Margaret and Dick were walking Rosie and Polly along a country track on the way to the little stream.
‘Why,’ stamped Margaret, staring ahead. ‘Do people do that? Poo bag, please Dick. Now.’
‘Really, they should pick it up,’ said Dick, groping. ‘Oh no, I have used all mine.’
Margaret fumbled in her pockets, tissues out, dog treats out, old co-op receipt. old post office receipt now. 2nd class book of stamps out.’ ‘Why,’ Asked Dick, ‘don’t you empty your pockets, from time to time?’
‘Never mind that. I have found my stamps. This could be a good morning after all.’
‘And a poo bag?’
‘I have two more pockets,’ soothed Margaret, knowing that Dick has a special pocket for poo bags, a special pocket for tissues, an inside pocket for receipts, and a second inside pocket for phone. Margaret doesn’t know how she came to live with someone with such a tidy mind. Sometimes she hears Dick asking the flagpole how he came to live with someone who was so dreadfully, awfully untidy, and who empties her pockets sometimes, but then filled them up again, in no particular order.
Finally Margaret found her poo bag, tucked up her jumper sleeve beneath her waterproof coat. She realised she had put it there, instead of her pocket, which was why there were so very many tissues in every pocket.
She gave Dick Polly’s lead to hold, and approached the poo. It was rather a large one. She felt cross all over again. She turned back to Dick, and started to say, ‘Really, it is too bad.’
But Dick was pointing, wagging his forefinger at the poo. (Margaret is sorry to keep saying poo, but needs must). His mouth was working, but no words.
Margaret turned back to the poo. It seemed it was once more, women’s work. But … Lord … Arrrgh … The poo … was moving, yes it was. Just a bit, then it sort of fell on its side. It had a little hand – yes it did, and another. Then there was a sort of shiver (not not from Margaret and Dick, but they felt like shivering.)
‘I’m holding the dogs,’ Dick said. ‘You’d better check things are …’
‘Are what?’ said Margaret creeping forward, poo bag in her hand. But what good was a poo bag if there was a sort of hand. The pile was back as it had been.
Urghh. Ooooh. How. Whaaat?
Margaret reached it, she bent over, she really looked. Was it a frog? But … There was another. Yes, two frogs, but there was another, sort of lying over the heads of the two frogs, and then, when she tried to count the legs, there was another set of legs and arms, all with hands, these two were sort of wrapped round the head of the two frogs.
Margaret breathed in. She put her poo bag back in her pocket. ‘Frog stack,’ she said in a matter of fact voice, because she had read about it, and she liked to be a know it all. But f-o-u-r frogs.
‘What are they doing?’ Dick said.
Margaret didn’t like to even think what they were doing, but she expected it was naughty. It was spring. She told Dick what she thought.
Dick looked at Polly and Rosie. ‘Not in front of the little ones,’ he said, his mouth looking as though he had sucked a lemon. ‘This is not our business, it really truly is not.’ Best just leave these four to ‘it’.’
So Margaret and Dick did as ‘it’ resonated for quite some distance. They left them to ‘it’ too, on their return, and as they stepped over them, the frogs sort of shivered again. (sorry if this is too explicit)
‘Well, it is spring,’ Margaret said to Dick.
‘Stop talking,’ said Dick, and hurried on back to Margaret and Dick’s garden, and Margaret did not make the coffee for a little while, for Dick would need a few moments… Yes, you know don’t you … with the flagpole.
