In the mid 1970s, when we had droughts in the Summer, my parents got us a tortoise. (I remember my slightly older cousins telling me that we were not allowed to have a paddling pool because Mr Heath said so. Visions of the Prime Minister swooping teacher like on the pool if we filled it. Always was a little on the dramatic side.) It refused all the food it was given and ate weeds in the lawn and dahlias and other carefully tended plants.
About five years ago it made an escape attempt and disappeared to pastures new. Better weeds beckoned. My parents were not too sad, for My Dad had had to build little fences around all his flower beds. Otherwise he'd plant stuff and come out the next day to find little stumps where his flowers had been.
Now the mystery of the AWOL Tortoise is over. My parents have been in contact with the man who lives in the house behind and it seems that Speedy lived there for the last few years, but has now gone to live in a tortoise sanctuary belonging to the son of the owners of the pink house opposite them. ( Three houses away from a tortoise santuary, who would have thought we were so close....)
Anyway, Speedy now has other tortoise company after over 30 years of solitude and some female company, for he is a Mr Tortoise, we now discover.
And they all lived happily ever after.
2 comments:
What a sweet tale! Golly gosh, I remember Mr Heath telling us all to save water, and all those dreadful slogans like "save water, bath with a friend", and "nothing wastes water like a watering can can". (My husband can't believe how much junk I haves stored in my brain!!)
What inspired me over to you today was that yesterday I was listening in the car to good ole radio 3, and there was a bit of Mozart music about to be played, and because it was in the car I couldn't hear exactly what the presenter was saying, but suddenly I caught the words Josef Leutgeb, and I thought that's that Welsh lady's name, I always thought it didn't sound Welsh (lol). So I'm feeling chuffed now that I've made the connection between the original Leutgeb, and the Bara Brith munching horn playing hostess of this blog! The music was gorgeous, too.
Nothing like a bit of 70s nostalgia. You remember the slogans, well! My main gripe with politics was coming home after a hard day reading Janet and John with some sums and lots of RE, to find that it was The budget. Remember the picture of the dispatch box? Droning voice, heckling and Playschool moved to a later time on BBC2. Oh the pain!
Thank you for the kind thoughts.
When I thought I might have a blog, I was at a loss for names, hence the rather eclectic collection!
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