The Vaguest Ideas

All Wind, No Willows (tasty, tasty willows…)

This previously unpublished excerpt of a lost chapter from the classic story is from a newly discovered manuscript found in a disused corner of {a local library} [the Christopher Tower Library in the New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst].  It was unearthed beneath a spare copy of the 1814 Wyld edition of the Drivers Map between minutes of the New Forest Committee of 1994 and a recently discredited account of the Assassination of William Rufus in what is now a disused layby on the A35.

Despite the fluctuations in storms and seasons, Spring had tenuously arrived all the same.  A spate of fine and glorious days had tumbled one after another like dominoes.  All the clocks had gone forward, excepting those of dandelion, and Rat and Mole had not missed these opportunities for having a good scull in the boat.  Mole had even occasionally been allowed the oars with growing confidence, trailed slightly by competence.  Mole had sensibly paused and allowed the current its way to drift them down to Toad Hall, where and when they were surprised to see a large stranger, looming next to the boathouse in a smart but overstuffed tweed jacket with elbow patches and wearing a brown beaver skin hat, gesturing at the river bank and conferring with Toad.

On closer inspection, there was no hat, for indeed it was Beaver.  Toad made the necessary introductions.

“Hullo, Rat… Mole” said the Beaver, looking hopeful, if a little weary.

“Hullo, Beaver,” said the Rat, looking wary, but hopeful.

“Hullo, Beaver,” said the Mole, looking sun-dazed and content.

Toad added curtly that the Beaver had already met the Otter and Mr. Badger.  Then explained,  “I summoned Beaver here to help me with Rewilding Toad Hall.”  An explanation that begged more questions.

“Re? … Wilding?”  Rat cast Mole a quizzical look with a raised eyebrow he hoped that Toad wouldn't see.  Mole gave an inconsequential shrug and wondered silently if he had a bit of dandelion green stuck between his front teeth.

“Yes, for far too long the countryside has suffered catastrophic loss of biodiversity!  Time for us to do our bit!  It’s about reinstating the natural processes, reintroducing missing species, like Beaver, here, and restoring ecosystems.  It’s really the thing to do if you’ve inherited land that has been abused by agriculture for centuries.  I think they call it Kneppotism.”

Ratty wasn’t sure that the Wild Wood required any of that, but withheld his judgement.  Beaver seemed a nice enough fellow, and apparently knew his engineering.  Toad had already done some good things in his streams, such as put in brush passages to help elvers upstream past the culverts his father had unwisely proliferated.  Both Otter and Ratty appreciated the eels, however divisive that subject might become.  They hotly contested the eels best uses and preparation, this tended to bore the rest of company, especially Toad, with their endless squabbles.

“He's here to put in a dam, or two,” Toad announced casually.

“Now see here, Toad,” said Rat, “I quite like the river as it is now.  Its riffles and pools with Yellow Water Lillies, Crowfoot and Starwort.  The stream edge by my house where Marsh St John’s-wort meets the Purple Sedge, Pillwort and Bog Myrtle bushes. Further upstream in the slow bits there’s Southern and White-legged Damselfly.  Near the common where the ponies graze, there’s Fool’s Watercress, Blinks, Forget-me-not, Watercress, Floatgrass, and Water-pepper.  Under the Alders the trout like to shade, and even Otter tends to reverie in such beauty, that he doesn’t pester them unless he’s really peckish.”

Rat pivoted to Beaver, “meaning no disrespect, I’m sure you do good work, but we’re fond of what we have.”  Then back to Toad, “We've had enough problems from those outfall pipes you let them install by the headwaters!”

“Outfall pipes at the gates of dawn,” Toad envisioned proudly. Shiny and steely they had been too when they had arrived, before they began operation.

“Toad has been rationalizing thoroughly since he bought stock in Southern Water,” Rat said to Beaver.

“Last time the river flooded, I had to move into hired lodging.”  Rat complained to Toad, of course non-plussed Toad had no understanding whatsoever of the cost, inconvenience, not to mention the indignity involved.  “What does Otter have to say about this?”

“I can’t tell you, he stopped speaking to me.”  Toad averred uncomfortably, looking as though his neck had dried out.

“That bad?”

“He showed me his teeth first!”  Otter had a sanguine side, and was slow to rile.  He must have felt strongly, even if Toad was quickly dismissive in his ecstasy over Wilding.  Badger, too, Toad went on to explain, was also in a bit of a huff.  He’d managed to fend off that Exxon Pipeline which had threatened his underground demesne, only to have found himself in the uncomfortable gaze of the Planning Inspectorate, who were less than fond of his laissez-faire attitude to extending and demolishing his digs ad-hoc.  They were historically listed (possibly a Saxon settlement, or the site of the lost Toad Abbey), and it had meant a mountain of paperwork – although Mole had offered to help make it a hill, his eyesight didn’t suit (indeed, Toad had come a cropper when he’d allowed Mole to file the forms for his Land Management Stewardship with DEFRA).  Badger thought the very fact that Toad could get away with all and any works done courtesy of the Beaver, without a lick of Planning permission, “unbelievable!!!”

Despite Otter and Badger’s distaste, Toad was clearly undeterred. 

Rat was no stranger to Toad’s projects and enthusiasms, and only occasionally had had to put his oar in, just as he was skilled in messing about with boating.  Rat had put Toad off his grand plan to level a swathe of the Wild Wood for a Solar Panel array by toying with a pocket watch to reflect a sundry ray of sunshine that had gently intruded through Toad Hall’s transom.  Bouncing that beam at Toad’s eye while casually mentioning “the glare of publicity” and “hazy plans” and “dawning realizations”, had given Toad the impression that the view from the dining hall would be ruined, and that his bedroom window might be assaulted by a more intense and earlier sun-up which might startle Toad awake, unwelcome any given morn, let alone the state of grogginess Toad was swimming through as Rat focussed the gentle shaft until it was bright as the fall of Icarus glinting sharply in Toad’s eye.

“Have you told Beaver about the effluent?”

Mole piped in “What's effluent?”

Toad proffered sagely, “Proficiency in the languages of other countries.”

“Are they smelly countries?”  Mole inquired.

Beaver put down his theodolite and turned from surveying the river bank, consulted his slide rule and scratched his head.  He then proceeded, almost theatrically, to glance frustratedly back and forth between the bank and the logarithmically lined device.  “Not sure I can make this work,” He grumbled to himself, and then appeared momentarily to have barely resisted  the urge to knaw the end of the mathematical stick, a battle won, but ended with a sigh.

“I’ve just the thing!” interjected Toad proudly.  “I’ll go fetch my pocket calculator from my study.”  And off he went to rummage through the study in the depths of Toad Hall.

“He’ll be some time, then” Rat offered knowingly.

When Toad was out of earshot, Beaver furtively confided, "you gentle animals must help me out.  I'm here under duress.  I've been kid-knepped!!  There I was, minding my own business, munching on a bit of willow – part snack, part make-work – for the pool at the top of my catchment, when I was grabbed up by this stout aggressive fellow, I think he’s called Dow, who brung me here….”

Rat eyed the door to the hallway, he knew that even though Toad’s quest for any object within the clutter of his study would be an endeavour of archaeological proportion, he also acknowledged that Toad’s zeal, however brief, for the Casio FX-31, it was likely he’d purchased at least four other pocket calculators, and a whole Kraftwerk box set.  This limited the time in which they could freely conspire to solve Beaver’s predicament, which, to wit, he was continuing at some length.

“The same thing happened to my cousins.  This Erek fellow, press-ganged them to the Land of Nap to give to some Dryad...”

“Dryad?” Mole asked.

“Tree-woman.”  Beaver looked stricken,  “The first pair, one was ill to begin with and died, and the other ran off because the water quality was so poor.” 

“Effluent?” queried Rat.

“Slurry and pesticides,”  Beaver reflected sadly, “it killed off their veteran trees when they lifted the floodplain before my cousins could get to work.”

“Surely this Merrick fellow must have known what he was doing...” Mole presumed.

“He certainly thought so!  He tried speaking French to me, to check if I was Canadian,” Beaver said with some bemusement, “some of us in Finland are fond of poutine.”

Rat, quite aware that Otter would have lost patience with this segue by now, “Enough gents, Toad will be back in a moment, and I’ve an idea.”  Rat went on to swiftly instruct Beaver in the ways of Toad’s gadget mania, and how he might be usefully taunted.

Toad re-appeared waving a TI-81 (the disposition of the Casio had been elusive) clearly pristine, its display glinting in the spring afternoon, most likely only un-boxed moments before.  Beaver brusquely grabbed at it and set to prodding its black, light grey and blue buttons.  As he fumbled at the trigonometric functions, the poor device slipped from his paws and shattered on the reclaimed Welsh slate paving that ran from the boathouse to the side kitchen door of Toad Hall.

“So sorry, I’ll just sweep that up…” Beaver guiltily turned to brush the newly formed detritus with his formidable tail.

Toad, taken aback by the conflict between his hospitality, interrupted show-offery, and inconvenient fury, nevertheless rose to the moment to further complicate the matter, “No, sir, think nothing of it, I’ll just get the Dyson out.”

Luckily, or not, as it transpired, this was nearby inside the foyer.  And Toad was even prouder as he wheeled it out, extension cord trailing behind.  “This is the De Stijl edition!”  Toad proclaimed.  Indeed it was a purple and yellow testament to incongruous modernity.

Beaver persisted to attempt to tidy the mess with his tail, which seemed better at reducing the shards of the TI-81 to fragments, than to resolve the unsalvageable mess.  Before Toad could press the “on” button of the DC-04: “No, no, no, you must allow me to sort the mess I made….” and here Beaver launched Rat’s gambit fully, “besides, I’ll implore you not to use that thing in my presence!”

“Are you an anti-Vaxxer?” Toad was incredulous that Beaver, a devotee of engineering, and thus of good design and science, should be stuck in the past.

“It’s their sound.  Can’t stand them.  Send me all flight or fight ‘til I’m speechless, I’m literally afraid to say.”

“Just Dysons?  What about Hoovers, Sharks?”

“Hate them.  All.”

“Why ?”  By this time Toad was quite worked up.

“Nature abhors a vacuum.” Beaver laid this as a trump card on the field of play.

This sent Toad into a frenzy, he was more than re-wilded – he was livid!  There was nothing for it as Toad instantly banished Beaver beyond the Weir.  Despite everything, Rat was sorry to see him go, as Beaver seemed a solid chap, and might have made up a good fourth for whist.

“Thanks ever so,” said the Beaver to Rat and Mole as he departed, shuffling past the new iron bridge on his way downstream past the Weir, his tail far too large to tuck betwixt his legs, “I’ll be sure to stop by that Ladgemoor place Otter told me about.”

 “A Pine Marten offered Beaver a pinch of snuff”

Our local expert of biblio-antiquity is feverishly working to deduce the authenticity and provenance of this work, updates forthcoming. UPDATE: At 12 pm today, a rather rumpled antiquary book expert had a chance to glance over the manuscript to find that not only was it not on period paper stock, but had been typed on an Olivetti Praxis 35, although a magnificent designed machine worthy of Toad Hall, not manufactured until 1984. The Olivetti Windsor font, installed via daisy wheel in that model, is proportional and rather like typefaces of Grahame’s day. Although inauthentic this piece may be published yet in a future expose, “Tales of the River – Debunked”. Thanks and/or apologies to Kenneth Grahame, E H Shepard for liberties taken with their prose and images. If you’d like to indulge our previous year’s silliness, a 2018 report on leaked plans for the Recreation Management Strategy. this 2019 article detailing an unusual rewilding proposal from Chris Packham and this 2024 announcement offering a still timely proposal for generating Forestry England revenue from car parks (no, not what you’re thinking). On a more serious note our ecologists have produced a paper looking at the possible issues which would arise from Beavers arriving in the already established high value biodiverse habitat of the New Forest. FURTHER UPDATE: The local library in question has been in touch to dispute the notion that they have any “disused corners” in which such a fantastical find might have been unearthed. We look forward to their newly announced circular shelving system which will eliminate corners altogether. CONSUMATE UPDATE: Due to the above furore, this piece was banished from its original posting location in an act of rather bizarre censorship, which we'll investigate further, at some point.

 

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 7:57 am