- by Owen Morton, with material contributed by Kate Brasher
I’d like to apologise first off for the distinct lack of website articles for the last three weeks. As always, there are explanations, but I’m not going to really go into them, other than to say I’ve been busy every day with exams and every night with other important stuff (yes, stuff that is even more important than this website). On this fine Sunday afternoon, however, I find myself with an hour to wait until I start reading my beautiful shiny new copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and what better way to kill this hour than by detailing to you all the very exciting and not at all stupid story of the Bush People of Pickering? (Well, actually, there are several better ways of killing this hour, primary among them being playing FreeCell, but anyway.)
The story of the Bush People of Pickering is not a happy one. As can perhaps be gathered, this interesting race of people lives near Pickering, in – get this – bushes. Most specifically, they live in the bushes on the side of the road that goes from York to Pickering. Why they live in these bushes is a question which has never adequately been answered by anthropologists or anybody else. It is a certainty that these bushes are no better in any way than bushes in a more isolated spot; the only explanation that anyone has ever come up with is that the Bush People long for the life experienced by ordinary humans who are not Bush People, and they position themselves in bushes nearest to the roads built by ordinary people so they can continue to dream.
This explanation actually fits quite well with other facts known about the Bush People. They are in fact made up of two quite distinct groups of people. The first of these groups is those who are Bush People by heritage – they were born to it and their family have been Bush People for generations. These are the True Bush People, the ruling caste of Bush People, who live in the best bushes, and lord it over the other group of Bush People. The other group can perhaps be best described as ‘Bush People Wannabes’, members of ordinary human society who have heard the legend of the Bush People and find that this idea of a simple life living in the bushes by the side of the A169 appeals to them, for whatever reason. Obviously, the Bush People Wannabes are almost always entirely insane, because no one in their right mind would believe that this sort of lifestyle is a sensible one. Occasionally, however, a Bush Person Wannabe might be so because they have nowhere else to go: a criminal on the run from the police, for example, who would think that the police would never ever think to look for them in a community of people who live in bushes by the side of a main road. In most cases, they’re right. The True Bush People always welcome Bush People Wannabes, because – as has already been noted – the True Bush People secretly envy ordinary human communities, and by accepting Bush People Wannabes, they are bringing parts of normal human society into their own community – even if these parts are the insane and the criminal.
Beside the steady influx of Bush People Wannabes, the Bush People do not have links with ordinary human society, and are in fact outside it. The laws of the United Kingdom do not apply to the Bush People, for they have their own system of government. They technically comprise a separate country which merely happens to be enclosed entirely on all its boundaries by Great Britain. There are in fact other such communities on the A169. Where the bushes cease and are replaced by grassland, the dominion of the Bush People ends and you enter the territory of the Grass People. The Grass People are almost entirely the same as the Bush People, except for the important fact that they live in grass and not bushes.
Because neither of these communities have links to ordinary human society, they naturally have close links with one another. The Bush People and the Grass People have long been allies against the evil power of the Pylon People, who live in electricity pylons, also along the A169. Contact between the Bush People and the Grass People is maintained through the use of buses. Obviously, ordinary human buses going along the A169 do not allow Bush People on board, so some form of trickery is required to gain access to the bus so a visit to the Grass People can be made. Initially, this trickery took the form of hijacking the buses through simple means: a Bush Person would step out into the middle of the road with a gun and force the bus to stop, then allowing all the Bush People to get on the bus and directing it to be driven further down the A169 to the lands of the Grass People. This tactic was abandoned when the bus drivers began to get wise to the plan and started simply running the unfortunate hijacker over. A new plan was adopted: the Bush People set to work building themselves a fake bus stop, which, when completed, would be placed by the side of the road in a convenient spot. Hidden by the bus stop, the Bush People would stick their hands out and cause buses to stop, believing the bus stop to be genuine. Then they would leap out of the bus stop, and before the driver knew what was happening, they would swarm the bus and force the driver to take them down the A169 to the home of the Grass People. This plan also had to be abandoned when it was pointed out to drivers by their bosses that there were in fact no bus stops along the A169, and therefore any bus stop they saw would be a fake created by the Bush People for their own nefarious use. Following this, buses never stopped for the Bush People again, and so the Bush People attached wheels to their fake bus stop and simply travelled down the A169 on that instead. They have been stopped by the police for this mode of transport several times, and have since come to the conclusion that it is easier to just walk, especially considering the distance from the Land of the Bush People to the Land of the Grass People is only 100 metres anyway.
And that’s the legend of the Bush People. It’s all true. Every last word of it.