Me and Cosmo are walking along a very straight wide track in the woods and I can see a small group of people in the far distance and it takes quite a while before we will get there. But you know – Cosmo he is always busy interested in squirrels and rabbits and is constantly searching, looking, listening and following a trail of some sort. By the time we approach this group I have no idea what I’ve been thinking, just kind of arrived out of a daydream and hear myself saying ‘that’s impressive’.
‘Yeh he’s a nutter’ is the reply.
This is a group of three teenage boys who have cycled into the woods on their bikes, with rucksacks as if they are on an expedition? An old fashioned scenario I thought. One of the boys has climbed up a tree which has its first branch about 20 feet or even more above the ground and above that is another branch with a snapped rope hanging down, which I remember had a log tied to it.
‘He got up there like one of the black men with the rope tied between his feet’
I doubted that as the tree looked very smooth, and said ‘yeh Pygmy’s climb trees to get fruit and that’.
‘No, he didn’t really’
I got that feeling that these boys were going to bombard me with confusing contradictory statements, neither were interested in Cosmo and wanted me to move on quickly.
I quite liked this situation and did not want to leave quite so quickly, I thought I might try a little harder to engage with them and I said, ‘No……… I know how he got there, he’s climbed down from the sky! Do you even know who he is’?
They saw how bizarre that statement was and smiled and said, ‘no we know him’.
Things relaxed and these boys explained that after this they were going to make a swing to cross over the deep pond along the track a bit. I said I knew exactly where that pond was, I didn’t know how deep it was, but I saw a dog run into it and the dog didn’t sink! What’s happening here are you mending the rope swing. They were, and the guy in the tree was edging closer to the rope and he cut it off with a pen knife. I said I wanted to take a photo of them, as I was writing a blog about walking in these woods and asked them to stand at the foot of the tree and pose. They seemed very happy and almost interested in the blog. Asking what was it called, how long had I been writing it. I said it was called Another walk with Cosmo. They pointed at Cosmo who was waiting patiently for me to move along, asking if it would come up if you google it. They said he’ll stand up on the branch for your photo. We agreed not to go that far and me and Cosmo left them to it. We will follow up another day and see what they made.
I keep thinking of Jack and the Beanstalk now, climbing down from the sky with bags of gold he stole off the giant. When I got home googled the boy who fell from the sky. Turns out he did and landed in Coventry. He spoke Urdu, had no idea where he came from or what community he had belonged to and did not know his own name or how old he was? Apparently a victim of people trafficking.
