The Gooseberry Set
The Bohemian Life and Times of Martha Rowe-Dente
An Authorised Biography
By Genevieve Hedgley-Hogg
At her beginning Martha was born into a scramble of pink and hairless siblings, all eyes-a-bulge beneath blind sealed lids in the squabble to compete for a place at the teat. Alarmed by the rudiments in the basics of survival, Martha knew that she must search out beauty down the by-ways to dreams and once fixed upon this noble purpose, promptly barged two brothers and yanked at a sister to gain the firmest nipple for the longest suckle of the sweetest milk.
Once grown away from Mama's warm and patient belly, Martha preened her auburn fur and took a wide eyed look over and about and around. Twitching her nose to the air, Martha turned tail on Mama's skirting-board home and scampered the pattern across the linoleum floor with a hippety skippity run, run, run right out of the parlour's back street door where the gutter welcomed her with a half hot dog dobbed bright with a yellow mustard that overkeened her big brown eyes until they smarted a mite too much and moved her on to a stale bagel to neatly nibble on in little mousey crescents before proceeding on her way to skipperty whoops through a grating into the Miller's cellar where she flipped top over tail to belly first most flop onto a softfall sack of flour. A timely repose...... until bumpity wake up and down bounce behind the back of a horse drawing a barrow upon which herself was found to be on a ride atop a pyramid pile of softfall sacks all a-judder to the cobbles dancing down the street until the salt-sea breezed on Martha's whiskers and the horse hoof clipped its clop, rocking the wheels on quarter turns by a Steamer-Ship-Cruiser on the Water-Dock-Front.
Two stevedore arms threw Martha and sack across the burly-broad of a double-bend back and then down into the hold of a ship's black echo where a fellow mouse introduced himself as the Honourable Ismbard Rowe-Dente, Philosopher and Poet.
He was a kind mouse and escorted her to the ship's kitchen where they sat by a porthole eating gorgonzola and patais de fois gras as the ship sailed away from the huge green lady giant wearing a star crown and holding a flame. Ismbard explained that she was THE BIG LIBERTY and they were leaving her country now and sailing to London England where he had lodgings behind a mahogany bookcase in Cordwray Square off Gooseberry Street and Martha was most welcome to join their commune and even be his Mousewife.
Martha accepted and settled down her life in amongst composers of nutshell symphonies and sculptures in turnip and potatoes and Martha too found her own limelight as an artist of some repute in the medium of many coloured lentils and the odd dried pea.
