Rocca - The Amazing Adventures of Wobblin Wobin

N OT LONG AGO in an almost-forgotten part of London near docklands lived a very old man called Mister Jakub. He was a poor immigrant from Poland, an expert metalworker, and behind his terraced house was a small yard in which he had a toolshed. Whatever was in that shed he kept secret from the world. Nosy neighbours desperately trying to discover its contents repeatedly failed whenever they tried to find out, and as he seemed to have no friends, or visitors whom they could quiz, they remained in a perpetual state of curiosity. The gossips came up with all kinds of fanciful ideas and spent lots of time arguing around them when they met: at the doctors for instance, or down at the shops, or down at the bingo hall. But in the end there was only one thing they could all agree on: that nobody except old Mister Jakub had ever been seen going in (sometimes with large bundles) and coming out (never carrying anything) of that shed.

Soon they got fed up guessing and spying on his comings and goings, and decided to leave him in peace. For which Mister Jakub, a solitary type, was eternally grateful. He liked living alone, minding his own business with no wife or children to worry about, going out only when absolutely necessary to the corner shop, say, or the post office to pick up his pension. Very rarely, when he had managed to save enough cash and was feeling sentimental, he would go out to buy some vodka to remind him of his homeland, and on returning home put some music on his ancient gramophone: always Chopin, the great Polish composer who wrote beautiful works for the piano. Seldom did he venture further out of his way to the charity shop if some item of clothing need replacing, or to the back streets where small car-repair garages and other little businesses that worked with metal in any shape or form conducted their trade. For Mr Jakub was a scavenger, a collector of other peoples waste, for whom any unwanted bit of iron, steel, aluminium, or other metal product was as good as gold.

You see, something that had started for Mr Jakub simply as a hobby when he first came to live in England had grown over the years into what others might call an obesssion. Salvaging odd bits and pieces such as these, he would shuffle home as fast as his 79-year-old legs would take him and go straight to his back yard and into the shed. It was his factory, the centre of his universe. Nothing else in life was as important for him as what he did in there: turning such little pieces of rejected scrap metal into the most beautiful garden ornaments you could ever wish to see.

He was totally unprepared for the disaster that was looming and the awful moment his happiness would come to a sharp and sudden end.

L IFE IN THAT corner of London had pretty much been by-passed by the 21st Century until someone in Authority (I mean to say, the Town Hall) decided the old Victorian streets filled with row after row of poor-quality housing would have to be knocked down and the residents moved to a better life in tower blocks owned by the council to make way for the big city redevelopment scheme they had in mind. It was dangerously close to where Mr Jakub lived. Too close.

Meanwhile, Mr Jakub had a planning problem of his own. Without noticing it, his passion had resulted in a space crisis: the shed was rapidly filling up and he had little room left in which to work. Over the years his creations had piled up, one on top of the other, and to you or I, had we been allowed to look in, would have seemed like nothing but a tangled mass of junk. There were elves and goblins; a flying witch on a broomstick; peacocks; owls and a pair of baby ducks; a nodding dog; a grasshopper; a cute comic dragon; rusty chickens; a sleeping cat; frogs; squirrels; fairies; angels and cherubs; butterflies; ladybirds; a dragonfly; snails; toadstools and mushrooms (a set of four); a Chinese buddha; a pair of crouching lions; a meerkat; a koala bear; rabbits; flamingoes; penguins; a tortoise; a large March hare; lizards; a hedgehog; a tin cockerel one metre high; a mother fox and her cub as well as assorted metal shapes only he knew the meaning of. His latest fantasy was a cheeky robin, perched on a curved twig, balanced on a bedspring, stuck on top of a long metal rod. We certainly wouldnt have had a clue what that was all about. A scarecrow, perhaps?

So there he was with this space problem, and not having any idea what to do about it. Of course, selling some or all of his stuff would have been the obvious answer. Not only would it clear the space he badly needed, it would bring him some nice extra income to spend on himself (as I said, Mr Jakub was not a rich man; a little more money would be welcome, you might have thought). But he hesitated. The trouble was, he had become so close to his creations he had begun to regard them, fondly, as his children. Besides, he never really gave money a thought, being a modest man with modest needs who was happy to get by on his pension, which covered his rent and lifes other basic needs with the occasional vodka treat. Whereas other people in his position would not have given the subject a second thought, to him the very idea of selling his creations in order to profit from his art seemed completely wrong.

Well, now. The days passed and he was still no nearer finding a solution, working there amid all this clutter and worrying about what to do, when a letter came tumbling through his front door bearing the official badge of The Authority. It was on such nice, stiff, paper that at first he thought it had to be an invitation to an event or party, or at very least a meeting over a cup of tea to discuss the future of his neighbourhood. Alas, no. On the contrary, the words he read were blunt and to the point. Without ceremony, the City Planning Department simply informed him that his entire street stood in the way of progress and had to be demolished. Residents had to get out and would be re-housed elsewhere.