enormity.
But he stayed in the forest of tall clocks, and waited. There came a time when he ran out of food and had to go looking for more. Sick as he was of the vegetables grown by Atticans, he knew he had to find some or starve. And true to his determined nature he did find some. Two hours’ walk from the forest there lay a triangle of three Attican villages. He visited this place twice in two days, gathering crops and filling his larder.
On his third trip he found the villages in the middle of a festival.
‘Oh, hey!’ cried Jordy, delighted with what he saw. ‘A game of hockey – I think.’
It appeared that they celebrated this festival by playing sport with old-fashioned T-squares – such as those used by draughtsmen and architects – wielding them as their sticks. With these sticks they batted an object around in teams of thirteen, attacking three goals placed one outside each village. Jordy watched as the lumpy little Atticans charged back and forth, whacking a ball made of rags. There seemed to be few rules in this game apart from the obvious one: you were not allowed to pick up the ball.
There were no goalkeepers and the goals themselves were sea chests on their sides with the lids thrown back, like open mouths waiting to be fed.
‘Oh, wow,’ Jordy murmured to himself from behind a cardboard box. ‘I’d love a game …’
He sat watching for quite a time from his hiding place. Gradually, one by two or three, players began dropping out. Jordy wasn’t sure why this was happening, but he guessed that when they got too exhausted to play any more they simply gave up. Once they came off the pitch, it seemed they couldn’t or wouldn’t return. Before long the teams were down to about three on each side and Jordy realised that the drop-out rate had been the same from each team at any one time. So if a player from village A had had enough, and left the field, village B and C players would follow shortly. Thus the teams were reduced equally and with no advantage to any of them.
One trick with the T-square seemed to be a favourite. A player would slip the T-square between an opponent’s legs, so that the top bar of the instrument was behind the ankles, then yank him off his feet. A great cheer would go up from the crowd when one of them did this to another. Jordy could see no referee or umpire on the field and assumed this kind of play was not a foul, even though the aggrieved player would leap back onto his feet and remonstrate loudly with the attacking player.
Finally, when there were only three players, one from each village, left on the pitch, Jordy could stand it no longer. He jumped out and grabbed a T-square which had been left leaning against a box. Shouting wildly, he threw himself into the fray, swinging his T-square with expert hands.
‘Go for the ball!’ he yelled at himself. ‘Keep your eyes on the ball!’
Indeed, one would have expected the villagers to have been shocked into immobility by the sudden appearance of a ghost. Not so. The players still on the pitch fought furiously with him for possession of the ball. Did he think he could be a star T-square-wielder overnight? Not so. These villagers had been playing the game since they could walk. Within two seconds Jordy was on his backside and nursing a bump on the back of his head.
He didn’t stop to complain: he was up on his feet in a flash and had downed the Attican who had flattened him. The other two came at him in a rush, but he sold them a dummy and sidestepped them, managing to take the ball with him. Two whirled and chased, the one on the ground followed swiftly. Jordy drew back his T-square to shoot at the nearest goal: what did he care which village it belonged to? But an Attican flung his T-square from five metres, striking the ball and sending it shooting across the field of play, out of his reach.
‘Is that allowed?’ cried Jordy. ‘Is that in the rules?’
He didn’t wait for an answer. Jordy chased the bat and ball. Reaching them he kicked the other player’s T-square out of reach, sending it skidding over the boards. Then with the other two bearing down on him he did a marvellous turn and struck