No.31 Elf and Safety
Once upon a time the little girl lived with her parents and her brothers in a brand new house. It was so brand new that there were no neighbours because the other houses in the street were still being built. The back garden, well, there was no back garden. It wasn’t fenced off, had no top soil, and just consisted of the uneven mud of the encroaching building site.
It was the 1970s so Health and Safety was applied with a light touch. It wasn’t unusual for the little girl to come home from school and find a mini dumper truck had been driven across the area by the backdoor, scaring the area with deep tyre tracks that quickly filled with muddy rain water and the culprit dumper truck parked near by.
When the little girl went outside to play she would invariable gravitate to any dumper truck, climb up into the driving seat, and try to start up the vehicle. The little girl knew she would need a key to get it started but never did find a key in the ignition. It was still fun to sit up at height, pretending to drive, and looking out over the building site at the part built buildings that surrounded her home.
It felt like her very own domain. An evolving and growing housing estate. Although it was shared with the builders themselves, they were rarely seen. They were long gone by the time the little girl got home from school. There was always evidence of their daytime activities but the invisibility of the builders made the little girl think of magical elves that come out at night to help. These elves came out during the day.