Time Waits for Gnoman

Tuesday started with a fog. A fog so dense and thick it seemed to trundle about the gnome village moodily, stomping over the gardens and pushing its way through the streets.

Graham stood on his doorstep, looked between his watch and the fog, grumbled, then set off down his garden path.

Gnomes are fastidious, finicky, things, prone to having large, fiery tempers disproportionate to their small, four-inch stature. But they’re nothing if not punctual. Graham went every Tuesday at seven thirty, and today, fog or no fog, it was Tuesday. He wasn’t going to let a bit of weather get in the way.

The problem he was encountering, however, was that the fog was so thick he couldn’t see past his garden path. He glared at the fog severely. It seemed to drift around with the breeze, revealing a blurry outline of his stack of firewood and then covering it up, snaking in and out of silhouettes of his daisies and then making them disappear.

He grumbled some more, and then began to edge his way, step by step, along the neatly laid stones that marked his path, hoping that if his gate was where he left it, he should come across it shortly. Graham reasoned that if he waved his arms around a bit he might encounter it sooner, which is when he heard a startled cry as one of his waving arms encountered somebody’s face.

‘Argggh!’ Said the face.

‘Argh?’ Asked Graham. ‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s Sid from next door, is that you Graham?’

‘Yes. Morning.’

‘Morning? You’ve just smacked me in the nose!’

‘Well, what’s your nose doing on my side of the gate?’

‘Is it?’

Sid’s face swam into focus a bit as he stood rubbing his shiny nose and looking around him in puzzlement.

‘I was trying to get to my shed,’ He said, ‘I must have got turned about. Here, what’s all this fog about then?

‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ said Graham.

Neither of the gnomes laughed because while they are excellent timekeepers and magnificent green thumbs, a sense of humour is not necessary to being on time or keeping a garden, and is therefore not necessary to gnomes. Shame.

‘I’m meant to be going to the village to pick up seeds,’ Sid said. ‘They need going in the ground today before the rain comes, and I can’t get there now, I wouldn’t even know which direction to start in.’

Sid was looking at Graham as if awaiting a conclusion, but Graham couldn’t imagine how this could be his problem, so he simply nodded and reached for the gate. Sid stopped him.

‘Well, what do you propose we do about it?’ said Sid

‘Do?’ Asked Graham.

‘Yes, about the fog.’

‘What is to be done? It’s fog.’

‘You can’t be suggesting you’re going out in this?’ Sid spluttered, ‘You can’t see past your gate!’

Graham bristled and drew himself up to his full four inches, five and a half if you counted his hat.

‘Now see here, I can see well enough to look at my watch, and my watch is telling me it’s seven thirty. I go every Tuesday at seven thirty.’

Graham thrust his wrist out to indicate his point, the other gnome squinted at it worriedly, and could only reply in a series of ‘But… but… but…’s’ before Graham set off on his way again.

Sid panicked at the thought of being abandoned blind by the side of a neighbour’s gate, and instinctively grabbed Graham on the sleeve, swept away by the steady march toward his Tuesday destination.

Graham’s feet in his sensible long wellingtons used to treading this same track every week, seemed to know the way, even if his eyes didn’t have much to contribute. So they carried him out of his street and onwards, wading through the fog. It seemed so thick he could feel it rushing in and out with his breath, soggy gulps of it chilling him from the inside.

Sid stumbled behind him, tugging on his sleeve with every galloping step trying to keep pace. At one point Graham thought his sleeve was going to be pulled clean off as Sid was bowled to the ground by a huge lump. The huge lump was Nigel, from three doors down, who now lay in a sad heap on the ground.

Sid dusted himself off and resumed his hold on Graham’s sleeve in case he tried to get away.

‘Nigel! Are you alright?’

‘Me? Oh yes thank you. Well, I seem to have gone blind, but other than that great. You couldn’t happen to point me in the direction of the old doctor, could you?’

‘You’re not blind, Nige, it’s the fog.’

‘The what?’

‘Never mind, get up, Graham’s leading us out of it.’

‘I am not,’ said Graham, setting back off on his way with a stumbling Sid and a not-blind-after-all Nigel in tow.

The three of them cut a wobbly line through the streets, turning this way and that at the command of Graham’s well-travelled boots. The fog hung around, not clearing long enough for them to get a proper look at anything. The thickness of it gave the feeling they were up very high, teetering on the edge of a mountain. This was made worse by the tugging and shuddering as another gnome and then another added to the line, clinging on for safety in the murky light.

‘Grahams leading us to safety!’ Someone called.

‘I’m ruddy not,’ said Graham.

More and more gnomes were collected, each hanging on to the last as if their very life depended on it, and on trudged Graham, because whether he was weighed down by thirty other gnomes or not, it was seven thirty on Tuesday, and he always went out at seven thirty on a Tuesday.

‘Really, this is a bit much,’ he called back into the fog.

‘He said we really need to hurry up!’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said, ‘it’s just a bit of bloody fog.’

‘He said be careful of the muddy bog!’

He sighed and trudged on. Through the paddock they went, over the bridge, along the coast path, and then finally, just as graham knew it would, a fuzzy shape appeared. A yellow and white beacon in the distance. His trusty boots had known the way after all.

A small combi van parked on the side of the road, the side window opened up into a counter, a menu printed on the side. A bearded face peeked out, squinting into the gloom. When the face saw Graham, it blinked and checked its watch.

‘Graham!’ The combi-gnome said, ‘I didn’t think anyone would come today.’

‘It’s Tuesday.’

‘So it is.’

The rest of the line caught up, bumping into each other and knocking Graham into the counter.

‘Here watch out, would you?’

‘What happened, why have we stopped?’ asked one gnome.

‘I thought you were leading us to safety!’ said another.

Graham sighed and turned back to the gnome in the combi van.

‘Bacon sandwich and a tea,’ he said.

‘Bacon sandwich?’ Asked Sid, pushing to the front of the line. ‘I could go a bacon sandwich. Fancy a coffee, Nigel?’

‘Oh lovely,’ said Nigel.

‘Is there soy milk?’ Shouted someone else.

‘For goodness sake,’ said Graham.

The gnomes were less concerned about being saved once bacon sandwiches and coffee were involved. They sat around as the murk began to lift, talking and drinking, listening to combi-Gavin’s stories about his travels.

‘This is nice,’ said Sid. ‘Nice to spend some time, you’re usually in such a hurry, Graham.’

Sid looked around, the fog finally lifted. ‘Graham?’

Combi-Gav tapped his watch. ‘Ten past eight,’ he said. ‘He leaves every Tuesday at ten past eight.’