The Amazing Adventures of Wobblin' Wobin

By Tony Rocca

Meet Robin, or rather, Wobin: a metal garden ornament transported from England to the beautiful French Riviera. He's lonely and can't speak French. Neither can he fly, which is a bit unfortunate for a bird. This is his story about learning to fly and being brave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912850457

Tony Rocca

Tony Rocca is a writer from the UK and this is his first illustrated children's book.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Mister Jakub’s Secret Shed

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 people’s 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 wouldn’t 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 life’s 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.

For old Mr Jakub it signalled the end of his little world.

O

NE BY ONE

over the next two months his neighbours slowly gathered up their belongings and sticks of furniture and made for the exit. Although they grumbled loudly about the disturbance, secretly most were glad to leave their cramped and cold homes which had been built in an earlier century and swap them for the modern centrally-heated flats that the city housing officials proposed. But Mr J was made of stronger stuff. He watched, dismayed, as removal van after removal van trundled down the street, carting whole households away to a new life and new horizons, and he determined to sit it out. Even when everyone had gone, finally, he refused to budge. By this time he had received at least four Notice To Quit demands, all of which he had thrown on the fire.

Bulldozers had begun to knock down the first houses when a loud and insistent rat-a-tat-tat at the door brought him to his senses. Opening it a fraction on a security chain he saw a man in a black suit take out a piece of white paper and thrust it through the gap into his hands. EVICTION ORDER it read in big, red, capital letters. He had 24 hours to get out before the whole house would be pulled down. Or else? Or else the police would come with a warrant for his arrest and he would be forcefully removed from the property, and probably charged with a breach of the peace. Which means causing a public nuisance; he would be fingerprinted like a common criminal and possibly sent to jail.

Poor Mister Jakub. He was so upset. From his earlier life in Poland when it was in the grip of Communism he still had bad memories of terrible scenes involving police and soldiers in just this kind of circumstance. It had taken years to overcome the nightmares and he could not face the idea of going through it all again. He had to accept the fact that The Authority had won. Given his advanced age there was nothing he could do but agree and face an unknown future in a white-walled council flat totally without charm in some tower block where there was absolutely no chance at all of carrying on his hobby. Or maybe they would put him in an old folks’ home, which was an even less attractive proposition.

‘Well,’ said Mister Jakub to himself, ‘they can do what they like to me, but they’re not going to get my