The tabloids have been at it again! Once more they have taken the facts and distorted them beyond all recognition. So here is the true story of the notorious affair between myself. William B.B. Wolf and the Three Trotter Brothers.

I have lived in the village of Rhyme now for many years and, after clearing my name in the case of Reds grandmother, I became an honourable citizen and was voted onto the Parish Council where I’m now Chairman of the Village Planning Board. Incidentally you might like to know that grandma turned up several weeks later working as housekeeper in Captain Hooks hostel for lost boys in the town of Grimston. In any case if I had been going to include uncooked meat in my diet I would have preferred a piece of young chicken to a chunk of old mutton!

Anyway. back to the plot. Rhyme, over the years, has mellowed a lot. Mechanisation has put paid to a lot of the old jobs that our residents had and they have had to adapt to the times. Little Bo Peep for instance now works at the local hyper market directing customers who are lost to the nearest exit. Boy Blue plays a mean cornet in the Toytown Jazz Band and Jack Horner manages our local football team and is regularly greeted by visiting supporters with the chant of, "Who ate all the pies then?" Then the Trotter Brothers returned. You’ll remember them. They were the one hit wonders of the 1930’s with a catchy tune with, in my view, awful words. Something about not being afraid of a big bad ~~oH’. They, Del, Rodney and Harry, came back to the village a few months ago and took up residence. In their usual grand and offensive manner they announced that they were going to build houses for themselves in the village.

There was a nice plot of land at the edge of the village, just beyond Old Macdonald’s farm, that had planning permission so they bought that. They submitted their plans for three houses to be built on the land. Everything would have been alright except that the three dwellings were to be of completely different designs and also constructed from different materials. When the planning committee saw them they gave a unanimous thumbs down to the plans and referred them back to the brothers. The Trotters were not well pleased with this situation and said they would appeal against our decision. Meanwhile they decided to start work on the first of the houses.

Well, as you all know, if you are going to build a house from straw there is going to be one heck of a mess made. Straw blowing everywhere and causing a nuisance to all the neighbours. I sent in the buildings inspector and he ruled that the brothers were defying all the current building regulations so we ordered in the demolition gang and had their men remove the offending structure and clear up all the windblown straw. We sent the Trotters the bill for this clearing up operation. Once again they were not pleased.

A few days passed and then reports began to come in of another structure being built on the land only this time being constructed of sticks and twigs woven into a sort of lattice. Once again the mess they made was awful. In fact it looked like a pig sty. The demolition gang had to be sent in yet again to clear up the site and get rid of all the rubbish.

To say that Del, Rodney and Harry were displeased is the understatement of the year. Anyway they started work on the third house, which was to be of a conventional brick structure and with which the planning committee had found no fault. I ensured that the buildings inspector made regular visits to check that all building regulations were being adhered to. Eventually the house was completed and it turned out to be quite a desirable residence.

That should have been the end of the matter but then the Trotters decided to have their revenge. On their way home every night from the Cat and Fiddle pub in the village they had to pass by my house. They rigged up one of those ghetto blasters so that it played that flaming awful song they had recorded long ago and they walked back and forth in front of my house blasting it out for a good hour each night. I complained to P.C. Plod, but all he could do, he said, would be to tell them to switch it off if he caught them. So no joy there then.

After a couple of weeks of this nausea I hit upon an idea. Off on to my computer and produced an official-like poster warning of an outbreak of swine fever in a nearby village and that normal precautions associated with an outbreak of this kind would be taken in our village, Rhyme.

Anyway, as they say, an ill wind and all that. We made a compulsory purchase order on the property and used the money to pay off the brothers’ debt to the council for the clearing up operation of the first two houses. What to do with the new property was no problem at all. The old woman who lives in a shoe has been living in overcrowded conditions for ages so we moved her and all her children into the new house, We are going to turn their old shoe home into a Nursery Rhyme Museum.

So, as they say, alls well that ends well and let us hope that the telling of the truth over this matter gets those bloody tabloid newspapers of my back!

                                        by  Alan Edwards                              June 2006