Gerbil World Cup HQ: The Late Entries
Griselda arrived to find two letters waiting, which was, by gerbil standards, already an epidemic. By the end of the week it would be six.
Middle Earth
The first letter was written on paper so old it had gone the colour of weak tea, in a hand that pressed hard enough to nearly go through the page.
Griselda read the squad list twice. Elendil. Isildur. Anarion. Aragorn. Theoden. Denethor. A midfield built almost entirely out of one hobbit, Frodo, listed first. Dwarves on the wings. Elves in goal, on account of the eyesight.
“Some of these players,” Griselda said slowly, “are extremely dead.”
“So was the Hanseatic League’s accountant,” said Gertrude, without looking up. “Didn’t stop her doing the books.”
Griselda considered this a fair point and stamped the letter APPROVED before she could think better of it.
Elendil insisted on being addressed as Elendil, Elf-friend, which the other gerbils found extremely long to fit on a shirt. Isildur took one look at the trophy case and had to be gently walked away from it by her own daughter, Aragorn, who had the tired patience of someone who’d done this exact walk before, several times, over several ages. Theoden trained like a woman remembering she was younger than her knees currently believed. Denethor sat in the stands, ate steadily, and offered opinions on team selection that nobody had solicited and everyone wrote down anyway. Frodo carried the ball everywhere. The ball, mysteriously, always came back to her.
Wimbledon Common United, and, Separately, Sooty, Sweep & Soo
A second letter arrived taped to a marrow, and turned out — on careful, damp-patched inspection — to be two letters stapled together by someone in a hurry.
The first was from Madame Cholet, on behalf of the Wombles, in handwriting so tidy it looked ironed. Her back four were tidying the touchline before kickoff had even been discussed, which Griselda noted approvingly as “the first squad all season with a stronger work ethic than Tournament Operations itself.”
The second was from Sooty, Sweep and Soo, entering as their own separate side. Sooty said nothing and always seemed to be holding a wand nobody had seen her pick up. Sweep squeaked; Gwendoline transcribed it as [Sweep, agreeing] by the third bulletin, having given up on rendering the actual sound. Soo, calm and organised, ran the whole operation without appearing to try.
Both letters were stamped APPROVED, on separate forms, filed in separate drawers — which felt, to Griselda, like the very least she owed them after the marrow.
The Flowerpot Men & Little Weed
Written in two hands and one language nobody at HQ had a translator for, though Gertrude claimed to understand every word and refused, on principle, to explain how. Bill and Ben trained by talking exclusively to each other, at length, in flobbadob, while their coach — Little Weed, listed on the team sheet simply as Weed, capt. — stood between them and appeared to be the only one keeping the whole operation on schedule.
The Clangers
No letter this time — just a soup dragon, curled up outside HQ one morning with a note pinned to her tail. The Clangers communicated in whistles pitched too high for most of the building to hear, which Gwendoline found, on the whole, restful, and wrote up as such.
Bagpuss’s Mice
Small, industrious, and mostly interested in knitting the goal nets rather than defending them. Griselda approved this one on sight, on the grounds that any squad offering to improve HQ’s soft furnishings unprompted had already done more for Tournament Operations than most federations managed in a decade.
The Magic Roundabout
Dougal arrived complaining before she’d even signed the form, which Griselda found oddly reassuring — a captain who complained was a captain paying attention. Zebedee didn’t walk onto the pitch so much as arrive on it, mid-bounce, and refused to discuss her position, preferring, as she put it, “to go where the game needed her.”
Greta’s line appeared under the glass before Griselda had finished filing the last form:
Six new entries. One bracket. Bring several umbrellas.
Nobody asked where she’d been. Nobody ever did.
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