The Tale of Polly Pot

By: Valentino Incanto Profferi

©Valentino Incanto Profferi 2009

The story told here is utterly, fictitious and any resemblance between the characters herein or the events depicted and any true incident depicted by the Fairy tale is completely coincidental and unintentional.

Dear Polly Pot, as she was well known through out her village’s district in Surrey, was now a well ripened wench who was well loved by all who had come to know her. She was a generous spinster that occupied a little plot with a knoll at the front. The little green plot was surrounded by high hedges with gaps on each side for ramblers and visitors. Her plot was skirted on three sides by grazing land populated by sheep that could often be seen with blackbirds on their backs.

Behind the grassy knoll with a table and chair at its top, there was a shack that had been carefully put together, and a hand pump to a well that did by itself work as a pump. The shack’s spaces and cracks had been carefully filled in with various materials such as clay. Its roof was of layered corrugated steel sheeting weighed down with stones that had later been covered with a layer of packed earth. The shack was chilly, but the stout Polly found it quite comfy. She did after all; spend much of her time out of doors tending the gardens about the plot.

On one side of the shack there was a gap for the pipe from the stove with an oven that was flanked by two cabinets. On the other there was a table with three benches. Opposite the door lay a small bed with thick covers that were always neatly made. At the foot of her bed was a stool below a hanging mirror that helped to illuminate the windowless shack with the light from the spit door which was left half open on most day, but for those of storms and with the foulest weather.

By the hedges on one side she kept a row of spinney berry bushes that offered extraordinarily sweet and plump fruit much like Polly. They were highly regarded by her neighbours, who bought the majority each year to serve fresh, make preserves, and for their Christmas pudding. Three bushes there were of blackberry, two of raspberry, one of gooseberry, and a small patch of loganberry that Polly enjoyed herself in a jelly spread on her bread.

Along the other hedge were a row of prickly, colourful rose bushes. Of the roses Polly picked one flower each day of their season to accent her hair ribbon as she tied up her extensive dark blond tresses. Many of the village girls would come in the season to fetch a fresh rose either on the way to school or as a detour after the milking. Polly would smile in approval and ask nothing of them. However, most girls, except for the very poorest would give Poly a few pence for the blossoms that brought them some cheer.

The hedge at the back was partly obscured by a glass greenhouse that was taller than the shack. It could have made a very comfortable house. The mice, who were also Polly’s friends, helped keep her garden and lived happily in the little wood blocks inside it that Polly used to put her pots on. In those pots she grew the pot that earned Polly so many a friendly bop. Even the constable, Mr. Bobby, came by in the afternoon when he was off duty. Following their congress they would have a cup of tea with some cake followed with more coition with which he repaid her herbal relations.

In her garden she kept a patch of herbs with rosemary, parsley, thyme, and dill. A larger segment was taken up with cucumbers, and the remainder wit carrots, cabbage, onions, and peas. Most of it produced cucumbers which she pickled and either gave to those who were hungry or sold them to those neighbours who paid to have had with her laid. For the grocer there was a barrel of pickles especially she made who paid her half its profits plus sausages, meal, salt and his wanted hard favour. It was his juicy penetrative savour that left Polly certain he had paid her. However, it was always the grocer who over paid her.