Piggly Pegolas and Nicholas Pegolas

Piggly Pegolas and the great escape

“What a lovely day,” thought Piggly Pegolas, as he trotted forth from his squalid corrugated iron lair, accidentally treading on a passing vole. “Morning, Harry, me old mucker,” the pig cried across the raging torrent of mud, slime and bedsteads which the Derwent had now become. Receiving no answer from the tone-deaf nag over the river, Piggly turned his attention to the pile of potato-peelings, cold chips and half-eaten toast which was to form his breakfast that fine morning.

He had only just thrust his eager snout into the enamel bucket which constituted his entire dinner-service when a loud hoot from a motor-vehicle caused him to jump, raise his head sharply and toss the bucket upwards so that it flew into the air. The bucket was one of those which has a handle on it and, on its way up, this handle caught itself under Piggly’s chin like the strap on a policeman’s helmet. This caused the bucket to stop travelling upwards and, instead, to force itself back downwards onto the startled pig’s head, where it lodged itself firmly.

“What? Night-time again?” thought Piggly Pegolas from inside the bucket. “That was a short day,” and he started to look around for somewhere really disgusting to settle down to sleep. The trouble was, though, that, while he could usually find a particularly nasty piece of mud with the help of the street-lights along the road, it really was completely dark this time. Piggly thought for a while and his thoughts were interrupted by what sounded like a metallic knocking coming from inside his head.

“If that Nutty Twang has been storing his acorns inside my ears while I’ve been sleeping again, I’ll really clobber him,” thought Piggly Pegolas, but then he heard a familiar voice. It was speaking Piglish, but with a much less rural accent than PP’s. This was a pig with style and breeding, or at least one who had mixed with the porcine aristocracy for much of his life.

“Is that you, Piggers, old boy?” asked the voice. “Why, it’s been ages since I last clapped eyes on you. I see you’re fatter than ever, har, har. And what’s that strange hat you’re wearing? Here. Let me help you.”

As quickly as night had fallen, it was daytime again, for Piggly at least. He stood blinking in the light and then made out the gleaming pale pink face of Nicholas Pegolas, his upper-class cousin who had been reared in some special farming establishment the other side of Derby. Not only was he beautifully clean but he also had a piece of carefully-tied spotted cloth around his neck and a burgundy-coloured ribbon through his tail. The two pigs snorted greetings at one another, caught up on each other’s family-news and were just about to settle down to a puddle-full of rotten onions when the piercing sound of a whistle made Nicholas Pegolas turn around and run back to the lorry from which he managed to escape.

“Can’t stop, old chap,” he called out over his immaculate pink shoulder. “Duty calls and all that,” and he disappeared up the ramp of a large white lorry with writing on the side. Piggly Pegolas couldn’t read but, if he had been able to read, he would have read “Derbyshire Experimental Agriculture Testing House” on the tailgate of the lorry as it disappeared from view around a corner. The words meant nothing to him but he noticed that the first letters of each word were larger than the others, almost as if they spelled a separate word on their own. Piggly was sad to see his posh cousin go but, quickly returning to being the Pegolas we know and love, he realised that there were all the more mouldy vegetables left for him.

A few days later Piggly was waddling around his field looking for some mice to frighten when he saw the same lorry coming from the opposite direction. This time, it parked outside the Derwent Arms and the driver and his mate went inside for lunch. Soon afterwards, there came a terrible banging and squealing from inside the lorry and the sound of a familiar voice crying for help. “Are you out there, Piggers? Please come and save me,” it cried. Of course, it was Nicholas Pegolas.

Piggly trottered across the road to where the lorry was and used his dripping snout to pull the restraining-pin out of the back of the lorry. Unfortunately, he didn’t realise that the tailgate opened downwards. With one mighty bound Nicholas Pegolas was free. The daylight burst into the hay-strewn lorry and Nicholas jumped, spotty cravat streaming in the wind, down on to the road. He looked around. Where was his usually ebullient cousin? Normally Piggly would be grinning and waggling his tail with self-congratulation, but he was nowhere to be seen.

The men had heard the sound of the falling tailgate (it was more of a loud thud than a crash) and ran out of the Derwent Arms to see what had happened. Nicholas had quickly hidden in the cabbage-patch and there was so much hay in the back of the lorry that the driver didn’t think he had escaped. Looking carefully all around them, though not down at the road, the two men lifted the lorry’s tailgate back into position and drove away before anything more could happen.

As Nicholas emerged cautiously from behind the cabbages, he heard a plaintive moaning from the road in front of him. There, with the striped pattern of the lorry’s back end on his face, lay Piggly Pegolas, dazed and trembling. “What happened?” he asked. “It became night-time suddenly again, only this time it hurt more.”

“Never you mind,” soothed Piggly’s cousin, lifting him off the tarmac. “Let’s go over for a browse through the dustbins and, afterwards, I’ll tell you about all the terrible things they do to unsuspecting pigs at that Derbyshire Experimental Agriculture Testing House. It’ll make your tail curl, old boy.”

And, with a supportive trotter over his cousin’s bruised shoulder, Nicholas Pegolas helped Piggly Pegolas round to the wheely-enclosure where, amidst the apple-cores and soggy leftover crisps, they soon forgot about the terrible events of the day. Just to round things off, it started to rain again.

Piggly tries to get smart

Before they could work this ruse, however, the two pigs had to deal with the problem of the difference in their appearance. Although Nicholas and Piggly were about the same size, one was sleek and well-groomed, while Piggly ... well. At first Nicholas suggested that his cousin should go and wash in the river. They inched their way towards the foaming torrent which the Derwent had become since the heavy rains and, just to help Piggly overcome any last-minute doubts, Nicholas gave him a gentle nudge over the side.

Piggly bobbed around happily in the water for a while and, once he began to feel a bit chilly, he clambered up the bank and looked around for his familiar field. He was almost as alarmed at what he saw as the people who saw him. Instead of Nutty Twang’s tree and his tumbledown sty, Piggly Pegolas beheld a vast, hard-surfaced field with lots of little people running around it screaming. While they screamed, he oinked and ran for the nearest cover, which unfortunately was the office of the headmistress of the primary school to whose playground the river had carried him.

To cut a long story short, after the fire-brigade had left, the caretaker took Piggly back to the Derwent Arms in the back of his truck, which was also used to convey the leftovers from the school-dinners to the dump. Piggly Pegolas reached his intended destination but the leftovers did not.

When Nicholas saw his cousin, he exclaimed that Piggly was dirtier than he had been before, so it was agreed that, rather than Piggly trying to get clean, Nicholas would (to his horror) try to get dirty.

Just as Piggly had needed a bit of help deciding to get into the river, so he was only too pleased to help Nicholas take the plunge. Rather than offering just a gentle push, Piggly decided to do things properly, taking a good long run-up from the other side of the field. He left Nicholas looking disconcertedly down at the muddy water, went right over to the edge of the road and began his run. As he approached the river-bank, he observed that Nicholas had already plucked up enough courage, jumped in, got sufficiently dirty, and managed to climb out just a few feet downstream. The trouble was that Piggly Pegolas was now going too fast to stop.

Well, to cut another long story short, the football-match had to be postponed until later in the season, the supermarket re-opened the following morning and Piggly was sent to his (now overcrowded) sty without any tea. Nicholas began to wonder if life in the Derbyshire Experimental Agriculture Testing House had been that bad after all.

The golden bough

One day, when Nicholas Pegolas, still on the run from the Derbyshire Experimental Agriculture Testing House, was staying in Piggly’s sty, Nutty peered out from the inside of his tree to see what appeared to be a very long pig. At one end of the sty was a twitching snout while at the other was a waggling tail, yet the ramshackle building must have been at least 10 feet long.

“This must be a nightmare,” thought Nutty Twang, rubbing his eyes and pinching himself. “There’s quite enough of Piggly Pegolas already without him growing extra-long.”

PP, in partnership with his cousin, subsequently disabused Nutty of this horrified notion and, greatly relieved, he invited them both to come up and see him in his tree.

“You’ll enjoy this,” Piggly told Nicholas Pegolas as they struggled up the trunk. “The bough that Nutty likes to sit on has a great springiness to it and, when you bounce it really high you can see all sorts of places.”

The visit began conventionally enough with the two pigs pretending not to be hungry and then tucking in to all the acorns which Nutty offered them. Once the conversation about the dangers of folding-down backs of lorries and the weather had run its course, Nicholas posed the question he had been aching to put.

“Nutters, old boy,” he began. “I understand that there is a rather noble excrescence attached to this very arboreal item which affords a somewhat impressive panoramic vista of the environs hereabout.”

“What did he say?” Nutty ask Piggly, who dutifully translated. A few minutes later the three animals were perched on the great bough which stretched out from the tree, over a large patch of mud ending just above the river’s edge.

“I believe it is possible,” said Nicholas Pegolas, “to enhance the relative perspective of the purview by initiating an oscillation.” Translation completed, the two pigs and the one squirrel began gently to bounce up and down. After a while Piggly was able periodically to see the primary school, the football-ground and the supermarket he had accidentally visited earlier that week. Nicholas was anxious also to see the slightly more distant Derbyshire Experimental Agriculture Testing House, so he urged his companions to join him in bouncing harder.

Nutty became anxious and, between bounces, said: “I wonder if we might not slow down a bit because I think there could be a slight danger of.” The pigs were really enjoying themselves and were eventually able to get short glimpses of the testing house. “Behold, behold,” cried Nicholas Pegolas, “that monstrosity of a quasi-academic edifice may be distantly perceived!”

“This is exciting, Nutty,” said Piggly Pegolas turning and expecting to see the squirrel who, without explanation, seemed to have temporarily excused himself from the company.

With their sightseeing done and all their bouncing completed, tired but happy, the two pigs took their eventual leave of their unexpectedly absent host and returned to a sumptuous recycled repast in their frugal hut below.

Nutty Twang had never seen the stars shine so brightly before. The moon, declining swiftly in the southern sky, had seemed so close as to be touchable. The whistling in his furry ears only added to the excitement of what must have been by far the biggest bounce which he and his piggy friends had been able to elicit from the exquisitely elastic bough which was now somewhat further beneath him than he then imagined.

The air seemed cooler, rarer, cleaner than that which he was accustomed to inhale in the dank Derwent valley. All was clear, bright and shining, the sky above, the earth below, the pinpricks of light from the cottages, the orange-lit roads snaking their ways over the Derbyshire hills. For Nutty it was the happiest day of his squirrelly life and it seemed to go on for ever. And, in fact, it did.