Lo and Behold
£19.50
Every picture tells a story, read on ……
Fame Manor, or “the House of Ill Fame” as it’s often called, is situated in the Norfolk countryside just a few miles east of the market town of Swaffham and is currently owned by two Dutch brothers Daan and Pim Vandaal. (That’s them up on the roof of the big Georgian mansion). They arrived in England on the Harwich Ferry from the Hook of Holland one dark winter’s night in 2018 and have been there ever since. The locals refer to them as “those bloody vandals” because they strongly disapprove of all the changes they’ve made since bursting in upon their quiet country scene.
The Fame Estate has been turned into a safari park and gardens by “the boys” which inevitably the locals are none too happy about both in principle and because of the coachloads of visitors it attracts. What’s more, old Molars the crocodile frequently escapes and the elephants seem to spend more time drinking beer from a bucket at the village pub, The Pickled Raven, than they do in their own enclosure.
The boy’s widowed mother Saskia lives in the Dower House on the other side of the park and is currently involved in a dalliance with Ben Dover the local gardener/odd job man who, according to the locals, is “a very handyman indeed.”
Daan and Pim are also obsessed with Dutch heraldry and are currently experimenting with the genetic modification of the Frisian eagle in an attempt to bring it to life through selective cross-breeding with the great bustard. They plan eventually to release any resultant mutations into the wild in the remote mountains of East Anglia. The Frisian black eagle is unique because it is always depicted cut in half vertically which means you never see this double-headed creature in its entirety. It appears on the coat of arms of the town of Sneek in the Netherlands (famed for its canals, the De Walrus Bar and a magnificent sampler of the same name).
The eagle breeding programme is so far not very successful as most of the hatchlings are single-headed and grow to over 10 feet tall with voracious appetites. And, you guessed it, the locals are up in arms about these raptors because the creatures think nothing of swooping down on cats, dogs, deer and even, on one particularly shocking occasion, the vicar’s toupee! The poor man has never quite recovered from this awful ordeal even though the surgeons did miracles reattaching his left ear in such a timely manner. Is nothing sacred – apparently not in Long Dog Land
Comes as a pdf for you to download and stitch whenever and wherever the fancy takes you.
- Area in stitches: 312 x 370