The first of April had come and gone so I knew it wasn’t a practical joke. Through the process of elimination I came to the conclusion that what I had on my hands was in fact a phenomenon. A remarkable occurrence indeed.
I’m not what you might call a morning person– in fact I’m robotic until noon and so it took a while for the phenomenon to sink in: ‘the ducks had gone’.

Five yellow ornamental ducks had, overnight mind you, decided to up roots and move on.

I missed their presence. The garden seemed empty somehow. Where once they had mingled with the plants, close to the wheelie bin, was now a void. Nair a duck in sight.

As I gathered my thoughts and accepted that all five ducks were now fully-fledged, I noticed another phenomenon. A witch on a bicycle. Yes, folks, an ornamental witch riding an ornamental bicycle.

There she was, bold as brass, on the ornamental bicycle down by the bushes. She wasn’t one of ours, we don’t wear witches. She didn’t have to exert much effort to overcome inertia. The bicycle wheels spun in response to the vagaries of the wind.

One phenomenon is unusual, two is downright dangerous and three would have to be filed under catastrophic. However, that’s exactly what happened, we had a triple phenomenon. My neighbour’s gnome legged it overnight to an adjoining garden. So let’s have a resume, just to put things in order. We had five ducks a leggin’, one witch absconding and one gnome a wanderin’– alas, there was no partridge in a pear tree.

Throughout the day the witch was returned, dare I say, to her coven garden. The yellow ducks flew home that evening and the gnome, well, he’s still away with the fairies.

Top: Maybe Christy would fare better with real ducks like the pair above!