It was a warm day. The sort of warm that can cook a slice of bacon on your forehead. Hi, I’m Richard and I’ll be telling today’s story.

We arrived at the mission to be greeted by the lovely Mrs M. The mission, to weed the garden and relocate some plants. As we set to work we heard tales of snakes in the bushes next door. “No snakes today, thank you” though was the cry from the garden heads. There was some expert deadheading from Clo and lots of weeding to be done. A couple of plants were hiding from the sun under bushes but I moved them into pots. It was lovely to be outside but we all agreed it was probably a bit too warm.

Now a brief story... (theme music starts and credits roll... oooh John Barrowman is in this one?)

It was the end of another day and the sun was starting to fall below the fence line. Weary humans who had been spending their day in the gardens were scraping barbecue grills and settling down inside for the night. No one goes out at night. Night is a time for magic, fairies and all manner of creatures to come out to play.

“Hisssss!!!”. Cyril the snake exclaimed as he put the last of his Ss on the scrabble board. “Hisssss isn’t a word” Ferdinand said as he rolled his eyes. Ferdinand was a fox and foxes as we know are sticklers for the rules. Cyril liked to spend his days in bushes in peoples gardens but at night he was a professional scrabble player and his opponent tonight was especially cunning.

A man pops his head over the fence. “Hi, I’m John Barrowman!”. The scrabble players look up and respond “Hi John Barrowman”. John then disappeared as quickly as he appeared.

“Maybe we should be playing snakes and ladders?” Ferdinand asked with a sly smile. Cyril couldn’t resist a chance to beat someone at a new game though and agreed “Ok, but I’ve not played it before so you’ll have to tell me how to play”. “The rules are simple” Ferdinand started to explain. “You go up the ladder and the higher you get the more points you get. If you can get to the top of the bush you win”.

Up to the challenge Cyril started to climb. At every rung he shouted down to Ferdinand with a wide grin on his face “Look how high I am now!”. After a while Cyril reached the top and slithered onto the bush. As he looked down to celebrate his victory he saw Ferdinand pulling the ladder away and disappearing into the distance. “Ooh you cunning fox you! Very good!”. Time passes and Cyril starts to get bored. Just as he was just about to give up hope, Maureen came hovering up to eye level. Maureen was from a long line of fairies. Her mother was a fairy and her mother before her. Maureen always wanted to learn to play scrabble and sensed an opportunity. “Let me down please and I’ll do whatever you want”, Cyril shouted. “Ok its a deal” agreed Maureen “but you must teach me how to play scrabble. I may be a fairy but I can’t spell”. That’s not very good, a fairy that can’t spell, that’s what they do. Cyril thought to himself but decided to keep quiet.

So Maureen flew Cyril down and good to his word he taught Maureen to spell. At that moment Ferdinand reappeared “I see you got down”, Ferdinand chuckled to himself. Cyril shook his imaginary fist at Ferdinand but it was too late to get revenge as the sun was once again starting to rise.

As night once again turned to day, Ferdinand returned to his hiding place under the bush. Maureen the Fairy returned to her perch on the fence and Cyril, well he returned to his penthouse apartment in the city. Scrabble was very lucrative.

Now back to reality (waves hands around as the picture goes all blurry and we return to the garden)

After a couple of hours of weeding and chatting we had finished. We escaped the snakes and we made our merry way skipping into the afternoon sun. A warm glow filling our hearts. Ahhh what a lovely mission, in great company.