Once the Truffle Prospectors had arrived at Boothland Woods, Wilson looked round, inspected the ground for a moment and declared that the very place where they were standing was a ‘prime spot’ for Truffles.
Lifting Dave out of the bucket, he placed him on the ground and instructed him to ‘get sniffing!’
Poor Dave shuffled around disconsolately for a few minutes before saying, ‘I don’t think this is a very truffly spot after all. Can we go home now?’
Wilson is not a quitter – at least, not when there’s money to be made – so he turned to Nërp and said, ‘Okay, it’s time for Plan B – turn on your Olfactory Tech and we’ll make a start!’
Nërp at first pretended not to have heard, but once that gambit became clearly untenable he confessed that, due to an oversight at the factory, his Olfactory Analysis Module had not been installed.
On hearing this, W came very close to losing his temper, pointing out to Nërp that this was only the latest of a long series of non-installed modules.
‘Well excuse me for not being C3-PO or HAL5000… or Johnny-5... or perhaps you’d have preferred Wall-E?’ Nërp replied, huffily.
He certainly seems to have had his Brooding, Overthinking and Sulking Modules installed!
When everyone got home, they were all in a bit of a bad mood. Wilson grumbled that he will have to start a Truffle Farm, due to the difficulty of locating and harvesting Wild Truffles.
He stomped off to Google ‘Truffle Seeds’ while Nërp and Dave stood in silence, staring at the ground uncomfortably…
Dave the Pig, having secretly confessed to me that he has no idea what a Truffle even is, let alone what one smells like, now wholeheartedly wishes he'd never brought the subject up.
Nevertheless, he is now heading up to Boothland Woods with Wilson and Nërp for an exploratory Truffle Survey, and he’s very nervous about the entire venture.
He tried refusing to go, but Wilson told him he was just suffering from ‘Truffle Nerves’ and popped him in the Truffle Bucket so he could be carried up to the woods – thus conserving his strength for truffle-detecting and -digging…
During a break in the Pig Yoga Rehearsals, while Wilson was out of earshot Dave the Pig called me over.
He looked very worried, so I asked him if he was a bit nervous about the whole Pig Yoga thing.
‘No, it’s not that,’ he replied, ‘it’s just that I think I’ve done a silly thing – I mentioned Truffles to Wilson!’
‘I’m sure that’s not a problem’ I replied, reassuringly.
Dave looked even more worried as he continued, ‘I was just saying what useful and intelligent animals we pigs are, and I happened to say that truffles are quite valuable, and that pigs are used for finding them. Now he’s on-line looking up the price of truffles, and I’m afraid I may have done a Bad Thing…’
Our conversation was cut short as Wilson returned to the room and announced that, not only is Pig Yoga now ‘On Hold’, he will not be proceeding with his PYO Strawberries venture this year – he will instead be opening a Truffle Shop.
‘The price of Truffles is around $14,203.50 per kilogram!’ he explained in a shocked voice. ‘That’s about £5000 per pound – WAY higher than the price of Strawberries! And best of all, they’re FREE – you just dig them up from out of the ground!’
This sounds to me a bit like Wilson’s ill-fated plan to ‘just dig V-Coins up from the ground’, but he is confident he can successfully harvest Wild Truffles from the woods, using Dave the Pig to locate and bring them to the surface.
I also have one nagging doubt: if Truffles are so easy to harvest, why are they so expensive?
_________________
I have to go into hospital shortly for a small surgical procedure. I don’t know how long I shall be out of action, so it may be necessary for Wilson to stay with his family at the zoo for a little while – which sadly will result in a short break in Blog Posts.
Wilson’s
SENSATIONAL PIG YOGA CLASSES
are now open for booking!
I don’t want to be disloyal to Wilson, but if you’re even considering booking a Pig Yoga Class, honestly I’d leave it a day or two so the initial teething problems can be ironed out.
However, if you’re determined to be an Early Adopter, please apply to the usual address enclosing your Class Fees (CASH only – Wilson is no longer accepting V-Coins, BitCoins, KodakCoins or any other virtual currencies due to their ‘Volatility’)…
‘Pig Yoga’ is now officially a thing!
The Practice of Pig Yoga apparently involves lying on the floor while a young pig walks up and down over your prone body. I can’t imagine that this is of any benefit to anyone other than Wilson, who will be running the classes and trousering the class fees.
But I’ll bet it makes your eyes water – I can promise you he won’t be trying it on me!
While practicing Pig Yoga (which Wilson confessed he didn’t enjoy, and most certainly wouldn’t pay for himself) Polly arrived to announce that Neil the Sloth has said ‘Froome...’
This is very mysterious, but I fear that by the time Neil has finished his sentence, we’ll all have forgotten how it began…
____________
CORRECTION: Wilson informs me that he was not ‘lying on the floor’ but practicing an advanced yoga pose called ‘Balancing-The-Pig’ which is allegedly a fusion of the basic Yoga Poses Balancing-The-Cat and the Upward-Facing-Anteater…
