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Dizziness Day Part Three

The Aftermath of Wobble: The Day Ballykillduff Tilted Slightly Left

A spin-off to “Dizziness Day in Ballykillduff”

1. The Day After Dizziness

When the dizziness stopped, Ballykillduff was never quite the same again.

Not in the usual, forgettable way like when someone replaces the town bench with a slightly newer bench. No, this was different.

The village had—by some mysterious leftover wibble in the world’s wobbly workings—tilted slightly to the left.

Not enough for immediate concern. Just enough to be noticeable. Balls rolled eastward. Tea cups slid gently across tables. The pub darts team scored nothing but the outer rim for three weeks.

Mrs McFadden said it was the Earth “settling into a comfortable slouch.”
Monsieur Brie insisted the village had “developed character.”

Farmer Doherty simply called it “Lefty Bally.”

2. The Peculiar Symptoms

The leftward lean had consequences.

  • Miss Kavanagh’s school blackboard erased itself. The chalk dust rolled uphill and attacked her spectacles.
  • The church bell swung one way only, producing a note best described as “mournfully apologetic.”
  • Local cows began walking in circles.
  • Children found they could run downhill standing still.

But the oddest consequence of all was suffered by young Alfie Fudd.

One morning, Alfie sat up in bed and promptly rolled out of the window, across the roof tiles, down the porch, and into the chicken coop—still clutching his book and wearing one sock.

“This never happened before!” he yelled, chased by two very concerned hens.

From then on, Alfie developed a mysterious condition known only as Tiltitis.

3. Tiltitis

Tiltitis meant Alfie couldn’t walk in straight lines. He zigzagged. Always left.

He couldn’t sit upright. He leaned.

His handwriting tilted at 45 degrees, his hat rotated, and even his thoughts seemed to swirl.

Worse still, whenever Alfie tried to go somewhere, he ended up somewhere else entirely.

He tried to go to the sweet shop. He arrived in the cemetery.

He tried to go to school. He ended up in the Women’s Knitting Circle (twice).

He tried to visit his granny. He woke up in the belfry with a bat called Clive.

4. The Map of Tilted Paths

After several days of veering confusion, Alfie decided to draw a Map of Where He Ends Up Instead.

It became a sensation.

Villagers began using the map to navigate:

  • Want to go to the butcher? Start walking toward the fishmonger.
  • Need the dentist? Aim for the duck pond and wait to be blown off course.
  • Craving cheese? Walk backwards into the wind and mutter “Roquefort.”

“It’s like a treasure hunt designed by a dizzy wizard,” said Councillor McGroggin, who had been trying to visit the barber for weeks and now had hair like a startled willow tree.

5. The Great Leftward March

Things reached a tipping point (literally) when the Ballykillduff Water Tower began to lean ominously, making glub-glub noises.

The village council declared: “We must rebalance Ballykillduff!”

Led by Alfie (still listing gently), they planned The Great Leftward March, a ceremonial stomp around the village’s eastern edge to “un-tilt” the land.

Everyone joined: sheep, teachers, bakers, accordion players, Monsieur Brie, the duck with the monocle, and Sally the Chicken (now a local celebrity).

They marched in sync. They chanted in spirals. They bounced on trampolines and threw bricks (politely) to adjust the tilt.

Alfie, with a colander on his head and an egg whisk in hand, declared, “NOW!”

6. The World Goes Right Again (Almost)

There was a rumble.

There was a creak.

There was a distinct “boing”.

And then…

Everything tilted slightly to the right.

But this time, tea cups stayed still. Cows walked straight. The school bell rang properly. Alfie finally reached the sweet shop.

And from that day forward, Ballykillduff remained ever-so-slightly crooked… but entirely content.

After all, in a world of perfect symmetry, what fun is there in surprise destinations?

The End (or possibly somewhere just to the left of it)

NOTE:

the wobble man

4½. The Stranger from Nowhere-In-Particular

The day before The Great Leftward March, when Alfie’s Tiltitis had reached peak wobbliness and the pub had lost six patrons to entirely unintended directions (one ended up in a wardrobe), a stranger arrived in Ballykillduff.

He came walking upside-down.

Not metaphorically—literally upside-down. Head pointing toward the ground, feet in the air, floating slightly above the road as though gravity had signed a temporary agreement to look the other way.

He wore a long coat filled with tiny ticking objects, weather vanes, and spoons.

A small wooden duck sat on his shoulder and whispered weather reports in French.

He introduced himself to Mrs McFadden by appearing directly behind her without warning and saying,
“The solution lies in rhythm, my dear. Always has. Always will. And occasionally in marching sideways with conviction.”

Then he tipped his hat, which was actually a teapot, and vanished into the general vicinity of the bakery, never once touching the ground.

5½. His Message to Alfie

Alfie found a handwritten note tucked inside his pillow that night.

It read:

To the Boy of the Bend,
When things go left and won’t go right,
Don’t fight the tilt — embrace the flight.
A single march, in shared defiance,
Will jog the world back into balance.

(Also: feed the goat cheese before launch.)

— Yours in wobbliness,
The Cartographer of Misalignments

It was signed with a doodle of a boot walking in four directions at once.

Alfie understood at once (well, not at once, more like fifteen minutes and a biscuit later): they had to march together, en masse, around the village, in exactly the opposite direction to the original tilt.

And so, with complete Ballykillduffian gusto, they did.

6½. But Who Was He, Really?

No one ever quite discovered the stranger’s origins. Some say he was a rogue mapmaker from a sideways universe. Others claimed he was Weather’s apprentice, sent to fix things when the natural world had had a dizzy spell.

Monsieur Brie insisted the man was “a cheese spirit,” though that theory was widely ignored.

But one thing remained true:

In the village records, hastily scribbled in red crayon by Alfie and hung proudly in the council loo, he is listed as:

THE WOBBLEMAN
— Part magician, part philosopher, part warning.

And every spring, on the anniversary of The Tilt, the villagers march once more — not to fix the world, but to remember the time it came unstuck.

Just in case the Wobbleman ever needs a welcome home.

the note

 

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