Dangermouse Vs The Elephants - short story

Adapted from images by André Santana Design and Trang Le on Pixabay

When you live in a downstairs flat you learn, very quickly, that most humans are actually elephants in disguise. Bang. Clunk. Thud. Thunk. Bang. Clunk. Thud. An endless, tuneless symphony booming in the background of your home, through work, and exercise, and trying to relax. Bang. Clunk. Thud. Thunk. Bang. Clunk. Thud. Each day, every day and – since the latest tenant arrived upstairs – all day too.

This particular elephant is most curious and annoying. Its flat is smaller than mine – I know because I’ve seen it many times over the years, after going upstairs intending to complain until the previous elephants have explained why I shouldn’t – and my own flat isn’t that big, just twenty four feet long and sixteen wide. I measured it the day I moved in (I find it helps to know intimately the space where you intend to live).

But regardless of the size of the flat, there are certain codes that it’s assumed will be abided by when one person decides to live close to others. Perhaps the most important code is that this person remembers that the others exist. But this new elephant is most curious and annoying because, of all the things it might remember, this particular code is not one of them.

Over the years I’ve known many elephants. Elephants that thump out of bed every morning at 4.00am to go to their job at a supermarket (why a supermarket needs to open so early is beyond me, but I had plenty of time to think about it, morning after morning, as I strained to get back to sleep beneath its clumping feet). Elephants that scrape their furniture around with their trunks at random times of morning, noon, evening and night, or whenever you’re least expecting it really. And a few elephants that make no noise at all until you really need them to be quiet, like when you’re doing a job application or recording a monologue and then: Bang. Clunk. Thud. Thunk. Bang. Clunk. Thud.

Ear plugs are a help but not impregnable. They’re not really designed to block the noise of elephant feet clumping right above your head.

And this particular elephant – this curious and annoying new elephant that intends to live above me for an indefinite length of time – has for the past four weeks never stopped clumping once. Despite its living space being no more than fifteen feet long and ten feet wide, there are apparently things it needs to use, check, or touch in every single corner every single moment of the day. Perhaps it’s addicted to exercise, or maybe suffers from chronic pain – hardly surprising for an elephant confined to such a small space – and must pace continually to relieve it. Or perhaps it’s just a mad elephant. But whatever its motivation, it’s definitely persistent and highly inconsiderate. An elephant that thinks it lives in a world of its own.

But all that’s about to change.

Above my front door – my only door – there’s a gap of five feet seven inches up to this elephant’s window. Its only window. Now, as a child I was a big fan of Dangermouse. I watched all his cartoons, read all his books, and even had his board game – the one where, when you reach the final section of the board, you have to choose between an easy route that’s much longer, or a shorter one that’s harder to negotiate. Though why anyone would choose the harder route was always quite beyond me.

I also remember the articles in his annuals, one-off pages between his comic strip adventures where he gave away the secrets of his trade, like survival techniques (did you know if you suffer a burst tyre on your bicycle when out in the countryside and have no spare inner tube to hand, you can strip out the old one out and line the tyre with moss to cycle home?); costume designs (I once made a neat eyepatch out of a cut-up cornflakes packet, perfect for covering a black eye); and most importantly, spycraft. On Dangermouse’s advice I once hollowed out my Mum’s hardback edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People to conceal my secret treasures. Though, I didn’t really have any secret treasures. I think I just kept a broken old clay pipe that I found in the garden in it.

The point is, Dangermouse knows what he’s doing. His methodology is sound. He would never put up with being plagued by thunderous pachyderms.

Another trick of his I remember – one I never tried – was making a periscopic spyglass out of toilet roll inners and two mirrors. My current situation seems the perfect opportunity to give it a try. Toilet rolls won’t do the trick, though. By nature, I’m quite a frugal person. It’s perfectly possible, with shrewd application of the paper and careful folding in between, to use no more than five sheets in a single sitting. A single roll can last me over a month so a five feet seven inch spyglass would require more than fifteen month’s worth of inners.

I could of course use kitchen roll inners, which I seem to get through a lot faster – at least two a month. However, after some quick calculations, I’ve realised a kitchen roll spyglass of the required length would still take over three months, and I simply cannot live like this any more. I just cannot.

I suppose I could remove all the paper towels from their rolls and store them elsewhere, but that wouldn’t do at all. What if I forgot where I put them? Not to mention the untidiness, and all the money wasted buying multiple towels I might never live to use.

No. What I need is a tube that’s already five feet seven inches long, or ideally longer, as holding the spyglass up to the very top of the door would be too wearing on my arms.

The solution? Poster tubes! I haven’t bought posters since I was a student twenty years ago. They always seemed like another waste of money, and I wouldn’t want to mess up my landlord’s walls by fixing them with blu-tack or drawing pins or sticky tape; but perhaps a single purchase of one very cheap, very large poster – one I’ll never actually hang but could give to someone who needs a pointlessly large poster – that, perhaps, could be justified in this time of dire need. And I’m sure Dangermouse would approve of me upgrading his original design.

So this weekend I’ll go and buy one. No, not the weekend. There’ll be too many people in town. Instead I’ll book a morning off work, which will give me time to make the spyglass too. I’ll need two mirrors, of course: one for each end of the tube. I do have a mirror – a plastic one I’ve never used – and a junior hacksaw I can cut it up with. I’m not very good with a hacksaw but the mirrors don’t need to be perfect, I suppose. (Not everything can be, people say.) They just need to be large enough to fit inside the tube and reflect one another, so I can get a decent view into the upstairs flat and see what this elephant is doing up there.

And when I find out, well good grief, there will be trouble. I’ll inform the landlord at once and hope he does something useful about it because I simply cannot stand the idea of facing up to any more elephants. I simply cannot, cannot, cannot.