Once upon a time a very long time ago, in pleasant England, when people wore tunics and pointy leather shoes and did not read the guardian or the times and most certainly did not get the observer on Sunday, there lived a giant around the fens of ely. He was much like many other giants: very tall, quite broad, looked a bit like Nick Nolte, and he most certainly did not read the guardian. Whether he could read at all is immaterial, as he was concerned with more appropriate giant-like pursuits, like creating hefty bashing bats out of the bodies of spindly trees and practicing short, succinct phrases like ‘who goes there!’ or ‘raaaaawrgh!’ His name was the Ely Giant, and that for the moment is all you need to know.
Similarly, also once upon a time a very long time ago, but not too far removed from the Giant’s fenland, lived a man called Tom Hickathrift. He might have also been called Jack, but for copyright reasons he shall here be called Tom, as we wouldn’t want to step on the toes of any other giant related heroes, such as Jack of the giant beanstalks or Jack the giant killer.
This Tom was a very tall man. He was also very strong, but he was also very feckless. His favourite hobbies were sitting down and blowing the head off of lager. But that is no livelihood, so he was forced to seek employment. What can a man who is prodigiously tall and strong but very lazy and possibly over dependent on beverages with an alcohol content between 3 and 9 % do as a job? Being not the sort of man to think much about it, he got a job carting beer in the city of Wisbech, which is a pleasant market town if you are happy to forget about its latent giant problem.
And for a moment, he was happy. But he disliked work, much like many, and moreover, he found that the journey to work to be the worst bit. There is an old adage from anyone who has ever worked in retail or really any job in the hospitality sector that is relevant here. It is the way to work that is always the worst, as you have the whole day ahead of you. These truths spoke true to the ears of our tom.
So, he came up with something rather cunning. His normal commute comprised of a long toddle up the road towards Wisbech, but he discerned that if he cut across the marshes that littered the space between the city and his home, he could cut a good twenty minutes off of his journey, for the small price of wet feet. And he would take his cart, so this wouldn’t be a problem. And moreover, he was, as we said, prodigiously strong so even if his cart got stuck in a particularly marshy bit of the marsh, he would be able to pull it out. Where in top gear they’re always bemoaning the dangers of driving across wetland and falling into ditches, Tom had no such problem: he may have been as tall as Jeremy Clarkson and as simple as Richard Hammond, but he was stronger than the both of them together so he could just pull them out. Lovely stuff, he thought to himself, and set off.
tom hickathrift
by chloe dootson-graube
illustrations by chloe dootson-graube
Now, you may remember the Ely Giant. Yes, that is right - unfortunately this fenland was the very fenland that our friend, the Ely Giant, inhabited. And as you can imagine, driven from polite society, giant’s are very territorial. What use otherwise would they have for their corpus of rude phrases like ‘who goes there?” and ‘raaaaawrgh”?
It was not long before Tom encountered this giant. You might at this point expect what the Giant was going to say.
‘Raaaaawrggh!’ screamed the giant. ‘Who goes there?’ You might be interested to know that anthropologists working amongst the giants have recently discovered that these two phrases carry an interesting subtext: the latter, who goes there, can also mean, ‘get off of my land you tiny fuck!’: and the former, rawwrgh, can be taken to mean ‘fuck off!’ It is also perhaps enlightening to note that when this was discovered, the academic community were not overly amazed, and the scholars of the journal of giant studies published many disparaging articles to the effect of ‘well, that was kind of obvious, and you’ve wasted my time.’
‘Oh hello,’ said Tom. ‘I’m just taking a rather ingenious shortcut, don’t mind me.’
‘You didn’t answer either of my questions, you scrawny babyfaced fuck!’ said the Giant.
‘Oh, well, I’m Tom, and I’m just trying to get to work! I cart beer in the city of Wisbech! And also, I’m not scrawny, I’m 6 foot five and I keep being told i’m prodigiously strong!’
‘Wisbech!!!! Wisbech!!!!’ said the Giant. ‘I HATE WISBECH!’ He then picked up his thorny bat and proceeded to smite Tom off of his cart, sending our Tom flying with his overly long legs flapping through the air. ‘Fuck off you GANGLY FUCK!’ he then stood with his legs asunder, awaiting retaliation.
Tom thought all of this was very rude. He did not like being called scrawny, babyfaced, gangly, or a fuck. He was none of those things! He was tall, but well proportioned, he looked his age, he had at least a four pack if not a six and moreover, he was not just a fuck but a generous lover. The audacity fo this giant who looked like Nick Nolte! And thus he resolved that negotiation was out of the question.
Dragging his feet out of the muddy pit where they had been deposited with a satisfying squelching noise, he crawled over to his upended cart, now a ruin of its former glory. He tore the axle (wheels and all!) off of his cart, and went after the giant.
Naturally, murder was the only solution. Sadly, this was what happened to naughty giants. A discussion of the foul injustices that befall giants is sadly beyond our remit here, but I believe it is suffice to say that it is probably racially motivated, and perhaps something that deserves a re-evaluation at a later date. As a narrator I wish to divulge that I personally think Tom ought to have been a bit more understanding, as no one is better placed than he to understand the struggle of the overly tall. But no, he was going to murder the giant. Because that was the done thing.
The giant did not take much to strike down. You’d think that he’d have rather good balance considering that he probably had size 15 feet, at least. But Tom whacked him with the axle of his cart, and he fall flat on his face, and then tom hacked him to death, and when he entered Wisbech, covered in mud, he was welcomed as a hero.
the end ❤