Merrydown Farm , livre ebook

Distributed by eBookpartnership - Monty Pumb

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

33 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A ruthless property developer wants to buy Merrydown Farm. His plan is to change it from a working farm into a bungalow park with golf courses and a spa hotel. This would destroy the natural habitat of all the wild animals. All the farm animals would have to leave as well. Cornelius, a wise old owl, contacts his distant relative Horatio. Horatio is a military expert. (Well, he hatched in the grounds of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.) Under their leadership the animals fight back.

Sujets

Children's

Informations

Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	15 juillet 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839785054
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Merrydown Farm
Monty Plumb
with illustrations by Liliam Natal

Merrydown Farm
Published by The Conrad Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874
www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839785-05-4
Copyright © Monty Plumb, 2022
The moral right of Monty Plumb to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk and cover design with illustration by Liliam Natal.
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

Prologue
H ector Capstick, the owner of Merrydown Farm, whistled tunelessly as he ambled back home.
It’s been a good old day, he thought.
He stopped and looked up at the sky.
Blue hour, he thought, best time of the day.
The sun was just below the horizon, and the landscape was suffused with the most glorious, bluish light.
He could hear the distant sound of a neighbouring farmer driving his tractor back after finishing ploughing for the day. The smell of freshly tilled land and the lavender from an adjoining field filled his nostrils.
Ah, all is well with the world, he thought, and tomorrow I’ve got a meeting with that American fellow who wants to buy the farm. That should be interesting, very interesting.
He heard a cockerel crow. That’s a bit odd, he thought. Old Henry normally sounds off earlier.
Cornelius had told all the animals to gather in the barn when they heard Henry crow.
Cornelius was old even by owl standards. In his youth, his tawny brown feathers had gleamed, now after twenty-one summers, they had lost their sheen.
His years at Merrydown Farm had been enjoyable. Always plenty of voles, mice and shrews and so on to feed him and his numerous offspring. The owl community and the Whomins, who owned the farm, had lived together in harmony. This could soon change, change dramatically. Something had to be done.

Chapter I

T he cows, sheep, and dogs marched confidently into the barn. The smaller creatures followed timidly behind, continually scanning the area for danger.
When Cornelius had called the meeting, everyone attending had to promise not to attack each other.
So far, so good, he thought.
He surveyed the barn. His exceptional eyesight was effective, even in the dimly lit interior. They all seem to have turned up, time to start.
Everyone stopped talking and looked up as Cornelius let out an ear-shattering screech.
‘Now then,’ he began, ‘let me remind you all, we are here to talk about a truce.’
‘What is a truce?’
Cornelius slowly turned his head round to see it was a plump, rather delicious looking vole who had asked the question.
‘Yes, for the foreseeable future, none of us can prey upon… upon any other creature within the boundaries of Merrydown Farm.’
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ shouted a brown rat ‘How are we supposed to survive?’
‘Look... um...’ said Cornelius, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Bing,’ replied the rat.
‘Bing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just Bing?’
‘Yes,’ said the rat. ‘In our community, all litters have names that rhyme.’
Cornelius’s head moved to one side, a puzzled look on his face.
‘I’m Bing, and I have brothers and sisters called, Sing, Ring, Buffalo Wing, Shoestring, Hamstring and Bill.’
‘Right,’ said Cornelius, his face becoming even more mystified, ‘but hold on a moment, Bill doesn’t rhyme, so why Bill?’
‘Don’t ask!’ replied Bing. ‘Unless you’re a rat, you wouldn’t even begin to understand.’
Cornelius quickly decided he didn’t need to understand.
‘Anyway, let’s get back to why we are all here. First of all, let me thank you for turning up tonight. And a special thank you to those who are not nocturnal, for staying up so late.’
Cornelius paused and stared at Bing, who he had just heard whisper, ‘Get on with it, you pompous old owl.’
‘Some of you may have seen…’
‘Hold on a second, Corny,’ interrupted another rat, ‘you haven’t…’
‘My name is Cornelius. What do you want this time, Bing?’
‘And my name is not Bing.’
Cornelius paused and looked down on the colony of rats. They were all large, all brown, all their tails were the same length, and they all looked the same to him.
How do they tell each other apart? he wondered.
‘What do you want, Ring, Sing, Buffalo W…’
‘I’m Bill and what I want is for you to answer my brother’s question, how can we survive if there is a truce, and we cannot hunt?’
‘The truce means you cannot prey upon any other inhabitant within the boundaries of Merrydown Farm. Anywhere outside of the farm, it’s business as usual. If we want to survive, we must all stick to the rules, and I must emphasise, all of us.’
‘So, what’s the problem?’ a black and white collie asked, in a Welsh accent.
‘That is what I’ve been trying to tell you!’ Cornelius said, now obviously irritated. ‘Some of you…’ He stopped and looked around the barn. ‘Where are the cats?’
‘Doing what they enjoy the most, sleeping, eating, or preening,’ replied the collie.
‘Yes, quite, and your name is?’
‘Dylan the dog. My job is to herd the sheeps on the farm.’
‘I think you will find the plural of sheep is sheep, Dylan,’ Cornelius corrected him.
‘Not in the world of sheeps dogs it isn’t.’
‘Well, that may well be, but I was hoping the cats would be present tonight. Typical behaviour of cats I suppose.’
‘I’ll tell them, and I will make sure they stick to it,’ said Dylan.
‘Thank you, Dylan. Now please can you all just let me get on with what I’m here to tell you?’ Cornelius paused until there was complete silence. ‘For months there has been a sign at the end of the road, which runs from the farmhouse to the big road. It has the words For Sale on it. For those of you who don’t understand this, it means the Whomins who share this area with us are leaving, and new Whomins will take their place. That, in itself, is not a problem. But last week a new sign was put up with the words: Goliath Global Development Inc . He paused. ‘Do any of you remember Periwinkle Farm?’
A lot of paws went up.
‘I used to live there,’ said a weasel.
‘And what happened?’ asked Cornelius.
‘We lived there for a long long time. We had a wonderful home in a small copse of trees; it was close to the river and fields of tall brown grassy things. I don’t go a day without rem…’
‘And what happened?’ asked Cornelius forcefully.
‘It went. We heard a rumbling noise getting closer and closer, so we all ran out and hid in a hedge. We watched a gigantic machine, which had a bucket with teeth at the front, dig our home and the other weasels’ homes up.’
‘A lot of my family and friends were squashed by those things,’ said a small ball of prickles. ‘It still frightens me when I think about it, even now.’
‘You are perfectly safe here,’ Cornelius replied.
The hedgehog slowly uncurled.
‘We lived there as well,’ said a rabbit, ‘until Whomins with bang sticks killed a lot of us.’
Cornelius surveyed the barn. There were still lots of creatures waiting to speak.
‘I can see that most of you have similar stories to tell,’ he said. ‘Just let me emphasise, if we do not stick together and keep to the rules of the truce, exactly the same will happen here. This farm will be turned in to a leisure centre for Whomins.’
‘What’s a leisure centre?’ asked a cow. ‘I’m the oldest in the herd and have never heard of one.’
Cornelius laughed, ‘that’s clever, herd and heard, um, um, what’s your name?’
‘I’m sorry I don’t understand what’s clever, but my name is, Mother of Everything in the Green Bits . It’s written on the tag in my ear, and you owls are supposed to be intelligent, uh!’
Cornelius looked at the tag; it read RL7043 .
It’s always a good idea to keep the cows on your side, he thought.
‘Oh yes, silly me, I can see it now. Anyway, leisure centres have lots of big buildings surrounded by grass with flags in it. Whomins hit balls with sticks around it. To achieve all this, fields, copses and hedgerows are destroyed or drastically changed. At Periwinkle Farm they even changed the course of the river. All this so some Whomins can come and play games.’
‘That’s not going to affect us,’ said a sheep. Dylan’s ears pricked up immediately.
‘Dylan!’ said Cornelius, in a commanding manner.
The collie relaxed.
‘We are sheeps, and we eat grass,’ it continued.
‘Whomins will not allow you to feed on this grass. It’s special grass. Also, I should tell you what was reported back to me by a jackdaw. At Periwinkle Farm all the sheep were forced to go into a big lorry. They were driven off, never to be seen again,’ Cornelius added.
‘Where did they go?’ asked another of the flock.
‘That I’m not too sure about, but the jackdaw did tell me he often flies over a building where he’s seen cows, pigs and sheep go in, but he’s never seen even one come out.’
‘Corny, it’s all very well telling us about all this, but what are we supposed to do?’ one of the rats shouted out.
‘I was coming to that, um, um Bill?’
‘I’m Buffalo-wing, can’t you tell the difference?’
‘Er, no, sorry.’
‘We are all as different as chalk and cheese! Still, you owls all look the same to us.’
‘Buffalo-wing, if you give me a chance, I will explain. I have asked my fourth nephew on my paternal side to visit us.’
Most of the animals had no idea what he was talking about, but he decided not to ask. It would be easier and quicker not to explain, he thought.
‘He lives at Sandhurst and watches Whomin soldiers train, so he is an expert on warfare. So please let me introduce you to Horatio.’
There were squeaks, bleats, moos, grunts, squeals, snorts and squawks as Horatio stepped out of the shadows and stood next to Cornelius.