We hadn’t been on the bus for very long when it came to a sudden juddering halt.
‘What now’? I thought.
‘The bus driver has gone off to that old nursing home over there to try and get more petrol’. Keith said, as if were a natural occurrence.
‘We’ve got to go tell him that he won’t find any there’. I said indignantly.
‘We don’t need to. He’ll find out himself.’ Keith said.
‘No he won’t. He’s stupid’. And so off I went after the oaf of a bus driver.
‘Coo-ee’! Anyone there’? No one was there. ‘Strange’. I Thought. ‘Where is the driver,where are the staff and where are the old folks’? It was dark, dim, quite scary too as you’d expect the place to be full of life.
‘Oo-oo’. came a quiet, simpering and plaintive call.
‘What on earth sounds like that? I thought.
‘In here’. Came Keith’s welcome voice echoing around the nursing home.
I walked around slowly in the dim light, from room to room until I walked in on a small white tiled room to see Keith staring at the thing that had been making the noise. It was a small white baby seal in the far corner of the tiled room, trying to hide in the dim light; waving his flipper towards his mouth.
‘Ah, poor little thing. Just look at him. he’s so cute’. I whispered.
‘And not well either’. said Keith. ‘Just look at him. He’s got brown sauce coming out of his mouth’.
‘That’s not brown sauce. It’s gunk’. I added. ‘He’s not well, the poor thing’. He’s trying to get one of us to clean his mouth. That’s why he was waving his flipper’.
‘What is it’? Keith asked.
‘I don’t know, but we’ll have to look after him as there is nobody here to do that’. I told Keith.
‘We can’t’. Keith said in a resigned tone of voice that implied that we were going to take him home to be with the other animals in the ‘End of The World Garage’.
‘We can, we will and we are’. I ordered.
‘Ok’. said Keith, knowing full well that he was loosing the battle and had to give in yet again.
‘Do you want to go home with us’? I asked the baby seal as if he could understand me.
‘oo-oo’. came the response.
Keith and I were amazed at that response, but it was such a natural response and a welcome one to us and the baby seal.
‘Ok then,let’s go home then bonny boy’.
We picked up the little fluffy bundle of seal joy and headed back home on the suddenly now fully working bus.