The first significant adventure Millicent had took place on a cold winter morning when she woke to find the whole world hard and sparkling in the midst of an ice storm. In a whirl of excitement Millicent wrapped herself up tightly in six layers of thick, warm, woolen underwear, threw an even thicker, warmer, woolen jerkin over the top of them all, and flew out into the crisp silent air. She made straight for the forest and was soon crunching along between the trees, her fingers dancing across the surfaces of twigs and leaves and bark. So transformed was the forest that she fancied herself a princess in a castle rendered entirely in diamonds, hung from every glistening column and arch with chandeliers and twinkling garlands. She stalked hither and thither, pronouncing decrees and ordering royal feasts and balls. She curtsied and smiled, counted her gold, pardoned squirrels and knighted blackbirds, and carried on with all manner of princess-like activities until finally she could think of no more.
Only then did she become aware of the muffled grumbling sound that was coming from her belly. The thought of breakfast quickly pushed all other thoughts aside, and the tremendous beauty of the icy world around her vanished as if in a sudden thaw as it dawned on her she had no idea how to get back to Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane. It is quite possible that she might never have made it home again. The forest was so large and she had walked so far that she might easily have gone on walking deeper and deeper into it’s wooden heart, only to finally curl up in exhaustion beneath some giant oak and never again open her eyes. However, that is not what happened. Millicent looked around her, licked her finger and tested the wind, and set off in completely the wrong direction - which is what saved her life. But not until much later.
In the wrong direction lay not only a complete lack of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane, but also a large and hungry Black Bear.
A trip to the park a couple of weeks ago reminded me of the magic to be found in this particular part of the world. See if you can spot the elephant…
click twice for luck
There was once a young girl who was the attendant to a rich and powerful queen. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane, because the village she came from was just a short walk down a pretty country lane from the slightly larger village of Muckleberry. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane because her mother, her mother’s mother, her mother’s mother’s mother and her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother had been called Millicent. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane because left to their own devices her feet smelled strongly of cheese and every morning she packed her shoes with fresh mint leaves in an attempt to subdue the pungent aroma. Her name was Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane but everyone called her Milly Maybe.
The reason for this was quite simple and even less interesting than anything to do with grandmothers and villages and foot fungus. Millicent was known as Milly Maybe quite simply because she said ‘maybe’ a lot. Of much greater interest is why Millicant said ‘maybe’ so much in the first place, and that is a more complicated issue.
When Millicent was a very young girl - young enough that a single puddle could entertain her for half an afternoon - she struck nobody at all as being out of the ordinary. And since ‘the ordinary’ was limited to the lives of the handful of families that lived together on the barren, muddy land that curved along one edge of the Great Blackwoods Forest, it didn’t take much to stand out. She had two sisters and three brothers, all older than her, who had survived their own treacherous childhoods and now accompanied her mother and father every day in the fields. Millicent was left with her grandmother, who was one of the Millicent’s that she had been named after. Her grandmother had by then outlived her name and was known to all as Oba, the name by which all old women in the village went after a certain age. She was an easygoing woman and generally let Millicent do whatever she felt like. Luckily for Millicent this easygoing nature stretched to the drying, cleaning, sewing-up, soothing and mending required after Millicent was forced to stop doing what she felt like by a wide variety of spills, rips, falls, scares, scrapes, collisions and scoldings. Consequently Millicent learned quickly about the small world around her, gained common sense by the bucket load, and by the time she was tall and strong enough to climb the giant silver birch that marked the boundary between her families’ land and that of their neighbours, she was having all sorts of wonderful adventures.
The first significant adventure Millicent had took place on a cold winter morning when she woke to find the whole world hard and sparkling in the midst of an ice storm.