Chapter Three

Tiny Libbedy and The Greatest Invention Since Forever


While the evil sisters were getting themselves sorted out, Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider was doing very much the same thing. And while she was about it, she was also taking the opportunity to scold herself quite severely. She simply did not like getting up early, and here she was, going about it all wrong on the wrong side of the day. And it was very much the fault of that dreadful saying, something to do with wisdom rising early. Horrible stuff, wisdom! It was all very well and good when one grew up and got boring and had nothing else worth living for, but when you were young and free, wisdom simply took up space. As far as Tiny Libbedy Spider was concerned (and she was very concerned indeed about most things that mattered), when you were a kid like her, days were far too short to waste on the boring stuff. Boring Stuff was for clogging up your life when you became old and decrepit and crabby. After all, at that point what else was there? What you really needed when you were young and vital was a humungous breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon, sausages, black pudding, fried tomatoes, chips, baked beans, treacle sponge, and – of course – soldiers (arranged perfectly on a separate plate so as to prevent them from drowning in sog). A mug of beef tea (or Bovril if that was all you had) was acceptable, although Libbedy preferred the idea of a nice, freshly squozen glass of orange juice, even if it was only to try it on for size.

Back in the days when her mum was a tiny spiderling, orange juice had been taken for granted. It had been plentiful and available in mammoth economy sizes (such a blessing for large families). In the past few years, however, something unexplainable had happened to the Orange Worms: Global Worming! Within no time at all, the succulent Orange Worms were practically extinct. A few passed what remained of their lives on model farms and ‘living’ museums, but most of those were in major metropolitan centres. Miniscule, out of the way cultural venues, such as The Miss Havering’s Bog Living History and Heritage Centre, had little funding for acquisitions of that magnitude. Miniscule Venues had to make do with drawings by local school kids. Little messy scratchy crayony scrawlies more appropriately stuck on refrigerators or, better yet, consigned to the nearest wheelie bin. That’s what passed for art and culture in The Miss Havering’s Bog Living History and Heritage Centre: messy, scratchy, crayony scrawlies. It was these infantile, really naff renderings of what Orange Worms may or may not have looked like, even down to what colour they may or may not have been, that served to inform and inspire Tiny Rumpus Libbedy and her classmates. But annoying as it was, it wasn’t really a problem, not when you thought about it. Not if you were young and full of the beans of life.

In any case, none of that hardly mattered, did it, on a morning such as this when a vibrant, tiny spiderling such as Rambunctious Libbedy, found herself awake and abroad at such an inconveniently, wastefully obtrusive hour as half-past seven in the morning! And with no pots or pans in which too cook a humungous breakfast, much less a darling, dearest mummy who loved to don her prettiest flowery pinny for the purpose of cooking it.

It was indeed an inconvenient morning, and having decided that it was such, Tiny Rumpus Libbedy came to the conclusion (after the teeniest, most heartfelt little tantrum) that she really should decide what was what. “I must,” she declared to herself, with her chin jutting straight out in a determined fashion, “examine the situation from every angle and draw some important conclusions.” This, of course, was easier said than done. The denizens of Miss Havering’s Bog (of which she was a prime example) were not much given to wildness of purpose or taking drastic action. In fact, they weren’t big on any action whatsoever, providing another method could be found (as was inevitably the case). True Denizens weren’t really big on anything at all, but then again, they were so exceedingly small of stature that most things, including overweening ambition, were simply out of reach. For generations, ever since various Unfortunate Civic Occurrences (such as The Great MacTurf Massacre) had been declared unconstitutional, True Denizens had contented themselves with drifting along, bobbling with the tide, and allowing life to carry them thence and thither on its gentle current. On the whole, this had worked out extremely satisfactorily. Life (in the cosmic sense) had been nice and pleasant, if not invariably convenient, and not in the least bit radical. It had always been (as The Chronicler has already stated) what one could call a gentle life. As far as anyone could remember, no Denizen had had to look up the word “Stress” for such a long time that it had finally faded from the page and taken itself off to the more demanding city dictionaries, where it rented a room with “ASBO” and “binge drinker” and “terrorist insurgent” and settled into a very hectic life indeed.

“Crisis” was another word no longer in the bog vocabulary and therefore, when something happened, such as the incident with Owld Misther Bucket’s bottom, no one really thought to panic. It was simply one of those things, which, if left long enough, would remember to resolve itself before teatime. The same with grass stains on new a frock or watching your ice cream fall from your cornet and land on your best pair of white shoes. Of course, there were some (as inevitably there are), namely, those who took life literally, who (from time to time) deigned to utter “how tedious” or even the more extreme “oh, piffle!” But most of those thoroughly exasperating individuals were easily identifiable, for they were much given to breathing heavily and expelling a great quantity of exasperated air at the same time. Folks not of that ilk considered getting all hot and bothered to be both silly and unnecessary, and possibly demonstrating a low moral character. If, they reasoned, there was nothing one could do, why do anything at all?

There were, of course, certain things about which one could do practically everything, and about these it was perfectly acceptable to think. The accepted favourite had to do with Plumbers Not Showing Up, which was the example most often cited in the Second Form “Unnecessary Inconveniences and How They Must Be Dealt With In An Effective And Courteous Manner” curriculum. The second favourite, the one most popular with those unlucky enough to find themselves as eldest sisters in large families, had to do with the proper place to put really, really obnoxious family members when they became inconvenient.

As far as the first category was concerned, when it came to well-regulated bogs (an Miss Havering’s Bog was the most well-regulated in the land), one simply refused to have any trouble with one’s pipes. To possess irksome pipes or cloggy drains was ill-considered in the extreme. Every citizen had been instructed in the art of preventing such ‘practical household botherations and boring occurrences’ as might occur from time to time, had they not? Instruction injected into their minds by both schools and grandmammas. Wasn’t that what schools and, especially, grandmammas were for? Was that not the principal (some might say, only) reason they were kept around for such a dreadfully long time? In the current economic climate, one simply could not allow grandmammas to remain, slightly odorous and in the way simply for sentimental reasons. They were, after all, created to fill certain household functions, and once they had served their purpose they were shipped off to remote corners of bucolic outlying villages to run picturesque tea shoppes and to crochet antimacassars.

In Miss Havering’s Bog, as in the rest of the world, difficult and obnoxious family members occasionally blighted even the most fortunately apparelled and conveniently behaved families. Fortunately, owing to the county’s rarefied location and rich, organic peat, any family who happened to find itself afflicted thusly, and had not the wherewithal to shunt them off to distant relations, had – in the end - recourse to certain ‘extreme measures’. Bog-Faeries. Bog-Faeries ran well-regulated travel agencies. They booked any and all frightfully obnoxious family members on long holidays and simply forgot to issue return tickets. And having terrible memories, they could be counted on to forget to remember where they had sent anybody, or if, in fact, they had sent anybody anywhere at all. The services of The Bog-Faeries were entirely satisfactorily. They came with a lifetime guarantee and saved no end of headaches for the denizens of Miss Havering’s Bog. And, best of all, they were cheap, much like certain discount airlines for whom they provided inspiration and customer service ethos.

***

Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider looked at her freshly built, sweet little house and thought and thought and thought. The more she thought, the more it occurred to her that she simply didn’t have any of the usual problems. The plumbing worked ever so nicely; not only was it sweet-smelling, but it looked even nicer than it worked. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought she had bought all her fixtures and fittings, as well as the more important items of furniture, from one of the fashionable design magazines on display at Misther Peveral Murkin’s Corner Tobacconists and Boiled Sweets. Furthermore, there were no obnoxious family members to make her life unpleasant and boring. In fact, there were no family members at all, and that presented something very clearly resembling a miserable circumstance. “How I wish my sweet little mama and all my sweet little brothers and sisters were here to share my new home and good fortune,” she sighed.

“Oh dear,” she thought, “Does the fact that I have lost my sweet little mama and my sweet little brothers and sisters mean that I do have a problem after all?” She then sighed again. “How I would hate that,” she said, then admitting to herself that more than a small amount of confusion was setting in, and that she didn’t rightly know what to do. For Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider, like the rest of her kind, was not entirely sure what a problem was. “The thing is,” she explained to herself and to the small yellow flower which happened to be sitting beside her eating its lunch, “problems, if in fact there are such creatures, were never properly explained to us.” That meant she could not only not recognise one when she saw it, but that she wouldn’t know what should be done with one once it was recognised.

“Isn’t it strange?” she mused. “After weighing all the options, I do believe I have a problem after all! Isn’t it thrilling! It means I have learned something important today!” At which point, a speck of dust floated by and settled on her tiny nose. Tiny Rumpus Libbedy stared at it cross-eyed for a moment (giving it a chance to go away of its own accord), and then flicked it away with her nearest forefinger.

“I wonder,” she mused again, addressing her remarks to the dust speck as it drifted down towards her left foot (the second one from the top), “if a problem is really a problem when it takes care of itself, or if a real problem is like a speck of dust and has to be dealt a bitter blow?” And as if to illustrate her supposition, she thwacked the dust speck with the blunt end of a stick, causing it no end of pain.

She considered both the outcome of her action and the various ramifications of her supposition for a good three minutes, after which she cocked her head strangely to one side, a mannerism accompanied by an unusually intelligent spark. “I do believe I have mastered the conundrum that defines a problem, and in so doing, I have invented something completely unknown in the history of Miss Havering’s Bog. I shall call it ‘Problem Solving’.”