Concerning Ogg

Concerning Ogg

Ogg is a little old lady (although the old can be quite relative – sometimes against a tree she appears particularly young) who is a Eurie Woman – someone who is wise about patterns of light, the movement of wind and growing things. Ogg’s specialty is trees.

She wears an odd assortment of clothes – mostly brown – gumboots in wet weather, sandals in the summer, and number four Rossi boots in the winter. She has a lot of woollen socks and keeping the ones that have toe windows together and the ones that haven’t grown toe windows separately causes an occasional Spot of Bother on washing days. She also wears a funny hat and has a hedgehog basket (hedgehogs tend to forget about people’s roads and need a lot of rescuing in spring time). The hedgehog basket is also very good at collecting rain water so sometimes there is a soft layer of moss in the bottom which Ogg thinks might be comfortable for hedgehogs and vegetables on days when she has to go shopping.

Ogg is also Jonah and Eden’s Grandmother and there is absolutely no witchery or alchemy about her although she owns a lot of books (mostly about trees). She has a very bad habit of moving house so boxes of books spend a lot of time trying to catch up. Ogg has a special glass for tippling and a gold cup (although she has forgotten the name of the kind person who gave it to her) for tea of a Green Variety which she drinks in large quantities at breakfast time.

So there really isn’t anything very special about Ogg except her Oggishness which includes an intense dislike of supermarkets, karaoke, hooning cars and people with Loud, Angry Voices. I expect that is why she lives in a tree house in Fruilia Venizia Giulia on the edge of a wood, not far from a small city with a castle called Gorizia and friendly sort of village called Solkan.

Apart from hedgehogs she likes bird song and church bells in the very early morning, the Peace Park Cats, little brown birds, orphaned kangaroo joeys and lost students. Ogg is also particularly fond of something called Fieldwork – on those days she wears old green trousers with lots of pockets (for putting useful things in), a brown field shirt (also with lots of pockets) sometimes an old raincoat (that she thinks Detective Colombo gave to Karitas when she was a girl) and Chinese desert boots (that she also has owned for a long time) and a yellow hard hat (so she doesn’t get lost).

On Field Days she measures trees or discovers Archaeology and writes lots of notes in pencil (in case it rains). Unfortunately, Ogg doesn’t know enough about something called Statistical Analysis so until Jonah grows up she has to find a friendly student to help. Then, when Ogg understands all the lists of numbers in her data base she Writes a Book which is another thing she likes doing.

Therefore, between hedgehog rescue, student care, visiting the Peace Park, tree hugging and inventing Tree Potatoes and writing books Ogg is usually very busy in an Oggish sort of way.