Waking up to a very quiet morning here in Upper Mandible, I could see that it had snowed quite heavily during the night, thankfully muffling the footsteps of any passing weirdos.

It was quite evident that Oswald and Nancy Beethoven had been up early walking their pet oyster, Gary. The unusual tracks in the snow, showed two sets of footprints; wheel marks from a converted shopping trolley and the scrapes, which could have only be made by a small, sea dwelling bivalve. It was however, the trail of crumbs created by someone greedily eating cream horns which was the real tell tale sign.

I had just about finished my morning exercises, stretching to the 14th century folk tune of ‘Our Des has got a bunion’, when my phone rang. Cautiously stepping down from my hand crafted, Norwegian, pilates stilts, I was pleased to hear that it was my old pal Kevin Costner. We had become firm friends after I’d looked after his hawfinch Simon, whilst on his annual visit to his Great Aunty Maude’s log cabin in Idaho.

Kev sounded quite anxious and didn’t stay on the phone long as he said he was a bit skint. Not having much acting work at the moment, he had got a temporary job as a lollipop man in Savannah. As it was his first day, he couldn’t be late and was ‘looking forward to getting dressed up again’. The lad asked if I could make another fancy, seasonal, reed bonnet for his heron. Similar to the one I made for his iguana Stephen’s house warming party. Kev said the last one I made gave his heron so much pleasure during the mating season but, by now ‘had seen better days’. He also wanted me to make some winter reed bootees and a tail finial for his female Jack Russell, Charlotte. This was great news, as I had no work, and being a bit skint myself, I could earn some extra money, get my daily exercise and forage for reeds along the River Hull, thus killing three birds with one stone.

It was still a tad cold outside so I opted for my patent leather Lederhosen and my nice black sparkly tights, instead of my usual customised, pink, reed foragers tutu. The Lederhosen were indeed one of my favourite items of clothing as Billy Gibson’s nanna had kindly embroidered a lovely portrait of Nancy Sinatra on the left buttock.

Opening my front door slowly and nearly tripping over a huge mound of Valentine’s cards, I looked up and down the street, with my home made replica of a German WW2 periscope, I checked that there were no weirdos. I could only see the usual sight of dear old Mrs Bibbins from number 54, dressed in a seductive Ann Summer’s, ‘Sexy Mandy’, black lace gown, gathering cigarette butts from outside the Breakwater’s house. Using only an 8 foot long trigger operated finch pole with some old dentures securely Gaffer taped to the end, I was amazed at the great dexterity demonstrated by such an elderly lady. At 87, she was still a fine figure of a woman and I could see Mr Breakwater having a sneaky peek from behind his cotoneaster.

I struggled to mount my unicycle as I had stupidly put my Lederhosen on a hot wash and they had shrunk somewhat. I feared I may rip my gusset but had forgotten it was reinforced, so with a liberal application of goose fat and a leg up from a passing organ grinder, I finally managed to reach the saddle of my 6 foot high unicycle. What a great relief!

Perambulating further down the street I could see the McCracken twins up on their roof. Bisonic legs wrapped securely around the chimney stack to get a firm safety grip, whilst trying to dislodge a stranded wind dwarf from the chimney pot. His struggle had created a large soot fall and their life sized model of Errol Flynn, standing on the fireplace was now black. The twins normally used his appendage to hang their wet umbrellas on to dry out and as the weather had been so wet, were eager to remedy the situation as soon as possible.

It was quite a common occurrence at this time of year in Upper Mandible, as the little fellas were often blown off course by the strong easterly winds from the North Sea. Quite used to handling similar predicaments, the thoughtful twins always had their grandad’s old coracle paddle handy to extract the wind dwarves, without causing them any unnecessary distress.

Nancy and Betty, just nodded to me politely. With sweat dripping from their foreheads, I could see they were both quite out of breath and couldn’t talk further, so I bid them both farewell using my second hand semaphor flags, bought from an Oxfam shop in Goole.

After pedalling for a few miles, I turned a sharp corner into the small hamlet of Little Gibbon-by-the Dwarf. I could see a familiar figure foraging amongst a large patch of Teasel. It was Gillespie Bullwatson-Furnace, dressed as a chaffinch, greedily extracting a meal from the dry seed heads with his prosthetic beak. Pretending not to see me, he turned his back, spreading his wings to hide his bounty, obviously thinking that I also wanted to feed on the seeds (which I didn’t, as I had the forethought to pack myself up some whelk and watercress sandwiches). I’d baked the bread earlier that morning using M&S’s, Canadian, Very Strong, Stoneground, Wholemeal Bread Flour. For those interested: Milled using French burr stones and perfect for making wholesome, bran rich, bread, rolls and pasta.

I was just about to head towards the river, when an old lady dressed in a long, black Astrakhan coat with matching pillbox hat, approached Gillespie looking him up and down with a strange sort of grimace on her face. She proceeded to blow Puy lentils at him through her recently detached catheter tube. ‘Does thee know young man, thou looks a reet tit’, she blurted ‘A grown man nicking scran from’t wildlife. Thou ought to be ashamed o thisen!’ Gillespie looked quite hurt by the old lady’s outburst and replied, ‘I am not a tit madam, I am quite clearly a male chaffinch and a fine specimen at that! You should get the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch Chart and then you’ll realise the folly of your comment!’

At this, the old lady took out a brown eyebrow pencil from her moth eaten, Victorian purple, satin purse and jotted a note on the bare back of her bald, recently shaven (and shivering) Afghan Hound. ‘I’ll tek thee up on that young man’, she said mounting her blue plastic dolphin. Incidentally, a traditional form of transport only ever seen and used in this small village during the winter months. The dolphins are mounted on converted silver tea trollies and are towed along with rider, by a large hound. Usually Afghans for some peculiar reason! That’s something I must remember to Google!

Being of a peaceful nature, I didn’t want to get involved in the dispute and continued to pedal down to the river, aiming to fill my Senegalese tea basket with several bundles of Common Reed. The best specimens, as always, were furthest away from the river bank and as the water was at a lower level than usual, even though we’d had some heavy rain, I had to wade through the cold, wet mud up to gusset height to retrieve them. Not wanting to get Nancy Sinatra covered in mud, I decided that I had gathered enough reeds to fulfil Kev’s request, plus I’d certainly have enough left over to make several pairs of ornate hot pants for old Mrs Loophole’s alpaca herd.

Mounting my unicycle, I was too wet and exhausted to turn the bike round and decided to pedal back home in reverse, using a highly polished Mr Kipling’s, foil apple pie dish as my rear view mirror.

All in all it was a very pleasurable and productive day out and one I’ll look forward to doing again in the not too distant future.