Wizki Tales

Wizki’s Trip To The Playground

Wizki was very excited. He had been promised a trip to the playground. He hadn’t been allowed to go to the playground on his own since he fell off the roundabout and suffered concussion. Fiona insisted on going with him to keep him out of trouble, but as she had been very busy with work lately, Wizki had been deprived of playground fun.

But on this day, Fiona assured him she would be available and she was true to her word. At five to ten she was insisting Wizki don his favourite red woolly jumper and they were on their way.

There were lots of interesting gateposts for Wizki to inspect on the way. There was a particularly good wrought iron gate that was especially fine that Wizki got a chance to thoroughly examine when Fiona bumped into her friend Tracey and nattered about Tracey’s unfortunate incidence of seasickness on a North Sea Ferry. It wasn’t that Wizki was interested in the smells of other dogs - he always found the sniffing of each other’s bottoms was beneath him - but he loved a nice bit of architecture, and he always enjoyed a good gatepost. He was a cultured pup.

The park was full of children playing and groundsmen gardening. Wizki loved the smell of freshly mown grass and dandelion seeds blowing in the wind. It always made him think of his oft-remembered school days, those beautiful times prior to his expulsion for cheating on his Domestic Science exam. He took in the air, the light. Oh, how happy could a pup be?

In this heightened state of happiness, Wizki ran straight to the swings, vacated the smallest child from her perch, climbed on and started to rock. Up he went. Back he went. He showed the watching children how a puppy could really swing. Down he went. Forward he went. Wizki was really moving. It was at the highest point of his back swing, with his tubby little frame leaning back to summon a massive effort, throwing his stubby little legs back and forth to build momentum and his tongue lolling out with enthusiasm, that Wizki found himself floating in space. Fiona had snatched him from the swing.

“Don’t push that poor little girl from her swing, Wizki: it’s naughty. If there isn’t a swing available, you’ll just have to wait. Now, apologise to the little girl.”

“Sorry,” Wizki said to the girl, as he saw her climb back onto the swing and shove her tongue out at him. Wizki wondered about biting her later when she got off the swing, but soon his attention was attracted to the roundabout and he forgot all about her.

The roundabout was Wizki’s favourite. He liked to spin round and round till he was dizzy. Then he would fall into Fiona’s arms and look sad to get attention. He had perfected the look over the years, and Fiona fell for it every time.

However this was the time Fiona got a call from work. She had to attend to the needs of a client. She tried to get out of the conversation - she had promised Wizki she would watch him on the roundabout, and she didn’t make promises lightly - but the problem was more involved than she had thought. She found herself walking round the park, talking her client carefully through the intricacies of the sale. She would glance round occasionally to make sure Wizki was still OK, and every time, there he was on the roundabout, spinning away.

It was quarter of an hour later, with the phone call finally over and with systems returned to normal, that Fiona returned to the roundabout to watch Wizki. She discovered that Wizki was not on the roundabout by choice. No, someone had stretched the arms of Wizki’s red woolly jumper and tied them to the roundabout. They had then spun the roundabout round and round. By the time Fiona got back to the roundabout, Wizki was really, properly sick.

“Who did this?” she demanded, anxious for her poorly pup and eager to discover who the culprit was. “Who has tied him to the roundabout and spun him round till he was sick?”

No one would admit to it, even though all the children were gathered round, looking sheepish.

“I need to know right now who tied up this poor little creature!”

Still silence. When she looked into their eyes, the children looked away.

“Wizki,” she asked, “Who did this to you? Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you again.”

There was silence and then a little boy said, “I did.” He said it quite defiantly, as if, though he knew he had done bad thing, he had done it for the right reasons.

“You did? Well, I demand to know why! This poor little animal may be mental scarred for life!”

“Because he asked us to!”

Fiona scoffed: “I sincerely doubt that Wizki would ask you to make him sick. You bullied that poor dog, as sure as I stand here. Wizki, tell them: you didn’t ask them to make you sick, did you!”

But Wizki was bashful:

“Might have,” he said, which was his usual reply when he really had.

Fiona was really saddened. She thought he’d got past this stage of asking to be bullied to prove he was a victim.

“He kept forgetting to hold on,” the little Boy said. “He kept flying off into the park. That’s why he got concussion last time he was here. So he asked us to tie him on so he didn’t fall off.”

“But why were you pushing him round when he wasn’t feeling well?”

“Wizki’s never been to sea. He wanted to know what seasickness felt like.”

That sounded like Wizki. If someone else had something, he wanted to have it, whether that was a new Playstation or Chickenpox.

He’s a silly little pup.

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