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Little By Little

  “Little by little, you begin to change even if you are not aware of it. What was once alien becomes familiar: foreign tongues, the music of strange instruments, the vagaries of the sea. Slowly you alter until the very stars that spin in the heavens are as familiar to you as the lines of your own hands. But first you must step out of your own front door. You must leave behind what you know and possibly what you love. You must be willing to lose every inch of yourself, for the next time you look into a stream or a mirror, which may be weeks, years, or even half a lifetime from now, you will not recognise your reflection. You must risk this much in order to gain what the world is ready to offer. You must make your own map of the world. Search out your own piece of sky and patch of earth, your own awning to sleep under when it is raining and it feels the sun may never shine again, for there will certainly be such days. No one can walk this path for you. You cannot simply follow in anot
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Vive La Revolution!

  It is Saturday morning, the day of the Easter Parade. (Oh, all right – I know in real time that it’s Sunday – Happy Easter to you all! - but the Lady Author was struck by inspiration yesterday and got carried away with her word count. And whilst she would publish two episodes on the same day, she knows you are probably holibobs busy and can only absorb a limited amount of waffle in one day.) Outside Much Malarkey Manor, the hens are hitching their carnival float to a tractor. They stand back to admire their efforts. ‘It’s pretty magnifique,’ says Mrs Pumphrey. ‘Very colourful,’ says Mrs Slocombe. ‘Very flamboyant!’ says Kenneth, approvingly. The hens have created an enormous handbag, thinking it will be an ideal container for all the rescued ducklings. But it’s not any old handbag. Oh no, it’s a handbag modelled on the new season Chanel Mini Flap Bag - a snip in Selfridges for just £2,800. Who spends THAT on a tiny handbag, eh? Honestly…utter madness… The handbag, caref
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Plot Hatching

  Well! It’s like One Hundred and One Dalmations all over again only with ducklings and the villainous Fridinator rather than puppies and Cruella De Ville. Kenneth the Phantomime, in full investigative mode, takes it upon himself to go to the village and check out the new fried food shop. He returns within the hour. ‘Just as I thought,’ he says, slapping his investigative notebook on the table. ‘There’s a notice in the window offering a specialty delicacy to celebrate tomorrow’s opening of the shop.’ Whilst he has been gone, the hens and Mrs Hare have been girding their loins, gathering their arms and battening their hatches. They have gone from a state of despair and upset to being bloody well angry. And Hell hath no fury like an angry hen. It’s the dinosaur genetics, you see. Mrs Poo is already dressing in her ex-army combat outfit. ‘What exactly IS a duckling canard?’ she says, as she tightens the notch of her belt on her commando trousers to ‘Extreme.’ ‘Well,’ says Mrs Sloc
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Canards

  The doorbell is ringing out the tune of ‘Love Shack’ by the B52s. Inside the Manor, a different sort of chaos from yesterday has taken over following the discovery that all of the ducklings have gone missing. Mrs Poo rushes to open the front door. ‘Good Morning! Happy Easter holibobs!’ says the visitor on the doorstop, for yea verily ‘tis none other than Kenneth the Phantomime himself! ‘Come in, come in,’ says Mrs Poo. ‘I don’t have time for niceties. We have a crisis on our hands,’ and she turns from the door and races back up the hallway, leaving the Phantomime to see himself in. ‘And season’s greetings to you, too,’ says Kenneth, but he follows Mrs Poo up the hallway anyway, because there is nothing a drama queen likes better than a bit of drama. Also, the urge to see if he can make it all about him is too strong to ignore. In the Orangery, the hens and Mrs Hare are gazing at the open door and the trail of ducky footprints in the wet grass. ‘Who left the door unlocked, t
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For This Moment

  Chaos has descended on Much Malarkey Manor, so nothing new there, then. The duckling numbers continue to grow exponentially, according to Mrs Poo and her scientific calculator. Mrs Hare is now comfortably installed in the Lady Rosemary guest suite and is steadily popping out more eggs, a picture of peace, calm and serenity, with the blessings of the Goddess Ostara in abundance. Mrs Miggins, however, is moving ever closer to the end of her tether and thinks it’s going to need more than the protection of a pagan deity to see her through this particular set of circumstances. To distract herself, she’s been pondering her Gladiator name. She thinks she would probably choose ‘Livid’. Or maybe ‘Explosion’. ‘I still don’t know what we are going to do with all these ducklings,’ she says. ‘And whilst I’d like for them all to stay here forever and ever amen, I can’t help but feel it will be wholly impractical. And what if it all happens again this time next year?’ She is in the kitchen with
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A Sinister Visitor

  ‘From a scientific point of view,’ says Mrs Poo the following morning, ‘it’s fascinating that the eggs are maturing and hatching so rapidly and without any form of incubation. It’s a miracle of nature, isn’t it?’ ‘Fascinating indeed,’ sighs a weary Mrs Miggins. Everyone is gathered in the Orangery, mostly because it has an easy-to-clean floor, and there are ducklings here, there and everywhere, making a high and mighty racket and pooping for England. ‘How many are there now?’ says Mrs Pumphrey, who is cuddling a clutch of half-a-dozen to her voluminous bosom. ‘Forty-one,’ says Mrs Poo, who has been keeping a tally on her clipboard. ‘Forty-two,’ says Mrs Hare, holding out another egg in her paws, still warm from her, well, you-know-what-doo-da. The egg is already beginning to hatch. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could stop doing that?’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘I don’t think so,’ says Mrs Hare. ‘This will go on until the morning of Easter Sunday. It’s tradition.’ ‘But
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Ducksplosion

  By tea time, the resourceful hens have constructed a list of ideas about what to do with all the eggs laid by Mrs Hare, and Mrs Hare has produced another five eggs to add to the not inconsiderable collection that is now stored in a large apple crate in the kitchen larder. Mrs Miggins taps on the kitchen table to gain everyone's attention. ‘I shall read the list of collective ideas,’ she says, ‘and we shall discuss the merits and downsides of each in turn. By a process of elimination, we shall reach a triumphant conclusion and all will be well.’  ‘Oooh,’ says Mrs Pumphrey, ‘Laetitia's gone into proper meeting mode. Go, Laetitia!’ ‘I’m just being organised,’ says Mrs Miggins. ‘If anyone else would like to take on the role of chair-hen, I am more than happy to step back and let them.’ And she glares around the table over the top of her spectacles in her best teacher-in-charge mode, daring anyone to challenge her. ‘Good!’ she says, as the other hens remain silent and Mrs
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