HOW MEAN IS MY VALLEY?
Chapter One
The valley usually awoke to the sound of a cock crowing, but if the crow couldn’t find him, the valley folk would hear his poor impersonation instead.
This particular morning, Percy was shaken awake as his shed vibrated around him. He opened one eye to see a row of plant-pots dancing along his shelf and a large green leafy thing in a pot jitterbugging in the corner. His ‘gardening trophies’ bought from charity shops and with the sporting bits snapped off, had formed an orderly queue at one end of the shelf and were jumping off in pairs like a parachuting display team.
Percy, according to rumours he had spread himself, had been the gardener at Mandrake Hall. The Hall was no longer in existence after a disastrous fire during one of the lapses of sanity which seemed to afflict the valley from time to time.
Jamming on his hat, Percy swung out of his makeshift bed, slamming both feet hard against the cold floor. This was unheard of as Percy’s turned down wellies were always positioned precisely so that he could leave his shed in an emergency ready equipped for any amount of gardening crises. Retrieving them from against the far wall, he synchronised his hopping with the plant in the corner and they fell out of the door together.