To the Rescue

His name was Stormrider and he rode a steed called Betty. He came from the land of Steve on the far side of the mountain called Bert. He wore the flat cap and string vest of the warrior and was deadly with both the pea-shooter and castanets. There were rumours back in Steve that he’d once poemed a man to death with some of the most lethal stanzas ever deployed in a poem fight.

He saw the peasant, busy outside his hovel updating his Facebooke page. He drew back on Betty’s reins and cut her ignition. He wound down the driver-side window. ‘Any Princesses around here need rescuing, my good ma… woman?’

The peasant considered for a moment, wishing he… she had such a fine and fancy tractor as Betty. ‘Not really,’ he… she said. ‘Although, tell a lie, we do have one up the tower who does like a wandering knight such as yourself to rescue her from her knickers.’

Stormrider nodded sagely. ‘Right.’ He turned Betty’s key and the mighty engine coughed itself back into life. ‘So,’ he said, ‘this tower, where is it exactly.’

‘Well,’ the peasant said. ‘If I was you I wouldn’t start from here. ‘’Specially not as it is Wednesday.’

‘It is not Wednesday,’ Stormrider spoke with the authority of the true knight.

‘Isn’t it?’ The peasant glanced down at his… her laptop. ‘Bloody internet connection’s buggered again, I’ll have to get a witch in.’

‘Well?’ Stormbringer said.

‘I dunno… the witch said I should sacrifice a goat to the demons of the internet, but you know how messy that is and these are my best rags… well, my only rags and….’

‘No,’ Stormbringer said. ‘The Tower, where is it?’

‘Oh, just get on the ring road, just past the supermarket, you can’t miss it.’ The peasant pointed off into the distance. ‘Oh, can I clean your windscreen for you, while you wait for the lights to change?’ The peasant pulled an even dirtier and tattier scrap of rag from under her… his rags.

‘No, thanks… er… what lights?’

‘Bloody wizards, they said we’d have traffic lights, traffic calming measures, pelican crossings and all sorts…. You wouldn’t believe what it is like here at rush hour… sometimes we get as many as two or three travellers a week, what with them and the bullock carts delivering all the on-line shopping…. It’s chaos here sometimes, and I’ll tell you another thing, that Lord of the Manor, I could tell you some stori….’

Hastily, Stormbringer wound up his window, cutting off the peasant in mid-flow. He put Betty into gear and drove off to look for adventure and a princess needing rescue from her knickers. ‘All in a day’s work,’ he said as he steered Betty towards the ring road.