By Roz White

If you ask a good many of the residents on Hopeless, Maine, to name their favourite place of recreation (although that in itself is a bit of a dodgy term on the island, some might say), there are probably not many that would name The Puddle Inn before one or two others – although, again, the choice is hardly enormous on Hopeless. It is not that The Puddle is a particularly noisome establishment (but again, see the above comments) but it does rather suffer from Geography. Which is perhaps a better option than suffering from some of the other things common to the Island.

Very few people go anywhere near its location, which in consequence means that very few have even heard of The Puddle Inn, and how it continues to even survive against such insurmountable odds is merely another mystery surrounding a place that is enough of a mystery in itself. You see, The Puddle is situated in a part of the island known as “the puddle”: it sits in a swampy area of lower ground that is damper, muddier and wetter than most of the rest of Hopeless, so it is perhaps merely a matter of degree.

So, if asked to provide directions to the establishment, those who are even aware of it might describe it as “The Puddle Inn in The Puddle.” The majority will simply stare at you blankly as if you had gone mad, although again this might be considered normal behaviour for a good many of them…

But it gets worse. Sitting in a damp depression (another term applicable to the rest of the island and its inhabitants, come to think of it), the pub itself is prone to occasional manifestations of water within its walls as well as outwith them. So sometimes there is The Puddle in The Puddle in The Puddle. Nobody on the island appears to consider such appalling grammar worthy of note; it is more a case of going to, say, The Squid and Teapot on that particular day, since The S&T tends to at least allow its patrons to keep their feet (or equivalents) dry.

Attempts to provide extra, and somewhat unique, entertainments in the pub also met with a singular level of failure. Islanders have a well-founded distrust of pretty much any body of water – even ones they can see the bottom of – and so the Puddle Inn Pool proved to be no benefit to profits at all. Even games of billiards can, on a bad day, come to resemble water-polo more than anything else, and shove ha’penny can be more akin to skimming stones across ponds (or, indeed, puddles). Nobody mentions the skittles anymore.

A certain Mr Igneous appears to be the hotelier at The Puddle; we say it in those terms because nobody has so far been able to produce any documentary evidence of his appointment or ownership of the Establishment, least of all Mr Igneous himself. But for all the damp, the loose and self-determining outbreaks of water and the singular lack of any regular (actually, any) clientele, Igneous always has a smile and a jolly word for anyone happening upon his little business; his chief source of supply is one Silas Grimgach, who whilst technically independent and self-employed, does seem to have some sort of tie to The Puddle, and has yet to attempt peddling his wares to any other hostelry, private cottage, village shop or… well, anywhere, really. The precise nature of this tie, as with so much else surrounding The Puddle, is yet to be illuminated but we do not doubt that it will prove to be just as unwholesome and potentially dangerous to life and limb as his “Old Succubus” Porter proved to be on its one and only outing. Yet Mr Igneous appears to be somewhat enamoured of the brew…