Chapter One
DODO ALONE
“Are we sitting comfortably girls and boys? Good. Then I will begin…
Once upon a time, (in the starting time) there grew from rocks and wood and people and bits of stuff, (some oddly shaped and some just slightly wet) a town called Hamlyn (They had tried calling themselves Erik or Glottal but they just didn’t seem right). Just to the left of this town like town there sat, (not that is could stand or crouch) its graveyard. So now we turn the page and see this graveyard like graveyard1 where dark and dank was still the must have look and where lots and lots of people didn’t live, in various states of decay and smell! But look a bit closer and there is movement, now look again just left of the maggots and a large dirty thing emerges, this is Dodo.
Dodo has Dodo thoughts and does Dodo things, he eats what Dodo would eat and says Dodo, he is defiantly Dodo and he is the last rat in Hamlyn.
Now Dodo is very big and fat, so fat that he doesn’t so much as walk, but roll quite slowly, (So no ratty skulking for poor old Dodo.) This is why in all of Hamlyn there is only Dodo, (in ratty terms that is) for when the Pied Piper (who for the record was an old drunk, in saggy yellow tights stuffed with socks, and really bad chat up lines) had called all his ratty brothers and sisters to dance to the mountain, poor Dodo was just too fat and too slow to join in. (Incidentally he was also asleep after eating a particularly tasty bit of fluff!). So now poor Dodo is left alone feeling even fatter and slower, but with no else to tell him so. (Or even where to go!).
At first Dodo hadn’t minded being alone, he was King Rat of All Hamlyn, (and even Queen as well, when the urge came upon him!) but as he only had himself to order around, (and even then he was ignored!) it got a bit stale, (and not even nicely so!) so he soon got bored of that game.
So poor Dodo tried to find some other rats, (and you thought fish had bad memories!) or even some mice to bully, but none could be found, even though he looked to past his left whisker and looked past his right whisker and even to the end of his worm like tail2, but there was only Dodo.
“Dodo “ said Dodo and he gave up, at his size it took him long enough to look round himself let alone anywhere else in the graveyard
“Dodo3” thought Dodo and he decided to sit down and try and have a thought, and by the morning he had found one he could keep and use all by himself. (The one thought about cold fusion proving strangely unhelpful and irrelevant!) If there were no more ratty friends to find then he would make some instead.
He started with twigs and piled them high, then came some mud for the bits in-between, then came some spit and some other stuff from his ears that wasn‘t spit and really shouldn‘t have been in his ears either! Singing badly as he worked, the mound took a ratty sort of shape4 and when he had had enough he stopped and called it Wrinkled Sidegrin.
But Wrinkled would not play, or even run away, and just sat and stared and wouldn’t answer in any way.
So Dodo kicked it down and began again.
He started again with many more leaves and some kind of moss that his granny would flee from, (who knows, she didn’t!) all stuck together with spit and lick.
Then came the bones he had left for his tea, and then someone’s toe and a blue feathered thing, all wrapped up in twine and it was new named Almost Drainlicky, in a ratty sort of shape5.
But the Almost would not play or even run away, it just sat and fell apart before Dodo could kick it down!
So Dodo cried and tried just one more time, and gathered up what he thought he would need to make it right. He started with stones and a rusty rag, then came some shells and a tall blade of grass, then came some new bogies and a slightly sleepy beetle.
All wrapped up in clay, and baked for a day, until it set into a ratty sort of way6, and it was named Flippantly Bedbugged!
But Flippantly would not play, or even run away , it just sat and stared, so Dodo kicked him until it fell on him. (Oh poor silly Dodo!)
So there lay Dodo under Flippantly and felt stupid (and had a bit of shell in his right eye!7) until breakfast time and the last page of this story flattened him even more.
“And so we wave goodbye to Dodo for another day, and if you are all good boys and girls I will read you some more tomorrow. Now put away you’re pressed snail collections and get ready for bed…or there will be no gruel.”
SWEET DREAMS
1 Because graveyards tend to be really bad at looking like anything else! When did you last see one looking like a funfair!
2 Which had several bite marks on it as it was always good to check it hadn’t become a worm!
3 Same word, different meaning. He only knew one word!
4 well the sort of shape you would get if you let someone on heavy medication (and had spent far too much of their life living in a brown bag calling themselves iris) have a go at sculpture using only their tongue and their own weight in used catnip to carve a rat shape….oh and they have only ever seen weevils….yes, it was that good!
5 Worse than the first, thought less spaghetti and more disturbingly shiny bits!
6 The worst, don’t ask, because it would hurt too much to tell you!
7 All the Optrex being drunk in a fit of stupidity only hours earlier!
