When I was a kid, I had a board game called ‘I vant to bite your finger’. I thought it was ace because it had a pop up plastic figure of Count Dracula and when you lost, you had to put your finger in his mouth, depress a lever at the back of his head, and he bit you. You were left with two red felt tip marks of pain and blood on your finger. Sometimes I would just go in the playroom by myself and make Count Dracula give me bite marks on all of my fingers without bothering to play the game at all. I think the Count also made a blood curdling ‘mwahahaha’ laugh as he bit you, but that might have been me. I don’t fully recall. Why am I telling you this? Because it proves to you that I am in league with the Dark Lord,
The Society of Bud Kissers was founded in 1482 and thus has a long and distinguished history of welcoming spring. Its members operate individually and as part of a group, depending upon temperament and location. Their principal job is to welcome spring by, as the name suggests, kissing the emergent buds of leaves and flowers. The greater the amount of kisses a plant receives, the more gloriously it will flourish that year. Maisie is the head of the River Great Ouse chapter, and has been bud kissing for most of her life. She was first welcomed as a bud kisser by her grandmother as part of her third birthday ceremonies. Always on the lookout for new members, her grandmother’s keen eye observed Maisie turn down a kiss from Thomas and instead lay a fat one on a daisy. It was therefore foreseen, from an early age, that Maisie would one day