Charlie is a snake charmer and their job is to bring on summer. I know you’re probably looking at the photo and thinking ‘where’s Charlie?’. That’s because you’re used to the idea of it being humans who charm snakes, not snakes who do the charming. Well, let me tell you all those stories are WRONG with a capital W R O N G; a product of humanity’s egocentrism which puts itself at the centre of everything. In real life, snakes charm all manner of things. As I say, Charlie charms summer, and their cousin, Sylvastina, charms the myriad oaks of Puttenham Common to grow in those perfectly rounded shapes. I was really hoping to be able to interview Sylvastina for this story, but it turns out that she’s still sleeping. Charlie is always the first one up as its them who makes it warm enough for the other snakes to get
Raymond sighed. He’s been here quite a long time, you know, so he’s earned a little sigh every now and then. He’s looking at the stick and wondering what you expect him to do with it? His magic-making days are long since over; it’s only him keeping the structure together – can’t you see that? If he bent down to pick up the offering, what do you think would happen next? A bang-squash-crack, that’s what. And then what would you people do then? No amount of iron fencing will make up for that mess. It didn’t use to be just Raymond, you know. There used to be a lot more of them and, in those days, it wasn’t just Raymond doing all the hard work at Kit’s Coty House. In those days, uprightness was shared amongst a lot of the stones. Old Maisie to the left, well she’s long since checked
He’s lost his feather, but I am sure you can tell that this is Prince Doily I. Just in case you were wondering, he’s originally from Rajasthan, but I found him on a stretch of the North Downs Way near Borstal in Kent. He’s only recently escaped from a locked drawer where he’s been kept prisoner for a century. Prince Doily I said we can call him Pridi for short, because it sounds a bit like ‘pretty’, which he most surely is. Pridi smiles when you say stuff like that to him, because he’s well into manners and enjoys a good fluff of his ego every now and then. Floral language is one of his specialities: he learnt the intricacies of it during a secondment to an illustrious Iranian court six hundred years ago. Pridi said he was glad to have met me and particularly commended me for my maxim: ‘manners
Richard was an over-thinker, that’s why his boughs and branches were curled erratically and so close to his trunk: he couldn’t decide on the direction of growth. His stunted appendages, all cluttered and clustered around him, obscured his view. Thus, he only ever partially grasped the goings on of the woods, and in his half-knowledge there was a darkness: he always chose the most unhelpful and fearful point of view. It had been a long time since the people of the forest had tried to talk him down from whatever terrified drama he was riding on. They had exhausted their capacity for trying to make him see sense. Nowadays, they observed him from a distance, and resigned to accept him as chaotic and panic-ridden. There goes Richard, they’d say, talking up the devil from the deep. Richard was alone in his unhappy corner of the forest, and only the young and
Bethany was a Friesian, but she was none too happy about it. Probably if she’d been a Highland cow, this story would never have been written, mellow and fluffy as she would likely have been. But Bethany was a Friesian and had a temper to match, righteous though it was. She was also—hmm, how can I say?—well, she didn’t half go on a bit. Anyway, the first time it happened was the winter of 1928. Bethany had observed the way the farmhand treated the farmer’s daughter over the summer months and her temper was getting frayed. Truth be told, Bethany was in love with the farmer’s daughter: the way her plump and steady arms and her soft and gentle hands pulled gently at Bethany’s teats was endearing to her. Plus, the farmer’s daughter told Bethany all her secrets, and Bethany found herself believing she was the maiden’s protector. It’s why she