What is Monkey looking for?
Photo of a blue plastic monkey with a white face and tail face down on top of a wooden fence post. His face is hanging over the edge of the post, looking down at the ground. Behind him is a tall piece of grass, and a field and woodland in the background. The sky is grey and glum.
What is Monkey looking for? Some say it’s justice, other’s the end times, other’s still his clan. I know though, that it’s actually a 20p piece: a special one he’s carried for more than fifty years. Monkey got the coin in change from a sweet shop when he was a kid. The sweet shop owner was the first human of any size to treat Monkey with dignity and respect, and didn’t even ask Monkey for any ID when he bought his cigarettes. So Monkey fell in love with the sweet shop owner, in his strange monkey-like way, and kept that 20p with him for ever and ever after, amen. Until recently, that is.
One day, one sad and sorry day I should say, Monkey was playing with the calves of the cows in the Lammas Lands. He was running and jumping, climbing and rolling, and having a real monkey of a time when the 20p must have fallen out of his pocket. Monkey said he has been looking high and low all summer, but so far, no dice. He’s beginning to suspect a cow has eaten it. Monkey is bereft.
Another thing Monkey is looking for is the Lost Civilisation of Godalming’s Lammas Lands. They were a Lilliputian clan which one ruled parts of Surrey. As a river-faring nation, they used the Wey and its tributaries to raid and conquer surrounding villages and hamlets. Human or beast settlement, the (now) Lost Civilisation would raid with impunity, determined to find and take the most valuable parts of a village—be it food, art, or monkeys—for themselves.
The Lost Civilisation lived on the Lammas Lands and had houseboats which could cope with the regular flooding, and which also kept them safe from reprisals. Monkey was a bounty they had retrieved from a peace loving inter-species woodland community in a non-disclosed location somewhere adjacent to the River Ock in Surrey. The treatment our dear Monkey received at the (now) Lost Civilisation’s hands was horrific, and so I will not cause your heart to hurt by telling that particular story. All I will ask, is that you do not judge our Monkey for becoming an agitated smoker. Far worse outcomes could have happened.
After a millennia of ruling the River Wey and its tributaries, and an epoch of terrorising our Monkey, one day regular sized humans started using the Lammas Land to graze their cows. Not too long after that, the Raiding and Ruling Civilisation became the Lost Civilisation and that was the end of that.
Well, that was the end of that for all but our sweet and dear Monkey. Since no one knows what became of the (now) Lost Civilisation, Monkey is left in a hypervigilant state, always on the look out for some rustling in the grasslands, a tiny cannon-laden houseboat amongst the reeds. No matter how many times people try to reassure Monkey that the cows ate the Lost Civilisation, or that the rising levels of pollution in the Wey eroded the hulls of their houseboats, or that they simply moved on, Monkey is certain that they escaped and will one day return. Honestly, though, I’m certain that’s just his trauma talking.
So that’s what Monkey is looking for: love and an adjacent terror. My personal hopes for Monkey is that he learns to stop looking and instead wanders the Lammas Lands in the present tense, enjoying as he does to babysit the calves and comb the big cows’ hair. In my heart, I know that when Monkey stops looking, Monkey will find a freedom from his fear because the Lost Civilisation really is lost. And likely, although not definitely, he will also finally find a shiny 20p piece.