Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk and I were painting the lower study this afternoon when we heard a strange noise from the garden. It sounded like a "ffflump", rather like someone had taken all the sheets off my bed and thrown them over the bannister again, but that hadn't happened since the reform school. At this disruption to our labours, I noticed with dismay (but not surprise) that Alfonso had departed from the strict colour scheme of Valencia Lemon Wash, and had chosen to cover his wall in a series of narrow, oblique red, white, blue and grey stripes of varying lengths.
"What kind of colour scheme do you call that?" I asked Alfonso.
"Eighties BHS Duvet Cover", he replied, wiping the brush clean on the new fitted carpet as he did.
There really is nothing that can be done about certain weevils.
Before anything untoward happened, I suggested we venture into the garden for some fresh air and to investigate the "fflump" noise.
The entire garden, including the antique pouting faun, and the prize winning thistle collection, was covered in a rumpled landscape of stitched cream canvas. Alfonso and I hoisted it up and walked underneath it, like a collapsed marquee. Only it wasn't a marquee, it was a hot air balloon, and the basket was resting on top of some recently deceased ornamental blowfish in the pond.
"They're not very ornamental any more" said Alfonso, peering into the murky depths.
"Why don't you do something useful, like fill the balloon with hot air?", I grumbled, opening an envelope attached to the side of the basket. Inside was a scrawled note, in handwriting which seemed vaguely familiar, and which read "FLY ME".
I left Alfonso to the balloon and went inside to study the note. I decided to compare it to the handwriting on the package which had contained the old conch. Carefully I laid the two pieces of parchment side by side on my patented TransVectorgram (or TV for short), which looks like an overhead projector, but is actually a sophisticated handwriting analyser. It flashed and buzzed and whirred for some time, and then spooled out a length of graph paper - which contained no new or surprising information, and certainly not the answer I was hoping for.
Alfonso was standing in the doorway. "Why don't you?"
"Why don't you what?" I said.
"Why don't you switch off that TV and come and do something less boring instead!"
"Like what?"
"Like fly this hot air balloon".
The TV continued to chatter and churn out paper, as I strode out blinking into the bright sunshine, accepted my little friend's helping hand as I half clambered, half fell into the basket, and righting myself, leant over to release the guy rope that was tethering us to earth. Alfonso let a quick burst of air from the burner into the sun bleached dome above our heads, and we began to float up, and the garden and the cottage, and the mysterious note just fell away like empty clothes.... Another adventure had begun!
TO BE CONTINUED
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