Work In Progress
SHORT FICTION
The One Where Glastonbury Is Found
by: Bruce Tomalin
‘It’s a bear!’ she cried, as the others shuffled through the crowd, the music thumping in the background, the lights flashing brightening what would otherwise have been a pitch black night. ‘No it’s not, it’s a dog’ said Alison, the only one taking any notice of Keren, who by now was jogging to catch the others up. ‘It’s a bear and I’m going to call him Glastonbury in honour of the festival’ Keren said indignantly. The others continued their shuffle through the crowd and the night. But Keren’s heart rose and she felt really pleased to have found the bear dog like thing in fact it made her night.
‘A bear, now that’s a good idea’ thought Glastonbury to himself. For he had chosen to accept that name it sounded, interesting and different something he had not felt before and he was grateful for being found, his new owner must truly be a lovely person. There he was stumbling through the night, being trod on repeatedly. Nobody seemed to notice this thing as they trudged through the darkness just seemed to be another clod of earth on the ground as they walked by. Glastonbury had fallen out of his previous owners pram, he was quite pleased about this as he didn’t really enjoy having his ears pulled and sucked by a strange wailing creature that seemed unable to talk to its owners, who just goo gooed at it and said ‘Ahhhh’ which Glastonbury took to be some sort of endearing noise when all he wanted to do was scream at them ‘Get me away from this noisy smelly thing!’
Glastonbury was indeed a strange looking bear; he had a round sort of pudgey face with a big round blobby snout. He had long floppy ears and two very small eyes which almost looked like slits behind his snout. He had a sort of round pear shaped body with a large posterior upon which protruded a tail, which was neither long nor short, it was just a tail. He stood on two long floppy legs leading to two of the most enormous feet you could possibly imagine. He also had two arms but strangely no hands which made life a little difficult at times. Oh yes and his body was covered from head to foot in a rather ruddy brown fur, well it was rather mottled and tatty looking like it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. Glastonbury didn’t like baths, or showers for that matter. Now the rather large feet he could explain away by saying that he was very young and he would grow into them. But the tail, well as we all know bears have hardly any tail and this was very definitely a tail.
Glastonbury was deposited into Keren’s bag which she then placed on her back. Glastonbury was in complete blackness until he happened upon a small torch at the bottom of the bag. He began to rummage through the contents of the bag. A used tissue! Ugh! A smaller bag containing metal discs of differing sizes and some coloured paper. Boring! Another slightly bigger bag, containing powder and brightly coloured sticky substances, ‘Hmmm!’ he thought, ‘These were indeed very dull things’. ‘Oh, at last a book’, something to do. Just at that moment the sound of music got very much louder almost deafening, then the bag started to bounce up and down and Glastonbury was thrown around the inside of the bag bumping into everything. He began to shout to be let out but it was pointless no one could hear him.
The next morning Glastonbury awoke still inside the bag. How was he to get out? The noise wasn’t there anymore all he could hear was a faint thrum of music in the distance and a strange breathing sound that got louder with every other breath. It sounded like someone was being strangled or was choking on some food. Just then Glastonbury heard another voice say quietly ‘Keren, you’re snoring again!’ Another voice came back rather sleepily ‘Oh sorry’. It was the lady that had found him; Glastonbury thought to himself I know I’ll jump up and down till they wake up. Keren was rather startled to see her bag moving as if it contained some jumping beans or something. Perhaps I was dreaming she thought to herself. Nope there it was again that bag definitely moved. She jumped up grabbed the bag and opened it quickly as she looked inside she could only see that strange bear like thing that she had found last night, her purse and her make up bag which she must have left open because all the contents had fallen out. Oh well she thought must have been Dave kicking the bag in his slumber. He often tapped his foot in his sleep. She took the bear out of the bag and began a more thorough investigation.
‘I think it is a bear you know’ she said to Dave.
No reply.
‘No really Dave I do!’
‘I’m sleeping!’ came the disgruntled reply.
‘No look, Dave’ she continued.
Dave rolled over and peered through one half opened sleepy eye.
‘Oh yes so it is’ he said hoping that would be the end of it, he closed the eye and rolled back over.
‘No you didn’t have a proper look’ Keren continued.
With this Dave rolled back over and said with his eyes shut, ‘You’re not going to let me sleep any more are you?’
‘No’ she said. Reluctantly Dave opened his eyes stretched a bit and wriggled closer to her.
‘Look if you’re awake we could always use this cosy time in a much more romantic way, how about it? What do you say? A little bit of lovin while everyone’s still asleep?’
‘You’ll be lucky’ she replied ‘Your breath smells worse than this bear, told you not to drink Stella, it makes your breath stink’.
Me, Smell! Thought Glastonbury, I don’t smell I had a bath last year!
Glastonbury had to endure a couple more nights stuffed in the bag being bounced around, occasionally taken out and played with forced into strange poses by a candle or sitting on a tent he even had to endure the indignity of having these moments preserved for all posterity on film with some device called a camera. Eventually he was taken home. Home, was a large place full of wonderful and interesting things for him to explore. Glastonbury spent most of his time in or on the large bed, sometimes stuffed between the pillows sometimes on them but often and most annoyingly he was deposited on Keren’s head in the middle of the night by Dave. During the day the place was his play ground. Keren and Dave would leave him there all day and go to some place called work.
Glastonbury would wait until he heard the exit to his home close and then he would leap up and saunter to the edge of the bed. Now it was quite a long way down for a small bear and it took him a little while to work out how he could get down and back up quickly without being noticed. He wandered up and down the bed several times before he worked out that he could jump over to the bed side table and then by using the knob things that stuck out of it he could climb down from one to the other and then using the same things he could climb back. After all it would look a little suspicious if Dave and Keren returned to find him in the middle of the floor or somewhere. Once he was down it was time to explore.
After exploring much of the flat Glastonbury found himself in a room with big soft seats and a big black box that made noises and shone bright lights at night time. He had only caught glimpses of it at night time from the bed. Just next to this was a bright slivery box that he had also heard noises coming from, the noises sounded like the ones at the festival where he had been found. He decided to investigate. He quickly darted across the floor, when he reached the other side he realised that the sliver box was much higher up than had it looked from the other side of the room. At that moment a voice spoke, ‘Ere young dog like bear thing what do you think you’re doin?’ Glastonbury froze and then not knowing what else to do he flopped to the floor as if he has just a cuddly toy after all. But the voice said again ‘Ere young dog like bear thing, Wat do you think you’re doin?’ Glastonbury opened his eyes looked around he hadn’t heard the exit to the home open. He stood up and looked around. ‘Up ere you silly bear like dog thing!’ There perched on one of the big soft seats was a tatty old grey bear with a waist coat and a hat with a feather in. He said ‘Are you talking to me?’
‘Well I don’t see any other dog like bear type thing in ere do you?’
‘Well no, now you come to mention it I don’t’ ‘
‘So wat do you think you are doing?’
‘Well I was just going to try and investigate this silver box that makes noises’
‘An why would you wanna do that?’ came the reply. ‘Don’t you know the rules? Us bears are not allowed to be caught moving about by our owners, wat would the great bear say if he found out?!’
‘The great bear?!’ Glastonbury replied nervously.
‘I can see you’ve got a lot to learn young bear’ said the older bear.
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