The Sandbag Times Issue No:58

Mrs Fox Goes To War
Hilda Ffinch
The bird with all the answers
Hilda Ffinch, Little Hope’s very own Agony Aunt (page 5 of the Little
Hope Herald) was easily bored and terribly rich. She loved nothing
better than taking on the problems of others and either sorting them
out or claiming that she’d never heard of them if it all went tits up
and they had to leave the district under cover of darkness having
followed her sage advice.
Dear Mrs Potter,
The Little Hope Herald
Saturday, 31st August 1940
Have you ever, in all the time you have lived in your little cottage on
Donkey Trot Lane, found yourself being rudely swept out of the
house and into your foxgloves by a tidal-wave of rain thundering
down the chimney during a summer storm, or awoken on a winter’s
morning to find your little sitting room knee deep in a snowdrift?
No, of course you haven’t, nor are you likely to. You see the average
chimney, such as your own, is not simply a vertical gateway to the
skies – it bends a little on the way up in order to slow the passage
of Mother nature’s unexpected bounty, allowing it to burn to a
crisp before it has time to annoy you .
Dear Mrs Ffinch,
Mrs Alice Potter
Cranberry Cottage
Donkey Trot Lane
Little Hope
25th August 1940
Whilst lying in bed the other night, I remembered
that I hadn’t put the fireguard up and when I
went downstairs to do so I suddenly had the most
terrifying thought: Supposing a Jerry bomber is
able to see down my chimney during the blackout
and thus knows exactly where to drop his load?
Many a century has passed, Mrs Potter, since we English sat
cross-legged in a circle about a fire in the middle of our wattle and
daub huts, eating roasted squirrel and watching the smoke
disappear though a hole in the roof before idly picking our teeth
with a handy bit of deer antler and popping out to defecate in
the lupins.
We are a civilised race, my dear, and our chimneys are the envy
of the world – I myself have a couple of particularly impressive
specimens, one of which is sufficiently cavernous as to allow a
string quartet to enter without too much ado, light a few
sparklers, bang out a bit of Beethoven and still give the Luftwaffe no
inkling of their presence.
Is this likely to be the case, and if so did I ought
to desist from lighting a fire at night until the war
is over? I’ve no burning desire to make myself
and my little cottage a target! I’ve some excellent
cabbages coming up and would dearly like to live to
see them through to fruition.
Yours, by candlelight,
Alice Potter, Mrs.
So light your fire of an evening, by all means, Mrs Potter, but do be sure to put your fireguard up as a stray coal may
indeed set the whole house ablaze and will definitely enable Herr Goering’s demonic bats to pinpoint not only your little
cottage but indeed the entire village. I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you how unpopular you are likely to be in the
vicinity on the back of that monumental faux pas!
Good luck with the cabbages, dear, adhere to the above advice and you’ll probably outlive them.
Yours,
Hilda Ffinch,
The Bird with All The Answers
You can catch more of Mrs Fox and Friends at www.mrsfoxgoestowar.co.uk
or on Twitter @mrslaviniafox
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