[Diligent: from Latin diligent-em attentive, assiduous, careful.]
Goblins are diligent squared. Leave them a note that a noblin (or non-goblin, as they
call us Big Folk) would easily understand and… well, here’s a recent example:
Scrob: It’s time to compost the vegetable beds and don’t forget to do the
dishes.
Result: neat piles of manure on every plate in the kitchen. And a grumpy
Scrob when I gave him an earful.
Yes, Scrob is now a him. This is not the result of her having been rude to a
wizard, who punished her by turning her from a bouncy little bundle of mischief into
more of a gnome.
Last month, Scrob handed in her notice.
When I asked what she was going to do next, she told me that she was going to work with The Bonkers. I wondered who, or what, they might be, and she said “Beople who are ponkers.” It turns out that she wants to work in mental care, so she’s gone off to study at a local guild. She says that she was inspired by working with me. She meant it as a compliment. They’re different from us, are goblins.
But not different from each other. The new Scrob, Scrob Two, is identical to Scrob One in every way, apart from being male, bald, bearded, twenty years older and a lot, by which I mean nearly two inches, taller. His original name was Grob, so it will come as no surprise when I tell you that in his previous job he was a Greenie. He lived in a nice nest behind the water-butt in the greenhouse, and he certainly has the greenest of fingers. They are even greener than the rest of him, and everything flourished under his care. He was always hauling baskets overflowing with fruit and veg to the house, and brewing delicacies in his pickle-shed. When Scrob showed him how to label his jars, he immediately decided to switch careers and become a writer.
When his authoritative, four-volume Encyclopedic Compendium of Vegetable Labels was published he was so proud that he bought the new hat that he’d always wanted (a purple one with a red-and-white feather), handed over his greenhouse to his nephew, Nob, changed his name to Scrob, because that’s what scribegoblins are always called, he says, and moved into my study. He has a perch across the desk from me, where he works diligently, both on his tasks and mine. Sometimes I look up and see his watery eyes peering at my pen, as he tries to decipher my handwriting—which is not easy even when you’re the right way up. My scrawl is almost illegible enough to have me instantly Board Certified as an alchemist. The other day I turned my manuscript round to see what it must look like from the other side of the desk. It gave me a headache.
And so far, I must say, Scrob Two has been diligence itself. Mail is answered promptly and politely. Appointments are entered into the diary—which for some reason he keeps in the dairy, but that’s goblins for you. At four o’ clock every afternoon he brings in a tray of “bea and tiscuits”, and we take a break and catch up on each other’s news and views. So far, so diligent. He has caused me very few problems, really. I could probably take the blame for most of them. My remark that I would be working on my current project until the cows came home would be a case in point. But at least we got plenty of nice, fresh manure for the garden, even if the lawn was quite badly trampled.
