The Man Who Invented Trousers has had a re-think. That is, I’ve had a rethink. The Man himself has been dead some time, and so is unlikely to be thinking or re-thinking.
Anyway, I’ve started again, this time with some sheep. Here’s the Preamble.
Preamble
Once upon a time, there were no such things as trousers.
There were tights, britches, breeches – which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the same thing as britches – kilts, skirts, hose, pantaloons. People who wanted to keep warm had to wear very big socks.
But no trousers. They didn’t exist.
Trousers had to be invented, they had to have a moment of genius. A few hundred years ago, in the days of enlightenment and revolution, the era that started the modern world, a man invented trousers.
This is his story.
And, like all stories worth telling, it starts with a sheep.
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The mountain was, to begin with, a lawless place. Terrible deeds are done in the wild, even without humans. Horses ran amok. Pigs fought each other with reckless, wanton violence. Rabbits pulled each others tails. In general, there was no rule, except the brutal yoke of moley militias.
For a brief while, however, all this was to change. An individual would be born who could bring some hope to that desolate hill.
Davey was a wise sheep. All the animals said so. In the late days of his lambhood he grew the most magnificent white woollen coat, so that all others looked upon him in awe. Such a magnificent coat on a young lamb like that, well, that sort of thing marked out prophets and priestesses, not your common sheep. This Davey was to be listened to, the other animals of the mountain reckoned.
And so it proved. When Lulu the Donkey had her breadcrumbs stolen by Tobias the Duck, Davey observed that a crumb for a crumb makes the whole loaf fall to pieces, and so Tobias gave back the bread. When Nebuchadnezzar, Leader Of The Angry Geese, declared war on the rest of the mountain, Davey declared that happiness resides not in material possession, not even in owning all the big field, and so Nebuchadnezzar laid down his great goose talons and lived for the soul. When Zanzibar the Hedgehog claimed the lower stile as her own, Davey reminded her there would be as much of the stile if it were shared, and so she abandoned her lust for glory.
By deeds such as these Davey became revered throughout the valley. His wisdom and prudence governed every discussion, eased every warring instinct. Soon there was serenity on the mountain, and all could live as brothers.
Yet peace would not last for ever. One day the skies thawed, and something happened to send the rabbits scurrying from their warrens in alarm, and to prompt the sober-headed fox, normally so cool and cunning, to chase his panicked tail in circles.
On a cold bright April morning, Davey went for his morning waddle. Kept his coat fresh, he said, and he loved the gorse bush beyond the hill. Smelling it gave his nose a good bit of exercise, all the better for sniffing out justice. So the other sheep watched Davey disappear over the hill and out of sight, as always, and then they continued their daily affairs.
It just so happened that, on that particular day, Zanzibar and Tobias were having a tiff over the correct preparation of grass. Zanzibar said that grass should be rolled about in, as every good hedgehog knows, whereas Tobias opined that grass was to be waddled on. Of course, there was only one animal capable of settling this dispute, and he was over the hill with his nose in the gorse. So they waited.
And they waited.
And they waited.
But Davey didn’t come. So the sheep huddled together, and they worried a bit, but they couldn’t think up a plan. There wasn’t much else to do, other than argue some more about grass, so they grumped in their huddle.
But still Davey didn’t come.
Eventually one of the sheep broke away from the fold and began to totter up the hill, in the direction Davey had gone. No-one would remember whether the sheep had a plan to find Davey, or whether it just wanted to have a peek at the gorse bush for itself. It didn’t really matter either way, for as soon as the sheep started to climb, a figure appeared at the top of the hill, startling against the clouds.
The figure was entirely hairless. Four legs wobbled pink in the sun. A body itched rouge where wool should have been. The head of this creature poked vulnerably forward, a tiny face squinting small in front of the never-ending sky.
The figure tottered down towards the animals, slowly. Soon they could tell it was a fellow sheep, although an unfamiliar one, shorn fully of wool. If they had ever seen a ship, it might have reminded them of a broken galleon, unable to find the North Star on a misty night. It had that sense of longing, that sense of tossing and turning in the waves, is only be found on land when a sheep is shorn.
It was Davey.
That wise sheep, whose wool had spread justice, temperance and virtue across the mountainside, had been cut clean, hairless as the day of its first sigh. Its skin trembled in the light as it staggered, weary and cold, towards the waiting crowd.
Young Lucien, the sheep who had started climbing the hill, looked on his guru helplessly. Perhaps, if Lucien had been a bit more articulate, he might have observed that Davey suffered from the chilling morning breeze just as the rest did. Stripped of his pomp, his majesty, his woolly wisdom, Davey shivered as any animal would. Somehow Davey was a little more sheeplike, and a little less divine.
That’s how the others saw him too. Cold, fragile, mortal. No prophet, no divine power lurked here. Only an unhappy sheep. Whether or not grass was to be rolled in or trodden on was beyond his ken, in the same way that heavens cannot be understood by the likes of lambs. Faith, like the coat, had gone.
And so Davey was shorn of wisdom, and the mountain had lost its healer. Chaos took charge of the valley. Nebuchadnezzar declared himself Imperial Majesty and invaded the bracken, but no-one could reason with him. Zanzibar and her minions occupied the stile and demanded a toll, but there was no sheep to insist upon the common good.
And so it stayed. Davey shivered somewhere in the corner, his sheepish locks never regaining their former grandeur. He was not listened to, not respected in the way he once was. The other sheep looked upon him and wept. It seemed, for the moment, that peace could never be restored in that miserable valley.
As it turned out, they were wrong.
TO BE CONTINUED – with Chapter 1: At The King’s Court
Jezknee 