard day's work when I need my sleep, I'm going to be back to being woken in the night by crying babies long after I'd thought I'd seen an end to that.". "No you won't!" Peter replied angrily, "I'm coming back here. And don't even think of depositing yourself on me or my sisters' husbands.". "Me deposit myself on you?" said John, "No fear of that! Me stick myself in some city with only a pocket handkerchief garden, and council bylaws saying I can't even keep a few hens!?". "You keep talking as if I still live here. I don't and I'm not going to." said Peter. "Well, you should!" said John, "You owe me a great lot! that you should have put into the farm instead of spending it on town luxuries. For a start, that's part of my new tractor you're sitting on. Get off it.". That last statement puzzled Peter at first. "Me make a motorcycle out of tractor parts!? What are you heehawing about? It's an ordinary Honda from a shop in Droitwich. You never had a new tractor." he said, and then, guessing a possible meaning: "If you mean that I bought it with money that I should have given you to keep your farm in equipment, the answer is: The world doesn't owe you a living! This - place - won't - pay! Admit that!". [213] "Mr.John Stevens, will you stop blustering!" Mr.Aikthwaite exclaimed, "Your son's both right and in the right. Back to the point. Lets get on with itemizing what's here. About a ton of hay; a plough, in bad condition; ...", and broke off as a white Porsche with three men in it arrived splashing through the manury puddles and stopped. "Oh lumme. Oh help. Now who's coming in that posh Porsche?" said John pulling at his hair in distraction as the three men got out, "The wolves gather! What an assortment! Captain Blowtorch, complete with his favourite weapon; Mr.Malling from Grange Farm; and who's the third?". "I'm Mr.Faulkner." said the third arrival, who wore overalls and a safety helmet, "The council sent me to check the condition of Stevens's cottage before it is sold.". John noticed that Faulkner had a metal detector. "I'm the Official Receiver." said Mr.Aikthwaite, "This is Mr.John Stevens. The one on the motorcycle is his son but financially nothing to do with this, and the motorcycle's his own.". "He owes me for mending nearly every implement he's got!" said Mr.Malton as he took his blowtorch cylinder pack off the seat beside him and put his arms backwards through its pack straps and lifted it onto his back and fastened its waist straps, "Always some excuse why he can't pay me right now. And he managed to wheedle ten gallons of diesel off one of my delivery drivers recently.". John looked at Mr.Malton's thick overalls and riotsquad helmet and chest pouch for tools, and holstered blowtorch head with gas lines arching over his shoulders to his cylinder tops, and pickaxe handle hanging from belt, and backed off. "I bet he's been up a fair few ladders with that lot on, to where people didn't think blowtorches could get, and, when he got there, not too scrupulous what he used it on." John thought in fright, "Help! Help! Oversized industrial thug walking welding and cutting shop. I bet he won't act so fancy when I get my shotgun to him. Forget it! Hostage sieges always end the same way, the gunman is talked at till he's sleepy, then they rush him. Fer-get it! but watch my life being scattered to the winds although I'm the third generation here. OK. OK. This land won't pay as an ordinary mixed farm nowadays.". "I'm Mr.Malling of Grange Farm." said Mr.Malling, "He's had five sacks of fertilizer and umpteen tractor tankfuls of diesel off me. He cadged off everybody till we all gradually `dried up' like unfed cows, then he moaned about us being mean. He owes everybody, and people start thinking that all farmers are like that.". "Thankyou. I thought you were helping me, letting me have that stuff! Now you suddenly demand it all back when I'm down." said John. Malling said: "After his man Griffiths had that fall and it got in the papers, someone called a meeting of his creditors. There, and at the next local branch meeting of the NFU [= National Farmers' Union], it came out how many people he owed. We'd had several whiprounds to get him out of scrapes. Time he accepted that his land just won't pay as a traditional mixed farm nowadays.". [Ifan Griffiths, chronically underpaid on excuses and promises to pay later by John Stevens, complained about this while in Ratchet, who later casually mentioned it when taking two of Smith & Maltons's guard dogs to a vet who Stevens owed money to. Mr.Malton rode with them, and at the vet's they met a garage owner who Stevens also owed to. A chance meeting: so big events sometimes start.] Mr.Malton unholstered and lit his blowtorch head as he walked to a padlocked door. "This is his main store shed. I've been before." he said. John Stevens watched the small hot hissing flame destroy £6 worth of padlock without giving him time to get the key. "Handy go-anywhere break-in device that backpack blowtorch of his is!" he thought, and shuddered at the idea of a pair of burglars or an organized gang of scrap-pickers armed with them as well as with sticks and guns. Mr.Malton walked in. "If you want to nose round the loft in there, you can't." said John surlily, "That clumsy thickhead Griffiths broke my ladder.". Mr.Malton reached into his chest pouch, which bulged more than usual, and took out a light nylon rope ladder with a steel hook on one end. He threw it, and the hook held. John helplessly watched Mr.Malton climbing the rope ladder, blowtorch and all, to a place he had thought such tools couldn't reach, and pulling up the rope ladder after himself, and melting open the eight locked steel chests and cupboards up there one after another, and pocketing £50 worth of cash that he found in them. (The rest of their contents were only old screws and old farm implement parts and junk.) "Oi! Leave that! I need it to pay the ..." John pleaded. "Then what's it doing in there and not already paid to them? Your putting bills off till later hoping they'll rot away like old leaves, stops now. The court said so." replied Mr.Malton. Mr.Malton saw another door, and walked to it. "Leave that door!" said John desperately, "I've never opened it, nor did my father! It's too handy for thieves to get in through, like they did in my grandfather's time once, and that's why it's never been unlocked since.". But when he finished talking, `Captain Blowtorch' had already torched through the ancient rusty lock, and opened the door and found himself in the cowhouse hayloft, which had a fixed ladder, which he descended. He searched the cowhouse, and by torching the locked outer door off its hinges came out into the farmyard, where Mr.Aikthwaite was showing the old exercise book to John. "This excuse for an account book of yours:" Mr.Aikthwaite was saying, "I've added the entries through, which you didn't, and if you had no money at the start of last year, you should have several hundred pounds now. Where is it?". "I can't put in every pint of beer and tankful of fuel and odds and ends that I buy! I'm no good at numbers and adding up and keeping fancy lists like an accountant!" moaned John. "Well, you should have." said Mr.Aikthwaite, "All those omitted odds and ends add up! Meaning that you haven't kept proper accounts.". [214] "Now for me to look in your cottage." said Mr.Faulkner. "Can't. It's locked." said John. "Key?" Mr.Faulkner asked. "Somewhere." said John surlily. "Mr.Malton?" said Mr.Faulkner. "OK, save your blowtorch gas. Here it is." said John, throwing a key at Mr.Faulkner. A farm dog ran up barking to Mr.Faulkner, who told John curtly to get the dog tied up. Mr.Faulkner went in and looked round and came out, and said: "Thank %$# I brought this helmet! Wet rot; dry rot; crumbling plaster; no sound wood in the place; roof is polythene sheet over ancient mouldy thatch; walls are cracked and bulging and subsiding. Looks like nothing's been done to it for ages, except to nail odd bits of wood over holes and cracks. Sorry, but these buildings must be condemned. It can't be sold, except for the materials in it. You may get something for the bricks from the used brick trade.". "Meaning that I'm in the street. Do I get time to pack some clothes?" said John Stevens angrily. "The law says that the corporation must rehouse you if you can't find somewhere for yourself. Until then you can stay here." said Mr.Faulkner. "In some %$# flat in town with no land at all, not even a garden, I suppose." said John. "I'm sorry to sound uncharitable, Mr.Aikthwaite," said Peter Stevens, "but he can't move in with me or either of my sisters. He'd start bossing and taking over the household, and selling things that he thought weren't necessary for work, and hatch some silly plan to try to get back into farming, and keep me and my family under tight orders like the army and not allowed to own anything except authorized items of personal kit. He still thinks I owe him all my time and the value of all the money I've ever earned.". "No fear of that!" John replied, "Me move to his house in some suburb with only a pocket handkerchief garden, or to Mary's ditto, or to Janet's #$% flat? Forget it! I'll go on hire! I'll go in and pack what'll fit into my pack, then you can do you like with the rest, and with the house and the buildings. There's a farmer near Oddingley who needs a man and has a bed in a back room for him. I'll send you the address if he hires me.". He went in, and a while later emerged wearing a big full rucksack crudely made from a sackcloth sack fastened to a frame made from scrapiron, with rope harness. He also had some gardening tools slung over his shoulder on slings like a rifle's. "Now it's like I've been having bad dreams about: thanks to you lot digging up this and that that you say I owe, some of it so long ago that I thought they'd forgotten about it, I'm on the road looking for work. This is all I'm keeping. This is all that any man needs: tools that he can carry, spare clothes, some bedding, room for a few days' food; perhaps a mementoes if there's room for them, to take it with him to wherever he's needed and never mind needing a furniture van. No entertainment stuff to kill time: if one job's finished, there's always another to do.". "Something under here!" suddenly said Mr.Faulkner who had been using his metal detector, and started digging. "Forget? Some people keep proper orderly accounts with running totals!" said Mr.Aikthwaite. Mr.Faulkner, holding up a small metal box, said: "It's £70 in those ancient enormous white fivers!" " it's found!" John Stevens exclaimed in dismay, "The bit that my grandfather put away!! I suppose it goes to the Receiver? £70!? I could have bought a with it then; now it's not much more than pocket money! Everything goes up all the time, `inflation' they call it, no point saving! Thieves! Thieves! You won't pay a decent price for produce, and you let the big farms undercut the little ones - you force men to keep their children at school forever getting paperwork minded although they are needed at home to help run the farms and to take over when their fathers get too old to work - you force men to pay extortionate wages when they must hire men - not one of my relatives and in-laws wants to know me - oh my head - you tell me that a few beers on market day is wastefulness like I was Rothschild -" he continued, getting angrier and angrier, and then rushed at Mr.Malton's car with an enraged shout of "Well, to that `list of my assets' that you've made, !". He shoved Mr.Aikthwaite roughly aside and grabbed the car's driving seat door, knowing that that make of car was faster than the only other car there. [215] To his dismay the driverless car suddenly opened its door hard at him, winding him, and unfolded its front suspension and steering gear into a pair of steel arms. Its right front wheel lifted at an odd angle as it reached out with its right arm and grabbed him by his right shoulder. "Thieves! Leave me alone and get off my land!" he continued to shout in vain as the policeman handcuffed him. Such was his first meeting with Jazz the Autobot Transformer. The police charged him with assault on Mr.Aikthwaite, and attempted theft of Jazz, and released him on bail. He went to Mr.Chilton's farm and went on hire there, back to working for a wage after three generations of owning land. By now it was nearly dark, and he put his tools and his crudely-made pack beside his bed and went to sleep. His farm and its contents were sold a few days later. Its implements went to Smith & Malton's as scrap, and vanished unceremoniously into Mr.Malton's furnaces. The Forestry Commission bought the land. After all bills were paid, a few thousand pounds were left over. John left it in the bank for when he was too old to work. "So much for that!" he said, reading the sale accounts that he received two days later, "Officials taking fat fees -- `K.Jackson, grocer, £74.12p for misc. supplies': where did the cat drag from? He moved away ten years ago! -- estimated income tax -- Smith & Malton's, repairing blah blah qwertyuiop, and ten gallons of diesel: Ye gods, have they even added in!? -- Lewison & Brown, blah blah and sheep dip -- etc etc etc. Nobody paid my father for the strip of land that the council took to tarmac Grange Lane across The Elvets from corner to corner that time, great gash through half-grown barley, cutting one good-sized oblong field into two fiddly little triangles. In the old days it took most of most men's wages buying food, and there wasn't all this trippering leaving gates open and running over hens till I can't let them wander to find their own food, and dogs chasing sheep, and town bird-feeding cult till now there's so many sparrows that anywhere near towns corn is picked bare standing, and they won't let us keep children off school to scare the birds away. Keep my head down and do what Chilton says and hope he doesn't change crops and make me redundant. At least the farm wages laws are on my side now.". He went to work cleaning out Mr.Chilton's cowhouse. [216] Two forestry commission workmen, Alf and Joe, went to Oakfields Farm, to examine the site. Joe had a big heavy red cylindrical pressurized liquid fire extinguisher slung diagonally across his chest on a harness; it had some non-standard fittings on its hose nozzle. A look round confirmed what Mr.Aikthwaite had told them: the place had been let go too long to be repairable, and was so full of rot that they were unwilling to pull it down in case it fell on them, and unwilling to risk taking millions of wood rot spores home on their clothes. The stored hay and straw was so musty and mouldy, rained on through the unrepaired haybarn roof, that nobody bought it. The two men went round, opening or breaking all doors and windows. Search found nothing of value, as Mr.Malton and a squad of his men had picked the farm clean so it wouldn't attract totters and scrap-pickers to hang around afterwards and plague the area. "I've been wondering when I'd get a chance to use this!" said Joe, and went round the buildings, firing into them short accurate high-pressure jets of burning petrol from his converted fire extinguisher. The buildings burnt and collapsed. Fire consumed all the unsaleable oddments left by three generations of small farmers: old battered furniture, bills put aside and forgotten till the reckoning came, official forms briefly puzzled over and put aside as a mystery beyond comprehension, oddments kept in case they proved useful some time. "That hay you're burning!" shouted John Stevens's voice unexpectedly behind them, "Lie down in the ditch!". The two spun round and fell to the ground and Joe aimed and kept his finger on the trigger, but then saw that John had no gun. "No. This place isn't yours now." said Joe as the two got up again. "Lie down in the ditch, or ..." shouted John. "Or what?" said Joe, still aiming and wary, "Whatever you want, you should've taken it away before.". Suddenly with a loud deep `whooomp' a huge ball of flame rose from the other side of the piled bales of hay, and debris flew. "Or !!" John exclaimed, "There's - was - a big tank of Calor gas hidden in the hay! Next time tell your mate Flamethrower Fred or whatever he's called, to be careful!". "We had a good look round!" said Alf, alarmed, "Why the %$#$% hide Calor gas in hay, you fire risk making idiot!?". "I needed it in case the Gas Board cut me off. I had to hide it in case the man in the shop came to take it back. He wouldn't wait till ..." said John. "... next time you went to market." Alf completed interrupting, "Tell me the old old story.". John Stevens, not liking being told he was wrong by yet more workmen wearing helmets and visors like the riotsquad, complained lengthily about education laws and employment laws stopping him from getting help round the place from his children; about his daughters Mary and Janet marrying and leaving so he lost their help round the place; about a day when Peter, ordered to turn hay in Thorny Field, had gone to school instead, and the teacher brought Peter back in his car with a long accusation about `trying to make him miss GCE exams for scruffy bits of labouring' when John's plans for Peter's future were nothing needing exams in but to be a badly- needed fulltime second pair of hands round the place and to take over when the time came and to marry a farming girl and raise a grandson to follow in the farm; about his three grandchildren being raised far away who would be no help to him in his old age; about Peter, who eventually deserted taking a lot of stuff; [218] about his wife Elizabeth who went back to her old mother taking a lot of stuff with her when he sold a red dress of hers to pay for urgently needed tractor fuel; until Alf interrupted him. "I don't know why you're telling all this." said Alf, "It's too late. Your farm's gone. No wonder your family left you one by one, trying an ordinary mixed farm on 30 acres, bread and water's normally a punishment diet but they got weeks of it every spring between the winter vegetables finishing and the summer vegetables starting because you were too mean or hard up to divert an egg or a pint of milk from sale. Now, if you don't mind, I've got work to go back to.". "You and your mate with the flamethrower burn it all as rubbish. Work work expense expense and it ends up like this." said John, "And my land ends up as a dark wood for crows and foxes to live in and plague everybody, as if nobody'd touched it ever.". "I should think so!" said Elizabeth Stevens, his wife, arriving, "I told him long ago!: `Any more talk of us living on wheatmash like horses instead of letting me buy bread or bread flour, and I'm back to my mother's !'. I came to tell him to forget any idea of moving in with my mother. The amount of times he's sold my shopping at the market, basket and all! And I don't suppose he told you about Janet's party! I made a nice big cake for her 16th birthday, and other stuff with it; and at teatime on the day the guests came to find a bare table. That dirty ox had sold most of the party food and all Janet's presents at the market and spent the money on tractor fuel and cattle feed! Most of the rest, he ate in the fields. I scraped the remnants together to give her a treat of sorts. It wasn't much, and she cried. The guests had to go away hungry. Try to find a good `mitigating plea' for that act-up!". "`Defence plea'? Try `can't afford' for a start! All those ingredients and gas, bought in or diverted from sale! Six eggs in it! Why buy food when we grow food!?, and inviting a load of school friends to pig it all in one day! I can't afford that carry-on! Giving children expensive ideas starts too soon, in their stories!" John replied, "Like this story that she bought for the children once: `Once upon a time there were three dolls, Molly and Mary and Milly, and they all went with Gollywog to the woods for an enormous party. There was ...', etc etc like a king's banquet, as if party food comes from thin air, not a word about who paid for it and how they got the money to pay for it. When I read that story to the children, I changed it to: `They all went to the woods with Gollywog to collect blackberries and nuts and firewood for their father or mother to sell to help pay the bills.'. The day after the party I found I was a hen short: oh yes, she'd killed and roasted it to have instead of the cake. Bang went all the eggs it'd've laid, and what it'd've fetched at market as an old hen. Enough of foxes, and cars running over hens, without that sort of thing also! Why can't she just sell the cheese or whatever and come straight back and do the rest of a day's work and give me all the money to pay bills with, so next market day I can do what I have to and come back in plenty time for me to do the rest of a day's work; instead of her wasting all day buying luxuries and junk so I've got to waste all my next market day selling it again, usually at a loss, to get some at least of the money back? And the amount of the eggs for sale that she kept giving to that Women's Institute in town where she kept wasting time, until I went there and made them pay me full shop price for all of my eggs they'd had off her.". "Why you!" said Alf angrily, running at John and grappling with him, "Counting every egg and cupful of grain, couldn't even give your daughter a decent birthday party for once although it'd already been made!". "Says you with a steady guaranteed wage and not wondering where the price of the next tractor-tankful of diesel or my man's next pay packet's going to come from! Winter or dry spell, grass stops growing, cows still need feeding! You try it!" John replied. "`Why buy food when we grow food?'" Elizabeth quoted angrily, "In winter next to nothing but stale root vegetables for ages till they bolt in store or run out, then little but bread and water like convicts on punishment till the broad beans start! Never that again!". "I'm not Sir Fontleby de la enormous expensive heated greenhouse, with saladings and summer vegetable seedlings three months before anyone else!" said John. "All the garden glass I've got's a few coldframes. Cow dung doesn't heat up, so not even a hotbed. Bread and water in spring? What do you expect?, like last year when a hard frost wiped out the sprouts and the January King cabbage, and even the kale so I had to give the stored roots to the cows. If I get them into a habit of killing sheep and hens and diverting eggs and milk from sale, they'd always be at it and I'd have nothing to sell to pay the bills.". "You two arguing across me: I'm a forestry commission workman, not a divorce court judge." Alf interrupted. "Excuse, you two, we want to get on with our work." added Joe, whose flame nozzle was now in its clip with its safety valve on. "OK, OK, rich enough to burn even a whole farm instead of seeing if anything'll sell. I'm going! I'm going!" said John. He walked away, back to Chilton's, back to work tending someone else's cows. "I should be ploughing Calf Croft [one of John's fields] for next year's wheat." he thought sourly, [219] "So much for that! Transformer toys, sets of teenage fashion dolls, so many fancy expensive toys! Nothing wrong with a piece of old rope for them to skip with, or a ragdoll made from scraps! (Or, better, if they've got nothing to do so they start playing, find them some work that needs doing.) Then people write stories about them, where they are alive and talk. Then that James Wernicke in Droitwich gets into such a frenzy wanting his favourite story characters for real that he makes real Transformers, alive but of metal and wire, not flesh and blood like any natural living thing. Then when that clumsy ass breaks my ladder, that Ratchet comes rather then any other ambulance, and so it got in the papers, and the vultures read it and gathered. And that smarty voiced official's smarty voiced talking car that was another of them. Why must the law make us keep our children at school nearly for ever, learning nothing but paperwork paperwork paperwork, and a bit of town factory metalwork? That's why next to nobody wants to work on the land nowadays. In the face of all that it was useless me trying to knock him into a steady uncomplaining worker. Tell him to harrow the Elvets and move some logs one evening, and he just refuses and says it's dark (which it wasn't, there was enough moon to see by) and he's such a weakling from idleness that he can't lift the logs and can't turn the tractor motor over to start it, and in the end I had to do it to get the job done before moonset, while other jobs got left. I tell him he'll only get a man-sized dinner when he does a man-sized day's work round the place, and he takes food anyway. If I let Liz sell the eggs or the cheese, she used up the money buying endless junk and expensive shop food that I had to sell to get the money back. I shot a lot of game to sell to buy tractor oil, and I came home to find more than half of it on the family's plates like a squire's banquet. At least she doesn't get the egg money now: a man from a hotel comes for the eggs on his way to work, and pays me. She wasted garden space on flowers, and moaned when I sold them as boxed seedlings and put beans or potatoes in instead to save food bills. She bought a fancy hat with cheese money, and moaned when I had to sell it to pay to have my harrow mended.". "Well, I've tried cases in some odd places due to case load and room shortage," said a magistrate sitting at a table in Droitwich magistrates court garage looking at Jazz the white Porsche and Ratchet the wedgefronted ambulance, "but never in here. Those `Autobots' again. At least it isn't Optimus Prime this time, filling the place with diesel exhaust.". "Those robots of Wernicke's seem to get into a lot of trouble." said a court clerk. "If you want to be a court clerk," said the magistrate irritatedly, "use words in court! They aren't accused, they're witnesses.". John Stevens was brought in. The magistrate said to him: "This is your second court appearance here in a few weeks. You are charged with attempted theft of a car, thought by you to be property of Mr.Faulkner the council buildings inspector, but actually a sentient robot vehicle; how do you plead?". "OK. I did it. Seeing my stuff being listed for selling off got me so angry that I had to do something, work work expense expense for three generations and my idle %$# of a son hung on at school forever and then skived off to a soft town job leaving me with no help and not a penny off him and it ended like that. You lot in towns eat food: who grows it? People like me!" said Stevens. "You are also charged with assaulting Mr.Aikthwaite the Official Receiver." said the magistrate. "I didn't. You can't pin that on me." said Stevens. "I'll treat that as a plea of not guilty. Call Jazz -er- Auto - bot." said the magistrate. Jazz was sworn in. "Ha ha, talking to a car, / thinks it's a Transformer, / quite a performance, / put him in the ..." someone in the audience thought, then, as Jazz started to transform, said "Holy %$#!" loudly and involuntarily. "Oh help, I didn't know they did as made as real! I thought it was just a talking car." said someone else. "I fail to see how %$# can be holy, or how it is relevant to the case." said the magistrate drily, "Silence in court.". Jazz unfolded his arms, collapsed his body roof to floor, lengthened and split his rear end into legs, unfolded at several joints along his length, and stood up, standing high above the humans, an improbable alien wonder far from any of the fictional worlds which he `remembered' as home. "I was in car mode at the time." he said, "The accused shouted `To the list of my assets that you've made, add one Porsche!', and rushed at Mr.Aikthwaite and pushed him down by his solar plexus and tried to get in me. I managed to wind him with my right door and unfold my right arm and catch him.". "OK, OK, I pushed him aside. I didn't hit him, 's assault." said Stevens. "Pushing's still assault." said the magistrate, "You pushed him quite hard, and it was in furtherance of attempted theft.". "OK, OK, I did it." said Stevens. The court clerk changed Stevens's plea to `guilty'. [220] "Update on Mr.Ifan Griffiths's injury. Call Ratchet Autobot." said the magistrate. Ratchet answered. "Are you Ratchet Autobot, currently based at Wernicke's factory in Droitwich?" asked the magistrate, following usual procedure. "Yes. When I heard of this case, I offered to come to inform the court as to the current state of Griffiths's injury." said Ratchet, and started to make clickings and air hissings. "You needn't transform, I know who you are. The mechanic will connect an extractor to your exhaust pipe. How is Mr.Griffiths now? Has he or is he likely to have any permanent disability?" said the magistrate. "I repaired his urethra, ticklish job it was. I plated the fractures. The bones and the torn sacroiliac ligaments should heal with time. Function is returning to his left pudendal nerve, which was crushed in the accident. There should be no permanent disability." said Ratchet. "Permanent disability?" John Stevens sharply interrupted, "There , to his brain, and there always was. Typical thickhead like I get. No hope of me paying factory wages to get the good men. I him which rungs of that ladder to be careful with.". "That work accident case has already been heard. Please stick to what you have been charged with today." said the magistrate. "OK. OK. I tried to grab that poncy official's posh car. Cars cars cars coming through for no good reason. The only journeys anybody need make is between home and work and shops and market, not weekend trippering all over the place leaving lane gates open. `Public right of way'? The only public it was meant for was for Grange Farm and Egton Farm and Egton Cottages to get to the main road each way, not for the world to cut through." said Stevens. "I don't see Egton Cottages. Show me them on this map." said the magistrate. "Used to be there." said Stevens, "Then everybody mechanized, big farms bought up little farms, do the small man down all the time, Egton Cottages got empty since farmers didn't want so many men, and Council pulled them down.". "What's all this to do with you trying to steal the car?" asked the magistrate. "Once Council got the idea that Grange Lane was free for all," said Stevens, "they suddenly tarmacked it, right across The Elvets from corner to corner and not round the edge, huge gash through half-grown barley, that was in my father's time. Nobody gives us a fair break. They never let me get the time and money to mend the house, then that poncy official blames me for letting it go.". " the court need to hear any more of this catalog of complaints of what a hard life you've had?" said the magistrate, "It still doesn't excuse you trying to steal what you thought was Mr.Aikthwaite's car. You've sacrificed too much of your family's comfort on the altar of your unwillingness to admit you were wrong and try some other use for your land. there are other cases for me to hear, and their participants not wanting to be kept waiting.". "All ri', all ri', I'll finish." said Stevens, "How much do I pay, and who to?, or what happens?". The magistrate fined him and bound him over to keep the peace. "!?" Stevens exclaimed, "I'll be a long time affording on pay! I'm on hire as a farm worker now.". "Time to pay? No. You've still got several thousand pounds in your bank account, left over from selling your land. Pay from that." "Not got a cheque book. I'm not drawing from that. That's for when I'm too old to work." said Stevens. "No cheque book? That hardy perennial. I'll adjourn this case while the court clerk goes to the bank to get a banker's cheque form. Mr.Jazz Autobot and Mr.Ratchet Autobot can leave if they want to.". The case resumed. The magistrate handed the cheque to Stevens for him to sign. "Not got a pen." said Stevens, stalling to the last. "The court clerk will lend you one." replied the magistrate. "Not got my reading glasses." said Stevens. "You were reading a newspaper earlier today quite easily without any." said the magistrate. "OK! OK! Here's my precious signature! Yet more of my life signed away! That posh official's posh smarty-voiced talking car." said Stevens, and signed, and put his pack on and went straight out and went back to Chilton's farm to do the rest of a day's work. [221] Endless cars passed him; none gave him a lift. "Not like the old days." he thought sourly, "Then, anyone'd've given me a lift in his cart. Now, people just whiz past. The world's gone to pot. The junk that people gather. If I had my way, any man posted to a new job'd keep only what he can wear or take with him in a pack: strong overalls, strong boots, spare clothes, bedding or sleeping bag, a few days' food, work tools. That's all a man needs. Sell or leave the rest. No fancy suit that you can't work in without ruining it. Nothing to pass the time of day with. Nothing kept just because it's pretty. One of those workman's helmets'd be useful. Furniture goes with the house and stays there. Rabbiting nets. A stick and a shotgun in case of trouble or to catch something.". "A while later, he rode in me to take a load of hay and straw and wheat to market for Mr.Chilton." said Optimus telling across the road's children about all this, "In that sort of complaining mood, I suppose that even a diesel-exhausty electromechanical ear to talk to's better than none. So there he is, soured by his upbringing, incapable of relaxing and enjoying anything or treasuring any `unnecessary' article, incapable of realizing that other people can, destined to an unrememberable round of labouring followed by a lonely old age without anything intellectual to occupy him when he's too old for labouring. Sad. At least his children are out of it. I don't make everybody miserable over my `lost' past and realm back on Cybertron which never existed. All my old companions that I remember! To get them back, I must make them, one by one, piece by piece. Eight of them so far, plus two Decepticons. Plus helping Smith & Malton's to make several of those intelligent dredgersubs; I'll be involved with two more of in a bit. If you've finished playing chess with Sideswipe on his dashboard computer screen, it's time you went back across the road to your mother.". [222-237] It was night. The world slept. All was quiet. Mr.Wernicke's cat Tabbins lurked between Optimus's wheels for mice. Outside a thickening fog dulled sounds. A dog was barking continuously in the distance somewhere. It was the loneliest time for the eleven Transformers exiled with no hope of returning to Cybertron which they `remembered' so well. "Was Cybertron real after all?" Optimus thought, "Did I prove unrepairable after my last fight when I finally overthrew Megatron?, and this is the afterlife? Emotion tells me so; intelligence tells me that James Wernicke's version is true, that I was copied into reality from humans' fiction. Sometimes I think it as some of the tales among us tell: `There Autobot and Decepticon go wearily about in ones and twos, where guns are of no use, safe from each other, their war ended, their peacetime ambitions also ended. Sometimes there they plan great things, then the plans fade away to nothing, only endless regret for the past life and what they might have achieved.". "It so, somewhat." he thought, awake in the silent dark, "Rayguns as I remember them are impossible, even my faithful laser rifle. The glowing power substance called `energon' is impossible also. Even seeing Shockwave the Decepticon leader (transforming into a mobile refuse destructor! in this world) parked next to me, can't stir me to resume the old war; nor can seeing me, stir him. Faster than light space travel is impossible. Teleporting is impossible. No! The truth is different! Our former `life' is as the toy models of us made by men, which were then used as fictional characters. Children sometimes show me them, small, hand-sized, with life and motor power only imagined, helpless against the hazards of the world. No hope for them of Ratchet or Wheeljack mending their hurts, for the Ratchet and Wheeljack toys are as lifeless plastic as the rest. Oh, 've mended enough of them for the children round about here. Even a small mewing kitten has small sharp claws and teeth to defend itself with at need; our toy originals not at all. The mighty Megatron, who transforms to a Walther automatic pistol? No, he was one of the toys which most often soon broke and had to be taken back to the shop, until the makers had to discontinue the model, and in many children's rooms Starscream [transforms to a white F15 jet fighter] is left to his ambition to rule the Decepticons. Even so in countless drawers and boxes and on countless shelves we have our miniature Autobot and Decepticon bases, sometimes merely used as toys, sometimes imagined alive. Then men published stories in which we had a wider and fuller life. Behind the impassable barrier of page and screen we lived, and men saw us but could not reach us - until James Wernicke made a real copy of me, alive and moving on this world.". He went in his mind over the miscellaneous problems of humans that he or his people ended up having to take a side in. Farmers and their difficulties; inshore fishermen and their difficulties; the need to get work done versus the workmen's and general public's personal rights; the need to give children something reasonably exciting to read versus not wanting to get them too war minded. Twice children had settled in or near Optimus's cab to read issues of the same war story comic serial, and his dreaming mind chose the same odd way to reinterpret it: as adventures in an imaginary part of Poland with Sparky Witwicky and his son Buster who Optimus `remembered' so well from his fictional past. The less appropriate a resemblance is in sensible thought (such as the tendency for authors' spellings of conventional and ray gun noises, and Polish placenames, both to end in `-ow'), the likelier it is to be used as a theme of dreams as the brain runs with its long term memory storer running in erase mode to `sweep and tidy' itself after the day's inputs. The result was a long involved dream of the history of Poland from the Dark Ages migrations when the Germans moved west of the Elbe and Saale rivers; the arrival of Slavs in Poland, so long ago that they spoke Common Slavonic rather than the Polish that it evolved into; Pitu alias Pet (for remembered names changed with change of language) who founded the village of Pitovu (now Ptow), and his horse Bealogrivu / Bialogrzyw (Whitemane); Heruwulfaz Haryawulfingaz (later Cherowolk), a stray Burgund German who taught them to fish at sea; Voludimeri / Wlodzimierz who founded Wlodzimierzow; the coming of Christianity; Zarak, the first fisherman there to sail "za rak" (= "beyond the crab", i.e. into deep water farther out than crab-catching depth), who resisted the oppressions of Lord Jaslaw and founded the fishing village of Zarakow; comparison of the luxurious Lord Jaslaw's meanness towards even the king's messengers at his palace at Zapow (a nickname from "za-pic'", to drink in excess), with the much better hospitality shown to some church messengers by Radomierz the headman of the Sprevjane Slav village of Berlin in the midst of forest and swamp by the great river Sprevja (now Spree), long before Germans returned and started a city there; travelling, mostly by boat down the rivers Sprevja and Havol (now Havel), in the Slavic backwoods of what was later to be East Germany; language problems met by far-travellers, so that, arriving at Jawinice / Jaevenitz they and the village priest Wolfgang had to talk in Latin; how Ivan the Russian, fleeing from Tartars, settled in an abandoned monastery to make baked goods including a Russian fancy bread called `kalach', whereby his surname Kalasznik, and others settled near him, and so the market town of Kalasznikow was founded; the uncontrolled insubordinations of nobles until all common policy faded until in the late 18th century Poland was partitioned between Prussia and Russia and Austria; the Germanization of administration in his area, exacerbating the tensions between peasants and nobles; the 1845 potato blight famine which swept all Europe causing hunger causing trouble, when one named Chrzaszcz (= Cockchafer) led the people of this area in rebellion against the Prussian authorities, and how one Zdzislaw Witowicki (living at Bkow, but his ancestry was from Witowice, whence his surname) slew Herzog Georg von und zu Sarreckau of Zarakow in the last battle in the market square of Kalasznikow; how he escaped the returning Germans, via Sweden to the USA; and how the fifth generation of his descendants, William `Sparkplug' Witwicky, settled in Oregon near Mount St.Hilary whose eruption in 1984 woke the Transformers from their 4,000,000 year sleep.