On Borrowers’ time

Published on by mickyrichards1957

During the Sixties, as I’d walk from my Balham flat towards Wandsworth Common to reenact famous Gerd Müller goals, I’d wonder at some of the imaginative creativity in the gardens along the way.

Many people clearly took great pride in sculpting various shapes and sizes on the bushes in their front lawns.  

One day, on the way to the common with my football tucked underneath my arm like Anne Boleyn’s head, I noticed that there was some vigorous pruning activity going on.  However, the tools being used were tiny.  I wasn’t allowed scissors as a kid, but I think I could have got away with playing these, such was their incredibly small size.

At this time we were being read The Borrowers during school.  The town where they lived was never mentioned; now I had living proof.  As I passed this house, they were, like the gardener in Bill and Ben, temporarily absent; but, to me, The Borrowers clearly lived in Balham. 

In addition to the tiny scissors there were tiny pliers; tiny wire-cutters and a tiny penknife.  Obviously, Swiss Army knives didn’t come in XXS.

There were never any competitions held down the street but, for me, the giant cockerel at number sixty-nine always won it.

5 thoughts on “On Borrowers’ time”

  1. just think you could have planted a hedge and trimmed into the shape of “Der Kaiser”. That would have kept you busy. When I lived in the Cotswolds I did a bit of gardening for people and one of the jobs was at the Manor; the owner had been a Major in the Gloucesters and he wanted part of his hedge trimmed into the insignia of his old regiment, ie a Sphinx. I did it but it made the cockerel at no. 69 look easy peasy

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  2. just think you could have planted a hedge and trimmed into the shape of “Der Kaiser”. That would have kept you busy. When I lived in the Cotswolds I did a bit of gardening for people and one of the jobs was at the Manor; the owner had been a Major in the Gloucesters and he wanted part of his hedge trimmed into the insignia of his old regiment, ie a Sphinx. I did it but it made the cockerel at no. 69 look easy peasy

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      1. you’re not kidding. There didn’t seem to be too many Sphinxes roaming the Cotswolds at the time, so I used the local cat as a model for the body and the head of Tutankhamen’s (or Tooting Common’s) mummy that I had lying around in my car.

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