Steve Hardy

The forgotten scar in Hastings Old Town called Fishaloop Village was home to the previously happy trolls and their decaying club, Castle Pointless Stone, formally the Dead Mackerel Café. Pointless Stone opened it’s smeared window onto Single Devil Street where it recorded the leaden footfall of old fisherman between Pub, Sky TV and elocution lessons – “remember darlings, exclamation is crucial, f**k between every third word for casual conversation and if emphasis is needed add “ing” to the end. If the benefit fraud squad is at the door “ing hell” is also an acceptable postfix”.

Single Devil Street is narrow and dark, even at mid-day, It’s pavements are littered with the dissolute bodies of out of pub smokers, the yellow street lighting doing little to hide the desperate mist of loneliness that crawls from their cigarettes. The properties are old, empty and expensive; the stamp of the week-end TV executive cottage that strangles the coast. Saturdays and Sundays their children, and endless stream of Poppys, Tasmins, Charlies, smear the streets like rainbow rats in incongruous Tibetan headgear, whiny perfect pronunciation irritating the few locals left, or in fact conscious.

In this bleak nightmare the troll Ron had to escape the Grumpy Fairy with her claustrophobic book of rules, what devious route would he take; the thin twittens leading to the open hills last used by the chav chef for his chummy supermarket adverts? To the sea where the proud fishermen plied their noble trade, or to be more accurate, drank eat and moaned about just about everything?

Don’t be silly, what do you think this is, the nineteenth century, he turned off his mobile and went to the pub…

End of part two…

In a small forgotten part of Hastings there existed a small group of friendly trolls who got together occasionally, huddling over an old wine stained table, to swap turgid stories of daily life. In fact it was always the same story but they were happy, as only trolls can be, and life rolled on alive with their endless twittering.

One day they heard a strange rustling and whining deep in the darkness at the back of their ramshackle castle where the frost glitters all year round in faint candle light. At first they put this down to the cheap Bulgarian red one of the trolls, Ron, was fond of, but then, as the erratic sound of discontent continued, they stumbled off to investigate, well, after they’d downed a trifle. Sat upon the wooden stairs that twirl from dank cellar to dusty attic was a slightly grumpy fairy without wings, having lost them in the Great Wing Scam of ’89 (a series of disasters the fairy seemed to attract with dull regularity).

Immediately the kindly troll Fost, the owner of the fridge (a magic fridge whose back opened in Waitrose) and in fact lord of the extremely dusty castle, said “join our little group and we’ll swap stories and celebrate”. The fairy, for she was a cunning fairy, thought “hmm, a group of followers” so she smiled the sweet helpless smile that melts the hearts of trolls everywhere and said “Yes, that would be, er, nice” but then she drew the trolls close and whispered “there is one thing I ask, it’s not a big thing, I have a secret, a secret I want to tell you but you must never tell anyone without my permission”. The trolls thought for a minute, well actually a couple of seconds as they still swam in the memory of the smile, and said “okay”. The fairy told the trolls the secret and it was fairly interesting, and made the fairy a more exciting character but they weren’t sure why it must be a secret, but, being trolls of their word they thought nothing more of it and the trolls and the fairy became friends.

Time passed slowly at the trolls castle and the magic fridge stayed full, sadly mostly with fish. One day the fairy said “I have found another soul behind the tree where I live, can she join our little group” and from behind the tree a beautiful Princess emerged. Now it must be said; the Princess was a bit “lippy”, had an aloof stare that frightened the trolls and had some strange ideas on how the troll homeland should be run but as they softened to her lost manner all became fine and they drank, laughed and were happy. The Princess was often away on mysterious royal espionage work and in her absence the fairy reminded the trolls not to tell the Princess the secret. The trolls said “why not, it’s a bit silly as we’ll all have to be constantly careful about what we say“. The fairy said “it’s my secret and I decide when to tell people”, in this way the fairy took upon herself power.

The arrow of time slid on and as it did the Princess became popular with the trolls as her company was good, her conversation was intelligent, her eyes were deep as oceans, her hair, oops, sorry, got a bit side tracked there. One particularly enamoured troll, Ron, remember Ron; cheap taste in wine, became obsessed with the Princess. The fairy noticed this and she was not happy, “I am your Queen, how dare you find another interesting”. The trolls said “Queen? we don’t remember that bit, it’s only a supper club, what’s the problem?” The fairy gave the trolls a look that froze their blood and took the Ron into her thin hand and said “Us fairies don’t talk about it much but we are pretty handy with magic and if I ever hear you using your pet name for the Princess I will turn you into a toad and as you’re pretty close anyway it won’t be very hard!” Ron cowered before scuttling away knowing now he had a secret to keep and words he could not use; the fairy was slowly taking control.

End of part one…