‘Devilish’ Dennis peered at a column of ants, as, carrying twigs and leaves,
the many-legged creatures made their way through Middlecamp Wood.

Tired, they stopped in the shade of his shadow, thankful for a rest.
Inspired, Dennis built a forest retreat which was soon entered by a fox.

A pack of hounds sniffed without but, confused by the aroma of his socks,
slinked away, as the Darkley Hunt cursed their failure to catch an animal regarded as a pest.

A lonely young woman wished that she could join this insectile army,
as she sat by a stream, watching ants cruise by on leafy vessels.

‘Don’t  be daft, Daffers’, she said to herself, ‘the insects would refuse your request, saying,
‘you’d squash us with your big feet, you nasty human!

'Oh, Dennis would have laughed at that,’ she thought, thinking of her brother,
wondering if he’d been fighting with village lads, for he wasn’t afraid to use his fists.

His public school had expelled him after a fight with two bullies,
Percy Pilling and Darcy Deadmash, who’d thought him easy prey, because he loved poets Byron and Coleridge.

What’s more, like his sister, he loved English folk ballads, such as the one about beer,
John Barleycorn, while other pupils rocked to The Rolling Stones and the newly-electric Bob Dylan.

His riding teacher, Diddly Dovetish, a former secret agent, taught him self-defence.

Little did the bullish boys suspect, that the extra tuition Dennis received wasn’t in how to control horses,
and the other kids laughed when they ended up on their arses.

Likewise, the village louts who’d tormented him as a kid, suffered the same fate as their public-school counterparts,
and the mockery of coarse country girls, who secretly fancied Dennis.

He even indulged some of them, but they weren’t interested in Wordsworth.

Remembering this, Daphne wondered – had he run off with one of those comely village females,
slender Dorothy Dilling or buxom Maud Middleflan?

‘Oh,’ she thought with alarm, ‘why did I describe them in such admiring terms – maybe I’m a lesbian?’

But her musing was disturbed by an odour, like that of sweaty rugby socks,
bringing back happy memories of playing for the school rugger team, pretending to be a boy.

Laughing at this, she thought, ‘Maybe this is fate.’

So, following her nose, Daphne met a wall of undergrowth, and concluded,
‘This must be where the hunt’s quarry sought refuge.’

Alas, the young woman was last seen wandering into Middlecamp Wood.

The police, perplexed by a structure made from forest debris, serched in vain.
But PC Pedro Despatchamoy, a Spaniard by birth, was suspicious.

He’d studied entomology in Madrid, but, fleeing vengeful husbands, joined the British police,
after watching an English television drama called Inspector Blood.

After examining the strange construction, he’d found traces of a species of insects,
Auntus Mirabellos, found on Cantabria Mountain, where an invading Moslem army was
struck down by a deadly rash, caused by an infestation of ants.

People wondered how these little creatures had ended up in their locality.
Had they evaded the UK Border Force by climbing into returning tourists’ suitcases?
That night in the Dog Inn, the constable learned that a rash had struck women returned from Spain.

But what had happened to Daphne?

Unknown to the authorities, she too had fallen for the philandering policeman, declaring,
‘Thank God I don’t bat for the other side, but next time, let’s do without the handcuffs!’

The lovestruck cop tracked her to Switzerland, where she was tutoring millionaires daughters in social etiquette,
and enticing young men at the discotheque, but she only had thoughts for one, her first lover,
that Spanish-born village constable.

Years later, a journalist revealed that Daphne, married to a former village PC, Pedro Pedro Despatchamoy,
had adopted a new identity – writing novels deep in a Spanish woodland as Bella Bulworthy-Budstable.

Now prone to ‘Brewer’s droop’, he’d fled Middlecamp-Manor after seducing all the local women.
But unlike Daphne’s brother, he was no good at fisticuffs.

As for Devilish’ Dennis, he’d left England on a fishing smack, hidden under a pile of fish.
Walking through a forest in Lithuania, outriders from a travelling circus spotted him fighting off a bear.

Billed as the ‘Fishy Fighter’, he took on allcomers in the boxing ring.
But, anxious to preserve his good looks, he decided to adopt a new identity,
enlisting the help of former teacher, Diddly Dovetish, he of the Secret Service.

Now, Dennis is a bestselling writer of love verse, under the name Senor Den Dissimo.

He loves to retreat to a forest den, like the one he built in an English wood, telling his pals,
the squirrels and foxes, ‘I’m glad I ran away, for I can resist the temptation to slug it out with local hard cases.

‘Daphne even lets me advise her regarding novelistic plots, as a result,
she wrote The Curse of the Little Creatures, about deadly ants which arrive in Britain via tourists’ suitcases.’

But back home, his old teacher Diddly Dovetish let slip at a school reunion that a former pupil,
who’d knocked out those school bullies, Darcy Deadmash and Percy Pilling, was living in a Spanish hovel.

Vowing revenge, the two sought him out, but, Devilish was warned by Diddly they were coming.

So when the pair visited a public convenience, they experienced terrible itching in their underpants.

‘Ah,’ cried Daphne, ‘Thank God for Dennis the menace, and his angry ants!’