Wroxall Mole-Catcher Isaac Clencher stunned the Shanklin and Ventnor region yesterday when he recounted a very disturbing vegetation experience, writes Horticulture, Literature, Dairying, Pest Control & Politics Correspondent, Daisy Bush.
In an amazing turn up for the books, Mr Clencher claimed that he had been followed home by a foxglove plant. The darkly-dramatic - not to say tragic - irony of this claim will not be lost on afficionados of John Wyndham's famous 1951 science fiction novel 'The Day of the Triffids', in which a variety of deadly toxic plant is released into the wild and proceeds to take over the world.
In the novel, the mobile and destructive triffids threaten to destroy human civilisation, and a number of survivors flee the contaminated mainland to the Isle of Wight in search of a safe haven, where they establish a colony of triffid survivors.
What must Mr Clencher's sister, Tittie, have thought, then, when her brother arrived home in a panic at 1am, and began to speak of an experience that threatened to reverse the narrative of Wyndham's post-apocalyptic parable, and put an end to long-held notions of the Isle of Wight as a place of safety, calm and succour.
"Well, y'see, what I were thinkin' was", Miss Clencher told me yesterday, in the cosy parlour of the mole-catcher's cottage she shares with her brother, "what I were thinkin', when I hears 'im a-comin' in through th' kitching winder, well, I thought 'yon bugger's bin at the Fightin' Cocks at Godshill wi' 'is mate, old Jake Bleery, that does th' stibblin' an' the' nolloppin' over at Bobberstone Farm. 'E'll 'ave 'ad one too many pints o' Nadger's Whistle."
I paused, trying to make sense of this colourful depiction. Failing, I gestured to her to continue.
"Well, I goes down-long the stairycase, an' Isaac, he be sat like Humpety Dumplety, all-long th' kitching table, an' all a-tremblin' as though e's has gotten them shaverin' collywobbler doodahs that took away me best friend Bessie Crapple a year gone Lady Day afore th' last."
Realising by now that I ought to have heeded the Editor's advice, and brought along Dick Harden, our Dialect, Cookery, Fashion, Topiary & Coastal Erosion Correspondent to act as a translator, I gave up and asked to see Isaac himself.
I found Issac Clencher in the cottage garden, stroking the lavender and singing a lullaby to a sleeping bumble bee. He was clearly still in a state of shock. "Arr, they dumbleby dores be a-buzzin' lowly-like this year. It's a long winter a-comin', an' precious mich honey they'll be a-milkin' on the heathways", he said, mysteriously.
Beginning to despair, I asked if he was ready to speak about his experience at all. He looked at me. "Aye, I can speak on it. Aye, I can speak. But maybes it's all th' speakin' an' carryin' on that brings it all down on a body. Maybes it be th' best way fer a body ter stopper 'is whistle an' keep counsel wi' th' dumbleby dores an' flutterbies i' th' grass." And with that, he was off, humming 'Jerusalem' and chasing after a Red Admiral.
In the end it was Eric 'Squirrel' Nutkin, tarring the feet of his geese near St John's Church in preparation for driving the herd to Shanklin market the next day, who saved a girl reporter's neck, coherent story-wise.
Eric told me what he had gleaned when he visited the Clenchers early that morning. "You see, old Isaac wasn't drunk. He'd been checkin' mole traps near Bachelors Farm and Winstone. It was moonlight, he swears by a moonlight check, says the moles, they come up, attracted by the moon. Anyways, he sees this great foxglove by the gate. It brushes at him when he goes by. It seems to tower up, 'tall enough to sting the moon' is what he said. Gives him a proper scare. Then, when he's comin' by French Mill, there it is again, he reckons, leanin' over th' gate at 'im again. Well, 'e starts runnin', 'cos 'e hears a terble lot o' bawlin' an' roarin' across the fields near Winstone, an' 'e swears blind every time 'e looks back, that great foxglove's not far behind.
"Well, old Isaac wouldn't rest this mornin' till I'd taken me sickle to all th' foxgloves round their cottage. I humoured 'im, for Tittie's sakes, but I just think e's been too long at them mole traps. Them noises near Winstone - that'll 'ave been th' donkey sanctuary, an th' council can't afford ter mow them roadsides these days so no wonder there's bloody great foxgloves all 'long there.
"I telled Isaac to stay off the traps for a bit. It sent 'is Uncle Cuthbert mad, did sittin' all night at them traps in the moonlight, waitin' for a nip. Me, I never goes near moles. Ain't nature, I say, for them creatures to swim underground like that. Stick to geese, I say. You know where you are with a goose. Would you like a goose, me dear?"
I thanked Eric Nutkin, and made my excuses. I left the charming village of Wroxall, and headed back to the relative civilisation of Cowes. Nestled in the rolling downs, Wroxall is in many ways an idyllic place. But there is a worm in the apple. The idyllic surface seems to mask a seething coil of dark forces. Such is often the way of idylls, in my brief, though deep, experience.
