Menagerie

Felicity is a hugger. It started as an adolescent, when she experimented with born-again religion, and soon she was craving any sort of embrace. After a succession of relationships suffered from her excessive clinginess, Felicity discovered that she could work out her surplus snuggles by grabbing flora. So she joined the Greens and now spends all her time getting tactile with trees. Silver birch has a nice feel, but Felicity’s favourite is eucalyptus, which is lovely and papery. Plus, the leaves get her stoned.

Leonard hasn’t had a drink in weeks. He swore off it when a heavy session with the boys resulted in a night in the cells, after Leonard spat at a policeman. Staying dry has so far been easy enough, but next month Leonard is working on a tourist caravan. He worries heavy drinking will be the only way to get through the experience – sightseers always give him the hump.

Bryony has had enough. Years of childish comments have pushed her to the limit, and the next time someone makes a cheap joke about trouser legs Bryony may well sink her teeth into them. So far, she has been content with non-violent resistance. The first March for Ferrets Against Stereotyping met with a disappointing turnout, however, and Bryony is considering teaming up with the weasels next time.

Des is patient. He has long been a fan of 70s sci-fi, the Tour de France, and the novel Middlemarch. But lately he has been craving more extreme challenges. This winter, Des plans to stand at the South Pole for two months with an egg balanced on his feet. After that, perhaps he will feel ready to try travelling on Southern Rail.

Dunstan loves tunnelling. After the mines closed, he moved to London to work on Crossrail, but that job is coming to an end. Dunstan’s eyesight isn’t good enough to drive the trains, so he’s pinning his hopes on Brexit, and the chance of a British Hadron Collider. Until it gets approval, he plans to keeps busy with his hobby of tagging every lawn in Essex.

Prunella is a trained killer. Her particular set of skills includes attaching limpet mines to submarines, and advanced fin to fin combat. Prunella has always disliked her given name, and prefers her callsign, P-Dog. She has nothing but contempt for her fun-loving cousins, wasting their time perfecting somersaults for herring, and yearns for the day when she can test her mettle against Iran’s mercenary force of Ukranian dolphinjas in the Strait of Hormuz.

Adam and Liam never agree. For years they have argued on every subject under the sun, from favourite foods to which football team has the best strip. (Adam rates Newcastle United, but Liam prefers Notts County.) It’s got so bad that they can’t even cross the road these days without bickering, and Disney are thinking of rehousing one of them to spare the tourists.

Beatrice hates naturalists. Nothing sours her mood more than bearded men creeping round her burrow in the middle of the night, and she’s totally fed up with tripping over dark lights and camera traps. For the life of her Beatrice can’t understand why they find her so fascinating, and frets that they have discovered her secret plans to cough on local livestock.

George doesn’t like being labelled. Last time someone called them a mammal, they wanted to lay an egg to prove them wrong, but sadly they don’t have a womb. In time, they want to have kids with an amphibian just to really mess with people’s heads, but until they meet the right partner they’ll settle for getting their bill pierced.

Tamsin suffers from headaches. This often makes her irritable, which over the years has given her a reputation as a grouch. Most of the animals in the forest avoid her these days, and last winter she slept alone. Tamsin has given up looking for a cure, after an unfortunate episode when she tried walking into a pharmacy. Now she copes by finding somewhere dark to recover, and reflecting on how boorish she finds male bears anyway.