OINKS

When I was three years old (probably in 1956) my parents took me for a walk in the grounds of Tonbridge Castle (Kent, England, UK). There I met an Oink. He was about the same height as myself, almost human, except that he was an adult, the height of a three year old human, had big feet, a protruding belly, no body hair and was a muted pink colour. I don't recall him having genitals, but he was definitely male and was very friendly. Chatting to him gave me a warm glowy happy feeling. He told me he lived in the dungeon of the castle with other Oinks. I don't recall meeting the others.

Adults in the vicinity could not see or hear him, but I could. I pointed him out to my parents, but they couldn't see him. My father must have believed me though, because he wrote to the creator / cartoonist of Billy the Bee, suggesting he include Oinks in his stories, which to the best of my knowledge he didn't.

I do recall this though, because when I was twenty one years old, my mother gave me a scrapbook, which included a clipping of a letter, which had been written to a London evening newspaper and printed, which claimed that the writer's (my father) three year old son had discovered a colony of Oinks in Tonbridge Castle, that the creator of Billy the Bee had replied, and had provided a cartoon picture of an Oink, which had outraged me.

The cartoon showed a creature which resembled a kangaroo, which was nothing like the Oink that I had met.

A recent internet search revealed that Harry Smith was the artist of the newspaper comic strip 'Billy the Bee', which appeared in The Evening Standard in the 1950s.

Unfortunately the scrapbook is no longer in my possession.

In 2005, I visited Tonbridge Castle and took a picture of the Oink Hole, which now had a rusting iron door covering it.

I am sure that when I met the Oink, there were iron bars and not an iron sheet covering, the entrance to the dungeon. Perhaps the authorities wanted to drive the Oinks away or trap them?