Syrup Season

Madge and Horst saw each other, once every year, at the height of syrup season. The biggest event on the village calendar was the annual Syrup Stir, when farmers, tinkers, travelling salesmen and niche whores from all around the municipal region gathered to stir syrup together. Around the enormous vats the local folk would stand elbow to elbow, wielding their massive syrup paddles and exchanging pleasantries. There was no better time for friends to catch up with each other, to enjoy each other’s company in a spirit of festive camaraderie. The Syrup Stir was a vital part of the village’s economic sustainability, but perhaps even more importantly, it held its social core intact.

Outside syrup season, villagers came and went as they pleased, flitting hither and yon, attending to business, raising children, watering crops and the thousand other little tasks that a citizen must carry out if they are to keep body and soul together. Often there was no time to stay in touch with those acquaintances who, though dear to one’s heart, proved so elusive when it came to dinner invitations or outings to the theatre. And the village didn’t even have a theatre, so the question was essentially moot. The point is, that if you had fallen behind on regional gossip, or found yourself wondering what your third cousin was up to nowadays, the Syrup Stir would be a soothing balm for the lacerations of social isolation, and syrup season was, for all who lived in the village and surrounds, that time of year when humanity was at its finest. Not for nothing was the village’s motto, “Stick Us Together With Syrup”.

Madge ran the village cardboard shop. She didn’t make the cardboard, but she did make the elaborate packaging that brought her many admiring comments from shoppers, the fancy wrappings that were so much more appealing to the eye than the plain brown paper they arrived in from the factory. It was often aid that “Madge makes the cardboard shop”, and everyone in the village was agreed: without Madge’s packaging, there may not be a cardboard shop at all.

Horst had never been to the cardboard shop. He had no interest in cardboard, but was at pains to make clear to others that this didn’t mean he bore any antipathy towards it. It was just that cardboard had played very little role in his life, and certainly had never exerted any significant influence over his behaviour. There was little need for cardboard at the Leterrier Aviary, and Horst was far too busy feeding, grooming and providing enrichment activities for a variety of birds both native and exotic to expend much time on recreational cardboard. So going to Madge’s shop had never appeared on his agenda, any more than Madge had ever found the need to pay a visit to the aviary — like Horst’s relationship with cardboard, she was in no way hostile to birds, but had never really seen the point of them.

Yet once a year, these two, whose vocations were so wildly disparate, found themselves alongside one another. Or rather, they had found themselves alongside one another the first year. Every year after that, they had contrived deliberately to take their places in proximity, affecting an air of nonchalance but in reality plotting out the route to the vatside with heart-pounding meticulousness, lest they miss out on the only spot they considered worth stirring syrup in — the spot next to the other.

For Horst and Madge were in love.

To Be Continued

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