They were the Midland’s best kept secret. One of Leamington’s rarest breed of fauna. So rare, in fact, that I doubt that even the great David Attenborough has ever seen one, though if he ever tried to frank a letter in the main Leamington Spa Post Office he may have inadvertently stepped on one. They make a small squishing noise not unlike stepping on a Stag Beetle. Though unlike stepping on a Stag Beetle you don’t then get ear-ache from all the Stag Beetle’s mates effing and blinding at you for your carelessness.
I am of course talking about the Pygmy Postman. And while I’m at it I better throw into the mix the Tiny Taxi Driver and the Borrower Bus Driver too. ‘Cos they’ve all been affected. They all of them, to a miniature man, disappeared inexplicably from Leamington’s streets on Saturday morning.
It began with the snow. And I suspected it ended with the snow too. You see we had 3.5 inches of snow fall in Leamington Spa on Saturday. And, as I am sure you are all aware, the Pygmy Postman and his related species are only 3 inches tall.
Well, I mean, you do the maths.
I suspect the poor little buggers were swamped within the first couple of hours. Snowdrifts up to the kerbs and, in some places, clean over them! They were never going to cope. Not even with their boots borrowed from Action Man. The Bus Drivers are no doubt lying frozen solid under a garden hedge somewhere; their buses lying empty and echoing to the sound of non-existent commuters who were unable to get into town that day because of the positively Antarctic conditions that ravaged this little Spa town that I call home. The Tiny Taxi drivers I have more hope for as I suspect they are all merely snowed in to their local pub and dare not jump down from the doorstep lest they find themselves in need of a St. Bernard puppy to dig them out. No doubt they are even now swimming around a small brandy glass trying to make the best of it.
Us big people take it all for granted you see. We dig ourselves out of our homes; we haul the snow off our cars and in some cases some of us (like me) wade heel deep through the snow drifts and make our way to work under our own steam and never give a second thought for the little people who can’t do all that. The tiny people who, up to their necks in a few millimetres of snow and ice, find themselves quite literally out of their depths.
Please people, if you do nothing else for others this Christmas, can I please ask you to spare a thought for the diminutive breeds of our society? We rely on them all year round and it is only now, when times are hard and the Polar Bears are migrating as far south as Birmingham, that we realize the great all-year round service that these little guys offer us. Only when they are gone and pewling helplessly from inside their snowy tombs do we finally value them.
Poor little soldiers of Leamington Spa. I salute you.
