The Great, Big Hole

Once, in the middle of a small village, there was a great, big hole.

No one knew where the hole had come from. They only knew that it was there and that people might fall into it and so a group of concerned villagers went and complained about the hole to their mayor.

The mayor wasn’t interested in filling in holes, however. He was too busy building a big mayoral palace with golden roofs and silver doors and windows and a large fountain shaped like a mermaid and so he said to the villagers, “Don’t worry about it. Leave it to me. I’ll deal with it”.

And so the villagers went away happily, thinking that the problem of the hole would be sorted out.

But, secretly, the Mayor thought to himself, “Filling in large holes? That requires manpower and tools and money and I haven’t got any of those to spare, not with the building of my mayoral palace going on”.

And so the Mayor decided that, rather than filling in the hole, he would just cover it up.

“Yes, that’s right”, he thought, “If I cover it up with something and just put some earth on top then people will think I’ve filled it in”.

And so the Mayor said to two of the labourers who were working on his palace, “I want you to go to where the big hole is; the one in the centre of the village but don’t fill it in, just cover it up with something and then put earth over it so that it looks like you’ve filled it in and then get back as soon as you can and continue building my lovely palace”.

Both of the builders thought this a really stupid idea but they weren’t paid to think and so they just did as the Mayor told them.

Taking a large tarpaulin, they spread it over the top of the hole and, hammering pegs into the ground to hold the tarpaulin down, they covered it over with earth.

Now, because no one could see the hole, the villagers all thought that the mayor had kept his word
and, even when people walked over it to test it, the tarpaulin had been pulled so tight that it seemed like firm ground beneath them.

However, later that same day, a group of young children were playing on that patch of ground where the hole was, skipping and running and jumping up and down, believing it was quite safe
when, all of a sudden, the tarpaulin split in two with a loud ripping sound and, down into the hole, all the children fell.

Thankfully, all the poor children survived their fall but they still had cuts and bruises and
the villagers had to send for an ambulance and then the ambulance crew had to climb down into the hole and use a special winch to hoist the injured children, on stretchers, up out of it.

Now, when the children had been taken off in the ambulance to hospital, the villagers got very angry at the mayor.

“He said he’d deal with it but all he did was cover it up and, because he covered it up rather than filling it in that made it even more dangerous”, they all said.

And so the villagers agreed that, if the mayor wouldn’t fill in the hole, then they would do it themselves.

And what do you think they filled it in with?

Well, they were so angry with the mayor that they knocked down the palace he was building and used all the rubble to fill in the hole properly.

They may well have thrown the mayor in the hole too if they had not been kind hearted folk but instead they ran the crook out of their village.

The important thing is that a proper job had finally been done and, once the grass had grown over the top of the filled in hole, the children could skip and run and jump and even dance on top of it without falling in and now everyone in the village was very happy indeed.