Just been for a wet walk in the Ilston Valley woods. Annabelle likes it there because it gives her ideas for her stories. I like the woods because they’re full of STICKS and Pearl likes the woods because there’s plenty of fox and badger poo for her to roll in. She loves to coat herself in Parfum de Badger, like it makes her look COOL and HARD or something. Or maybe she just wants to smell like a badger as well as look like one. She can be such a skank sometimes.
There’s a spooky pine-tree bit in the middle of the woods where it always seems dark and quiet. A lot of the trees have fallen down. Annabelle thinks it’s because we’ve had so much rain and wind – the rain softens the ground and makes it easy for the wind to uproot the trees. The weather has been totally messed up lately. Annabelle has various clever THEORIES about why this is. She says one reason could be the cutting down of the rainforests to make room to grow hamburgers. I don’t really understand that, but I do know I’d love to taste a hamburger. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get the chance because hamburgers aren’t allowed in our house.
There’s a lot of wildlife around here, but we hardly ever see it before it runs away. This is a shame because some of it would be really tasty. One night last winter Pearl brought in a hedgehog she’d caught in the garden. Annabelle had to call Jan and Alain to help her rescue the poor critter from Pearl, who’d turned into the White Monster again. The hedgehog was totally traumatised and had to be taken to www.gowerbirdhospital.co.uk where they’ve got a special hedgehog ward. Luckily Gower Bird Hospital is on Sandy Lane as well.
The Literate Lurcher 