The Mischief Makers

By Tony McNamara and Chris Bye

This is Tony’s first book and he wants children to enjoy reading the adventures of Cornelius, Finn and Merlin as much as he did writing about them.

“The ideas for the stories were inspired by the cat who lives next door to me, the fox who lives on the field at the side of my house and a mischievous looking gnome which I brought for the garden. I hope that the stories encourage children to use their imagination and create their own magical animal stories. More adventures to follow soon!”

TM/London/October 2020.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984595089

Tony McNamara

Welcome to the Mischief Makers! Cornelius the crafty cat, Finn the street-wise cunning fox and Merlin the Magic Gnome. In these stories we see them making all sorts mischief and magic – Cornelius and Finn partying on the roof and disappearing down the chimney, up to no good in stolen fancy dress props and Merlin turning my garden into a strange magical jungle!

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Tony Mcnamara and Chris Bye. 813190

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either

are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or

locales is entirely coincidental.

Xlibris

UK TFN: 0800 0148620 (Toll Free inside the UK)

UK Local: 02036 956328 ([phone] from outside the UK)

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-9845-9507-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9845-9508-9 (e)

Rev. date: 10/15/2020

CONTENTS

The Cat, The Fox And The Fire Brigade

Cornelius And Finn Go For A Spin

Merlin The Magic Garden Gnome

THE CAT, THE FOX AND

THE FIRE BRIGADE

I still can’t explain how he got up there or why, but the fact was he was there, bold as brass. The white, whiskery tip of his ginger-brown furry nose poking over the edge of my upstairs front bedroom window as he stared down at me - slyly, defiantly, as I stood on the pavement outside the front door, looking up in amazement. That can’t possibly be the fox from the field, surely? Our house was at the end of a small cul-de-sac overlooking a large open field, which was used by local football groups and the nearby school for various sporting events and was also home to a family of foxes.

S1Foxwindow.jpg

I hastily tried to re-enact my steps since waking up that morning. I had locked the front door as usual before going to bed, closed all the front windows downstairs and checked the same for the back of the house. It was only 8.30 am and I had been alone in the house since my wife had left for work half an hour earlier. And yet there he was! He couldn’t have climbed up the side of the house or the gutter on the side edge, could he? Can foxes climb that high? Even if that was physically possible, how had he managed to push himself through the narrow opening offered between the window sill and the open sash window in the upstairs bedroom? None of this made any sense. Even if he had managed that Herculean feat, I am a very light sleeper and would very quickly have been alerted to the noise of a canine intruder in my bedroom. Curiouser and curiouser, to echo what Alice once said when everything around her in her Wonderland was strange, surreal almost – this most peculiar episode still haunts me!

So if he was one of the foxes from the field -Finn- as I had named him, he had somehow managed to enter my house via the upstairs bedroom window. Still looking up in disbelief, I