More Than You Can Say

If they don’t want moles, they can make do with a stick. Sticks can be interesting too. Nature isn’t all donkeys and otter spraints and tern’s eggs and coypu skulls and rotten crawling living things. I’ll bring in a dead stick. So I picked up the first stick I biked past. A very ordinary stick. Dead, but neutral and uncorrupted in its death. And useful too, which is more than you can say for a rotting mole dropping to bits all over your ankles. I brought the stick into the classroom and dumped it defiantly on the nature table. Well now,’ said Miss Meddlar, after she had exam-med the week’s crop with the irritating care and slowness of a pensioner paying at a checkout counter. ‘Now then, well. Another wonderful effort from you all. I have to say I half expected to see an elephant in the playground, Mary, but that is a lovely jay’s feather you’ve brought in for us, really lovely. But do you know what? The star this week is going to go to… Stephen Fry.’ ‘Hurrh?’ A dozen pairs of disbelieving eyes swivelled between me, Miss Meddlar and the very ordinary dead stick that lay on the nature table like a very ordinary dead stick. ‘Come you on forward, Stephen Fry.’ I came me on forward, bewildered. ‘This star is not for your stick, although I’m sure it is ever such a fine stick ...»