Little Miss New

This is Little Miss New. But she wasn't always called Little Miss New, she used to be called something else.

Why wasn't she always Little Miss New? That's an interesting question.

Little Miss New has a story to tell, and this is her story.

-----

A long time ago, in a plain, ordinary town called Normalville, Mr. Nice lived in Nice Cottage, a beautiful and well-looked after house on Normalville's outskirts.

Normalville isn't known for anything out of the ordinary, and its people go about their everyday lives without any shock or scandal at all. Yes, bad things happen, but never anything too bad. It is quite the same for anything good too!

-----

Here is Mr. Nice. Now if you look at Little Miss New on the first page and look again at Mr. Nice, you might notice that they look almost the same.

You might ask whether Mr. Nice is related to Little Miss New.

For example, you might ask whether Little Miss New is Mr. Nice's sister.

Or you might ask whether they are cousins.

I'll tell you later.

-----

Mr. Nice was, as you might expect, a nice man. He was polite to everyone, helped out his family, friends and neighbours and was generally thought of as being nice.

And like everyone else in Normalville, he never did anything at all to stand out.

Here he is baking cupcakes one day to sell at the Town Fair. But nothing out of the ordinary here.

But some of you are asking, where is Little Miss New?

-----

One day, in Nice Cottage, Little Miss New went to her mirror. She stopped to admire herself. She was in her full attire, with her hat and dress, and full lipstick and makeup.

"I do look beautiful today." she said, as she adjusted her hat.

And suddenly, there was a knock at the door.


As quick as a flash, Little Miss New removed her hat, dress and makeup and grabbed Mr. Nice's clothes.

On went the trousers, the shoes and plain white shirt, and then she went off down the stairs.

-----

The door opened. It was the postman.

"Parcel for you, Mr. Nice!" said the postman.

"Thank you. I've been waiting for this." replied Mr. Nice.

But the postman noticed something different about Mr. Nice.

He asked "Mr. Nice? I couldn't help but notice, but you have something red all over your lips. Is that lipstick?"

"Lipstick? Oh no..."

-----

Mr. Nice thought quickly for an excuse.

"It must be the cherry pie I had earlier. I am sorry." said Mr. Nice.

The postman had a worried look on his face.

"Cherry pie for breakfast? That's not normal at all, Mr. Nice. Well, I would love to stop and chat, but I must simply deliver the rest of my round! Goodbye, Mr. Nice!"

Mr. Nice breathed a sigh of relief.

-----

Well, you might be asking questions yourself about Mr. Nice. Why was Mr. Nice wearing lipstick?

Did you know that Mr. Nice and Little Miss New are exactly the same person? Mr. Nice is Little Miss New, and Little Miss New is Mr. Nice.

But nobody in Normalville knew Mr. Nice's secret.

-----

Mr. Nice thought about what had happened earlier. If he told other people that Mr. Nice was wearing lipstick when he delivered his parcel, there would be concerns. There may be shock! There may be even panic! People would think this sort of thing isn't normal at all!

Mr. Nice spent a while thinking about what to do. He couldn't keep this secret forever as someone was bound to find it out.

He came to a decision. He would be brave and tell them his secret.

-----

Tomorrow was the Town Fair, and everyone from Normalville would be there. There would be games, food, drink and a big speech by the Mayor of Normalville.

And there, Mr. Nice would reveal his secret.

-----

Mr. Nice usually entered the annual cake competition at the fair. Only, this time, he would enter this year's competition as Little Miss Nice.

As this was to be such a special occasion, he created the most beautiful, wonderful, delicious cake, and it was the best he had ever made!

After finishing the last of the icing, he went straight to bed to get plenty of sleep for the big day.

-----

Mr. Nice got up, got dressed, put on makeup and became Little Miss New.

She checked herself in the mirror again, making she was as beautiful as she always was.

She had breakfast, and just as she finished her last mouthful, the doorbell rang again!

But this time, she didn't change her clothes. She went to answer the door as Little Miss New.

-----

It was the postman again.

"Just a parcel for y-... This is for Mr. Nice, madam. Would you make sure he gets it?" said the postman.

"I'll make sure Mr. Nice gets it!" grinned Little Miss New.

The postman didn't seem to recognise her at all, not one bit.

-----

Later that morning, Little Miss New left her house to take her cake to the Town Fair.

As she walked through town, she noticed that no one recognised her at all. Some of them asked whether she had just moved into town. And some of them said how delicious her cake looked!

She met the vicar of the town church, who was a friend of Mr. Nice's and he said that Little Miss New's cake reminded him of something that Mr. Nice would have baked.

But even he didn't spot anything different!

Little Miss New carried on, smiling. She felt like a completely new person!

-----

Little Miss New entered her cake into the competition and browsed the stalls at the fair.

Mrs Purl was there as usual, with her knitted dolls for sale.

And so was Mrs Lollipop, from the newsagents, with her 'Guess how many sweets are in the jar?' competition.

And Mr. Sausage the butcher served lovely, hot food from his barbecue!

-----

As the day went on, she did hear whispers amongst people, asking where Mr. Nice was. It was quite far from normal for him not to be here. He was there every year. And he hadn't even entered a cake into the cake competition!

Suddenly, a loud voice came from the Mayor's megaphone. It was time to do the annual tombola, so everyone began walking towards the stage, where the Mayor stood ready.

The Mayor said "I'd like to select a volunteer. And that volunteer just happens to be a rather remarkable person who has absolutely excelled at this year's cake competition. Would Little Miss New come to the stage, please?"

Little Miss New blushed, as the crowd applauded!

-----

As she stepped up to the stage, she turned and looked to the people of Normalville.

"Just before I do the tombola, I have something to say to you all."

The crowd hushed to a silence.

"You may not recognise me, and you may think I'm new to town. But the thing is, I know so many of you so very well and I hope you can forgive me for what I am about to do." she announced.

And just then, she removed her hat, and everyone there recognised Mr. Nice immediately, and gasped!

-----

The Mayor rushed to her just at once.

"Mr. Nice? Well, this... well. Oh dear."

The people of Normalville looked horrified. They had never seen anything like this before, not in a place like Normalville!

And then the Mayor said, "My friends. You may think we people of Normalville are certainly more normal than everybody else. People would think that a man who wants to dress, and live, as a woman is definitely not normal at all. What if I were to say that there are men and women who feel like they're in the wrong body all around the world? Surely if Mr. Nice feels more normal when he is Little Miss New, then this is the way things should be. After all, we like it when things are normal, so I think we should not be alarmed, and we should welcome Little Miss New as one of us!"

-----

And at once, the people of Normalville applauded them both.

And the important message is this. Just because you're different from everybody else, doesn't mean you're not normal. We can't have normality if we can't accept people who are different from us. If everyone was the same... well, that definitely wouldn't be normal, would it?

And the winner of the tombola? One happy postman!

Another Mr. Men idea.

I'll be putting together a full story soon. I've got another Mr. Men idea to add to the list.

Mr. Hero - Mr. Hero is the story of a soldier who suffers an unfortunate accident while on the field, losing his right leg and part of his right arm. Having being discharged from the army, the other Mr. Men help him adjust to everyday life and help him accept his disabilities.

Up The Magic Garden

Slightly autobiographical...

Hey, what shall we do today?
Let's go up the garden and play.

You don't need friends, there's plenty there,
Don't stop inside to stand and stare.

What is outside? Let's go and see.
Let's look under the magic tree.

Look, there is a spider here,
Come with me, nothing to fear,
Let's put you in a wooden box,
I'll leave you there for lots and lots.

Let's look now amongst the slabs,
You will see there's lots of ants,
To make sure they won't go far,
I'll put some ants into a jar.

A buzzing sound, I softly hear,
What can it be? I look and leer,
There's a wasp flying around,
It circles down to the ground.

I must be careful, wasps can sting,
They don't care; they'd sting anything,
I whack it with rolled up newspaper,
Just to stun it for my caper.

This next step is not for fools,
You will have to bring your tools,
A pair of tweezers will do you well,
And steady hands will surely tell.

The stunned wasp lies on the ground,
It does not know I am around,
I use the tweezers for these things,
I dismember all its wings.

A flightless wasp for me to keep,
In a box for a few weeks.

So many ants to play with too,
Let's see what body parts to lose.

Legs, if you can keep them still,
They walk as if they are ill,
If you take too many, just be wary,
It leaves them very stationary.

And if you try to take a head,
It simply makes that ant dead,
An antenna here that I have found,
Remove this, they'll walk round and round.

It starts to rain, it's time to stop,
Let's put away the jars and pots,
The spider box into the shed,
Forgotten now for weeks on end.

Remaining ants, I pour away,
Safe to live another day.
I take the flightless wasp inside,
It starts to stir while I spied.

In my room, I carry on,
The wasp walks around the box,
With tweezers, I grip and then,
I seperate the abdomen.

The wasp still lives, but only just,
Its fluids leak out like pus,
The abdomen, a strange thing,
It'll try to use its sting.

It tries to sting for two more weeks,
The wasp is dead, but this still lives,
It soon ends up in the bin,
But it was quite a curious thing.

The rain comes down in a thunderous spray,
I'll torture poor insects another day.

This ain't just about Mr. Men you know

Or indeed, kids books in general. Not as if I want to give the impression that I'm totally blasé about the whole thing, but on the whole, kids books do tend to be shorter than adult books. This does not make them easy to write, however, as you do have to tailor them for a particular audience. As is the case for parodies of kids books, as in kids books written in the style of kids books but for a more adult audience - re: 'Let's Shit'.

Parodies of this sort of thing are becoming to become more popular. You may be aware of 'Go The F**k To Sleep' which is a successful example of the genre.

I've given more adult books a go in the past, and I do have considerably high expectations of myself when I was. So high, in fact, that it battered my confidence to such a degree that I couldn't finish what I was writing. Even now, when I read back to what I've written before, I just think that I've scrambled together an awful piece of work, and I should use my time for more useful and productive ventures and the like.

I mainly enjoy writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It was only up to a few years ago, when writing a story about a being that can draw a portal to anywhere in the Universe that I realised that I should inject a bit of humour into the whole thing. But the main reason for focusing on Sci-Fi and Fantasy in general is that I like to create my own worlds and rules (though without becoming too unrealistic).

I started a blog two years ago with the intention of posting bite-sized portions of a Fantasy saga which I would update regularly. I didn't advertise it well, and again, the demon of low self confidence struck again with a killing blow that doomed the entire thing. Ideas for the story still run through my head, and I may just come back to this again, as there are some rather killer parts to this which I think to be fair should be exposed to the world.

Anyway, here is what I managed to accomplish, if you've got a bit of time to spare.

http://blatantfantasyrubbish.blogspot.com/

New Mr. Men characters

I've been thinking of new Mr. Men and Little Miss characters. They may not have the same level of poignancy as Mr. Gay, but you can't have that every time. This is what I've thought of so far.

Little Miss Transgender - Mr. Feminine doesn't feel as manly as the other Mr. Men and doesn't feel he is in the right body. One day, he leaves for a while, and later on, a new and mysterious Little Miss arrives in town...

Little Miss Art - Having painted portraits of a lot of people, Little Miss Art begins getting requests from some rather difficult clients...

Mr. Fit - Now that Mr. Science has opened a portal to a parallel universe, Mr. Fit trains harder than ever to challenge Mr. Strong in a strongman contest. But he injures himself badly and looks for help to get back in the game...

Little Miss Rainfall - Little Miss Sunshine visits the parallel universe to see her opposite number, Little Miss Rainfall. She hears Miss Rainfall is unhappy and tries to help, and learns that Depression is a serious condition and that these things take a lot of time and effort to resolve...