It is a Case of Death, Black Death.
1347 CE Black Death/ Middle Ages
You know, in the Middle Ages, things were a lot different, no cars, no televisions, no game consoles, no electricity! Things were somewhat, dull, especially for the peasants. They were basically slaves of the Lord of the Manor. You see in them days they were very strict rules on how people should live their lives, and peasants were the worst of, even if such pleasures like cars, televisions, game consoles, and electricity did exist, I think it’s safe to say that the peasants would not have been able to purchase any of them! They lived in horrible dirty conditions, and because there were no supermarkets then they had there own source of food; pigs, cattle, sheep, which they kept inside their home, because that was all the land they had, and they didn’t really own that, if the Lord of the Manor didn’t want them to live there, he could take it away, just like...that! The King owned the land; there were no government and certainly no democracy! Not like today, the Monarch, which by the way is the Queen, doesn’t have any say on what goes on within her country, because we are now a democracy, where the public have more of a say. In those days the monarchy were thought to be descendents of God. That’s why they used to get loads of respect.
Enough about then! What about Bolo?
“Where am I?” he thought, looking around, “it smells awful!” To one end of the room was a pig stay to the other was a nursery/hospital. The people, they didn’t look right. They had big black spots on their skin, and looked ill, not just eaten a month old hotdog straight from the floor ill, but well, I guess, it’s a, well lets just say indescribable is the only way to describe the pain the illness was causing. Just looking at them made poor old Bolo want to throw up himself! There were a small boy with pieces of rock, he was banging them together, what an awful sound it made! BANG BANG BANG!! “ARRRGGGHHH!! I’ve had enough!” Bolo went in his head, and hopped off of the bed and ventured around the place. Everyone seemed to be ill! With the same disease, them big black blotches! “coff coff!” went an old man. “AHHH YUK!” Bolo thought! He must have been the worst of them all! That cough seemed to set them all off! A picture started to emerge in Bolo’s mind, when he was in Greenleigh he had heard a parent say, “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases!” “Ahhh... Coughs!? Where’s the door!” He leapt through the open space which lead to the streets, they all seemed to have it. Men and women marching the streets yelling and whipping themselves with whips of many ends. Backs bleeding and blood rolling down the backs of knees onto the roads. “No wonder everyone’s dying!” Well in fact these people were punishing themselves because they believed that God had sent this disease to punish people for their sins. Why God would gain pleasure watching his people whipping themselves I don’t know, it’s just what they believed.
There seemed to be an awful lot of rats around dead and alive. “Maybe the rats have something to do with it?” Bolo thought, and in fact he was right. The rats carried the disease and passed it on to humans. The Black Death happened for the simple fact that the streets were dirty and mucky. So it is very unlikely for the Black Death to occur nowadays, the streets are much cleaner, but not if people keep littering. Back in Greenleigh Bolo couldn’t understand why people don’t put rubbish in the bin; he had always thought that the bins were where the rubbish lived. “What’s the point in having the bloody things if no ones going to use them?” He used to ask him self everyday, until he caught the sight of Whiskers or smelt a big juicy hotdog! In the Middle Ages Bolo had noticed something quite astonishing! “No bins! That’s why it’s dirty!” So the disease came round because of the dirtiness, dirtiness also means more rats! More rats result in, more disease, more disease, more death! Yes that seems right.
Something caught Bolo’s eye, a very, very large house, yes a house! All the other homes were just barn like buildings! This, this was a house, and a much bigger house than the ones in Greenleigh! Like a mansion! “I wonder who lives inside?” Bolo wondered, and being a nosey little mongrel that he was, he went to find out. I suppose the poor little thing wanted to get away from the illness, dirtiness, and rats!
What is it with dogs and nosiness, always sniffing around and wanting to learn more about anything? I guess that’s why we love them, their face full of confusion, not bad confusion but good confusion; the confusion that says, “What is this? I will find out.” We could learn a lot from them, people just give up, dogs very rarely do. Well take Butch for example; he is still this minute trying to sniff Bolo out. “Heeelloo.” Butch he’s in another time zone here, I mean I know a dog’s sense of smell is second to none but it’s not supernatural... is it?
Wow. It was like a different world, up at the manor house. It seemed to be much cleaner, but still not as clean as nowadays. Bolo was beginning to miss Greenleigh, the hot sun, the green grass, the clean roads, and the smiling faces of the children. All the children here were ill. You could see it all from up here. Even the doctors, yes doctors! They were called quacks back in the Middle Ages. They believed in astrology, and they diagnosed their patients according to the stars, this method was called the ‘Zodiac Man’! I don’t mean to be rude but I wouldn’t trust them with a pair of my old socks! But they didn’t know any better, it was not until many years later that doctors actually knew something factual about how our body works. Those medieval doctors; relying on the stars and Ancient Greek books that were written centuries ago!!!! All though those Ancient Greek philosophers did get some things right, but that’s a different adventure
. The ‘quaks’ as they were often referred to thought that the human body was made up a four ‘humours’: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. And if someone was ‘ill’ then it was believed that these four humours were not balanced, so the cure would be to, for example, drain some blood. What! Drain blood!! Were they stupid! Quite frankly, yes, but they didn’t know any better, and obviously, you would have died from blood loss! So my advice is, if you ever find yourself ill in the Middle Ages, don’t go to the quaks! You have a better chance of recovering just having a good bit of sleep.
Bolo, made his way back to the strange talking machine and went back home. Ahhh, what a nice smell. Greenleigh. What Bolo failed to find out is that the place he had just been was Greenleigh, he had never left! Just shows you what a change a few centuries makes, eh?
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