by Joy-Amy Wigman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joy-Amy is a mature student who has just finished her first year of the Creative Writing Degree. She is an award winning slam poet and runs a monthly comedy night in Cheltenham called Lemon Rocket for which she often MCs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Park Keeper<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I stared at the polar\nbear and the polar bear stared back at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\nare not wrong Gerald,\u201d I said to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even\nmissed the start of the Bake-Off. Letty only had eyes for Noel by the time I\ngot home and didn\u2019t want to hear about any dog snatching portals. Now you may\nthink the sight of a portal in my park might be enough to give a man like me\npause to contemplate. Not me though. I\u2019ve seen Derren Brown live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nwas the next day that things began to escalate. I normally get to work at about\n7.30am, make myself a cuppa in the maintenance shed and write myself a to do\nlist. I like a list, it brings a bit of satisfaction to a task. Cut the grass\n(Tick!), check the bushes for needles (Tick!), call the school about the kids\nplaying hooky by the picnic tables (Tick!). When I got to the park that morning\nthough, I knew I was going to have a problem with my first task. Mainly because\nit\u2019s hard to cut grass when you can\u2019t actually see it. What should have been\nslightly overgrown clumps of May greenery was covered in a dense layer of snow.\nI had walked to work in the late spring sunshine and arrived to work in Santa\u2019s\nbloody grotto. The kids didn\u2019t seem to mind though, snowball fights and icy\npenis sculptures kept them amused until the deputy head showed up to march them\nback to school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nsnow showed no sign of pissing off any time soon either. Eventually people just\ngot used to the idea that the park was full of snow and went back to walking\ntheir dogs and riding their bikes (though I\u2019ll admit there were fewer used\ncondoms to deal with).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve\nbeen in this job for donkeys\u2019 years. I have seen people walking all kinds of\nanimals in that park over time. We\u2019ve had cats on leads, micropigs in little\nwelly boots (I blame veganism) and we even had a parrot once (perched on some\nbloke\u2019s shoulder like a bloody pirate it was). The penguins, however, were<\/em> a bit of a shock. They were huddled\ntogether by the Dorothy Barnes Memorial fountain. It\u2019s hard to describe the\nnoise that penguins make. I suppose it\u2019s sort of a \u201cmeep\u201d sound. There was a\nlot of \u201cmeeping\u201d going on and one of my jobs is to make sure that pets are not\nleft unattended (not since the incident with the Mastiff-Chihuahua cross). So\nover I went to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was\nabout two meters away when one of them turned his raisin eyes to me and said,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExcuse\nme dear chap but do you know whether this fountain is salt-water or fresh?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well\nyou could\u2019ve blown down with a feather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cErm\u2026Did\nyou just speak English?\u201d I asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIndeed,\nI did.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nscratched my head. \u201cPenguins don\u2019t normally speak English on the telly,\u201d I\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\npenguins laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy\nwould we old boy? Not many people speak English in the Antarctic.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n He\nwas right of course. I told him that the fountain was fresh-water but I had\nsome bags of salt in the shed from when we had the last snow and I could chuck\nthat in for them. They seemed happy enough with that. They even gave me a tip.\nI mean, it was a fish but it\u2019s the thought the counts and it was lovely with a\nside of mushy peas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On\nthe Wednesday is was Leopard Seals. Friday it was an Albatross called Indira.\nThe animals kept coming. Arctic and Antarctic alike. On Saturday it was these\nweird badger things with massive teeth that said they were wolverines but\ndidn\u2019t look a bit like Hugh Jackman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nthink that\u2019s when people started avoiding the park altogether. It was lovely.\nNo crisp packets to pick up, no dog poo (the new residents seemed very good at\ncleaning up after themselves) and the thing with the pointy horn that was now\nliving in the lake made up extremely amusing haikus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\nreally have no concept of just how large a polar bear is until it interrupts\nyou taking a piss behind a shed. (He apologised but it was like having Idris\nElba apologise to you and what you want to say is \u201cNot at all Mr Elba sir, can\nI get you anything sir, please don\u2019t hurt me\u201d). The polar bear introduced\nhimself and asked if I was in charge here. I said that I supposed I was and\nhastily zipped up my overalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\nare taking this park,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have become increasingly concerned by\nwatching our homes shrink and melt and we are almost certain that your species\nis to blame.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t\nargue with him because his teeth are bigger than mine. He let out a deep sigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLife\nis hard, Park Man. Even bears need a holiday from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n stared\nat the polar bear and the polar bear stared back at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\nare not wrong Gerald,\u201d I said to him. \u201cMy park is your park mate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gerald extended a paw for me to shake and as I did, I asked if he\u2019d be so kind as to not eat the penguins as they are excellent tippers. He said he could manage that. Although he was looking forward to sampling some more of the yappy little snacks I sent him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5378","project","type-project","status-publish","hentry","category-student-stories"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project\/5378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/project"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe mess had started three weeks previous. It must have been about then because\nI remember I wanted to get home in time for the Bake Off final. \u201cThe Missus\u201d\nhas a thing for that Noel Feilding and there\u2019s no chance she\u2019d wait for me to\nget home before she tucked in. I was doing my last sweep of the park, grabbing\nthe usual bits of detritus with my litter picker (it\u2019s a Streetmaster Pro – the\ncouncil don\u2019t mess about when it comes to park maintenance). I tend to leave\nthe really nasty stuff to the end of my shift. The half-chewed hotdogs and used\ncondoms you can do with the Streetmaster, but dog poo must be done with a glove\nand a well-toned gag reflex. I had just dropped a luminous yellow Durex in to\nthe bin bag when this yappy little twat of a dog ran out in front of me, looked\nme right in the eye and dropped a ginormous turd right by my boot. It was\nsteaming like my Nan\u2019s apple crumple. I almost punted the git across the grass\nbut before I could do anything this bloody great portal appeared. You know what\nI mean? Stargate, Rick and Morty, Adele\u2019s gob when she starts singing? A\nproper, snot green, sci-fi portal. And if that weren\u2019t enough, this massive,\nwhite claw came out of it, snatched the dog and pulled it through. Well bugger\nme with a fish fork if I didn\u2019t laugh myself stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n