The Lost Forest Series

Once long ago, or short ago if you haven't got much time, somewhere on the African savannah a group of trees decided to form a wood. Nothing unusual in that, you say. The wood soon grew to become a forest and then...it became a Lost Forest... Within and around the forest lived many animals. None of them thought the forest was lost, they all knew where it was - exactly where they lived! But odd things often went on in the forest and frequently the animals had quite unusual adventures.This is the tale of one such animal, a leopard named Opa. One day Opa lost her spots. All of them. They just fell off. Opa knows who was responsible but she also knows she may be better off in the shade and sets off on a journey around the lost forest. On her journey, Opa meets a stork with a clipboard, a lost explorer, a polar bear...oh and a sloth but we won’t mention the sloth...or what it says. Can a leopard without spots ever be the same? And why does Opa get mistaken for a bat? This is the first, gentle easing into the quite unusual and unbelievable tales from The Lost Forest!

Across the African Savannah, over, around or through the Lost Forest and straight up a high rocky outcrop, Reginald, Prince of Baboons was sitting in the dining room of his hilltop palace... If only things had remained that peaceful... Reginald wants to fly to the moon - he’s tried before and failed...this time he is going by hot air balloon. However, things are never straightforward for Reginald... Along the way he becomes entangled with a camel, is almost eaten by a vulture, gets rescued by disguised meerkats...and then there is the moth of myth ...Oh and Les Termites.

The third story in the Lost Forest series sees life in the forest carrying on much the same as ever – or perhaps not... Honey Elephants are a rare and special thing and the subject of unwritten history...they also have knees... But this is not the beginning of our story. If a story must have a beginning then this one begins in a tree... Long before tomorrow when today had not quite become yesterday and somewhere in-between lunch and dinner...two monkeys were sat in a tree... And that would have been that except...except there is an awlful lot more. The stork, for reasons the tree monkeys explain, went on holiday but he flew South instead of North and bumped into some jazz-loving badgers; while he was away, the tree monkeys set off to discover the Honey Elephant's honey yard. Then there are the Sisters of the Sacred Brethren, a group of flightless condors, headed toward the Lost Forest on a pilgrimage....and, completely separately, the Rajastan Dodo is now extinct... But to be fair, no one probably noticed... Eventually they all come together in a chaotic tale of...well...you'll need to read the story to discover just what happens...or doesn't or should have... But as the stork says, “it's a metaphor, isn't it...a fossilised snake, a giant inner tube...no...erm...hominy grits?..oh, a pole..?” “It is the one and the many at the same time...” replied Sister Dor of the Sisters of the Sacred Brethren. The sun began to tire and slip down to the horizon, trying as best it could to cast butterfly shadows on the sand dunes until...in the cooling evening air, it sneezed, lost its balance and fell below the horizon plunging everything into darkness... Oh and don't forget, it is probably a bad idea to feed the badgers honey... And remember, the Honey Elephant is a rare and special thing and the subject of unwritten history...probably just a myth then...

The fourth story in the Lost Forest series sees life in the forest being as unpredictable as ever... Once there was a time when after breakfast there was nothing... Nothing except the stork being chased, nothing except a tiger falling from the sky, nothing except two tree monkeys discussing tea... Oh, a tiger falling from the sky? "My name is Typhon-the-Tiger and I am the last of the great Greek tigers." And so begins not so much an adventure but a series of discoveries. Some are unsettling; at one point the stork is perturbed by the thought, of all things, zombie African bush squirrel babies! Others are quite deadly; what is the cause of wild and strange hypnotise? What happened in a certain valley in Peru and will it happen in the Lost Forest? What is the difference between High Tea and Afternoon Tea? And what does yak butter tea have to do with any of this? Then there is the dragon...the stork tells Typhon to let him know when it's all sorted. Sorted how? Does the Sloth of Gloom know? What about the chess playing hyenas? But before all this, Typhon-the-Tiger smiled, “You must have done something very bad to have upset that many hippo and rhino beasts.” Yes, but who upset them? Grumpy lions, unreliable griffon vultures, the Cape Vultures Aerobatic Team, a stripe-stripped zebra all mix and swirl together around the Typhon-the-Tiger, the Last of the Great Greek Tigers, the stork and the two tree monkeys and their quest to defeat the one known as... "a name that is spoken only in hushed whispers..." How will it all end? Hopefully with a well-stocked larder, at least that is what the tree monkeys hope. But before then there is much, much to discover.