By: Blonde Two

Well dear Blondees and Blondettes, it would appear that Dartmoor’s “Little People” have been up to mischief again.  I am not sure that I have told you much about the pixies before but one has to be very careful not to offend them, especially if you are likely to go wandering around Dartmoor in the mist.

Blonde One and I were sitting (well maybe huddling) behind the Christmas Tree rock on Monday evening.  To say it was windy would have been like describing Aune Head Mires as “a bit on the damp side”.  We had de-baubled the Tree and were enjoying a well-deserved cuppa when I remembered a bit of Christmas chocolate that I had stashed in my rucksack.  We shared the chocolate and just before we set off back down the hill, I felt a compunction (compunctions, it turns out, feel kind of squishy) to leave a tiny chocolate offering for the Dartmoor pixies (piskies).

Anyone who is proper Dartmoor born and bred will tell you that leaving a little something tasty or useful for these tricky creatures will go a long way to making sure that they are on your side.  The moors are full of tales of poor, silly, humans who ignored this local advice at their peril.  Being a non-native, I often forget about this (despite having once been a gnome) but on Monday, I was glad that I hadn’t.

When we got back to the car park, Blonde One couldn’t find her car key.  We checked pockets and engaged head torches to look around the car.  A slight Blonde panic was just beginning to set in when I remembered the pesky pixies and pointed out to them, in a friendly but tense voice, that I had left some rather posh sea-salt chocolate for them up at the Tree.  It was almost a second later that Blonde One put her hand into her pocket and, as if by Dartmoor magic, the pixies had returned the key.