“Alice on Top of the World” serves as both a tribute to the original tales and a fresh exploration of timeless themes. It invites readers of all ages to reflect on their own journeys through life, encouraging them to cherish the magic of imagination and the beauty of memories.
Alice and Santa set off with the children’s presents
Alice and Fle, a very old elf, in his fertilizer mine
Alice meets King Tut, the king of the sea lions
Alice steps on the elevator to the top of the world
It began, as peculiar things often do, with something perfectly ordinary.
Old Mrs. Hanratty was sitting on the pier at Blessington Lake, feeding the ducks with the heels of a stale loaf, when the first leaf drifted down from above. She thought nothing of it—there are trees everywhere, after all, and it was autumn.
But then came another leaf. And another. And another.
By the time she’d run out of bread, the air above the lake was thick with them—oak, ash, beech, sycamore, elm—some so large they could have been used as parasols. They spiralled down in lazy loops, landing on the water with soft splashes or sticking to the pier’s damp planks.
What puzzled Mrs. Hanratty most was this: there was not a single tree anywhere near her. The leaves were falling from directly above—straight down from the empty blue sky.
Within an hour, word had spread.
Children in wellies ran laughing along the shore, trying to catch the drifting leaves before they touched the water. Fishermen paused mid-cast to watch as maple leaves the size of dinner plates parachuted past their noses. Tourists stood gawping, phones held high.
And still the leaves kept coming.
By midday, they were falling faster. The surface of the lake was no longer water—it was a shifting carpet of golds, reds, and browns. The ducks paddled in confusion, occasionally disappearing entirely under drifts of foliage before popping up again like feathery corks.
At two o’clock, the leaves began to arrive in patterns—swirling spirals, perfect rings, even shapes that some swore looked like letters. “It’s writing something!” shouted young Patrick Flynn. But before anyone could read it, the wind twisted the letters into nonsense.
Then, at exactly three o’clock, the lake itself seemed to sigh. A long, low sound, like the breath of something deep beneath. And with that, the falling stopped.
Everyone stood frozen, staring at the silent water, now buried under a thick, motionless blanket of leaves.
Mrs. Hanratty swore she saw the whole carpet shift slightly, as if something huge had just rolled over beneath it.
By the next morning, the leaves were gone—every last one. The lake was its usual, calm self, with no sign of the strange downpour.
But those who had been there said that sometimes, if you stood on the pier at just the right time of day and looked down into the still water, you might see something looking back. Something that moved like the wind, but had no need for air.
And if you were very unlucky, you might see a single leaf float slowly upward from the depths.
A Short Story: The Girl with the Purple Umbrella
There once was a girl named Lila who strolled through town with a purple umbrella—always open, even on the sunniest of days. She wore socks that didn’t match, spoke in rhymes when no one asked, and could often be found conversing with lamp posts or feeding imaginary pigeons.
People in the town of Dullingshire whispered.
“She’s strange,” said the baker.
“Weird,” nodded the barber.
“Completely off,” murmured the mayor.
“Possibly crazy,” concluded the postman.
One day, a curious boy named Felix asked her why she did the things she did. She twirled her umbrella, smiled, and said:
“I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy—
My reality is just different from yours, dear Daisy.”
“My name’s Felix,” he corrected.
“Exactly,” she winked.
She invited him to walk with her. Under her umbrella, the world looked different—full of colour, music, and upside-down rainbows. Trees whispered secrets, puddles shimmered like portals, and the clouds giggled above.
By the time they returned, Felix wasn’t sure whether he had visited another world or simply looked at his own for the first time. He tried explaining it to others, but they shook their heads and gave him cautious glances. He didn’t care.
From that day on, Felix carried a green balloon wherever he went and sometimes whistled at flowers to see if they’d sing back.
And when people whispered about him, Lila simply smiled and said,
“Welcome to my reality.”
And that’s how the world became a little less dull, and Dullingshire never quite lived up to its name again.
(As told in hushed tones by woodland creatures and highly suspicious teapots.)
In a village called Splotz, near the Crackling Cliffs’ root,
Lived an elf known as Fle—
And a jar marked “Newt.”
It sat on a shelf marked “Do Not Unseal!”
Right under the sign that read “Definitely Real.”
It bubbled, it gurgled, it muttered in rhyme,
And occasionally leaked a peculiar green slime.
“Now don’t touch the jar,” said old Fle with a wink.
“It once tried to marry a badger, I think.”
But Alice, quite curious (and rightly so),
Said, “Why keep a pickled newt sealed long ago?”
Fle sighed, then he paced, then he sat on a drum.
(He sits anywhere when his knees go numb.)
And thus he began, with a wiggle and groan,
To tell of the night he’d once meddled… alone.
“I was younger then—only two hundred and ten,
With a broom, a balloon, and a borrowed goose pen.
I’d just brewed a soup made of socks and some glue,
When a newt in a cravat said, ‘Good evening to you.’He asked for a snack, so I offered some cheese—
But he sneezed on my cat and dissolved half the trees.
Then he danced on my roof, ate my weather forecast,
And declared he would marry my gramophone… fast.So I pickled him, neatly, in vinegar brine,
With mustard, three cloves, and a touch of moonshine.
For ninety-nine years he’s been floating in stew,
Occasionally shouting, ‘I do, I do, I doooo!’And that, dear Alice, is why—if you please—
One must never serve cheese to amphibians with knees.”Alice blinked twice, then looked toward the shelf.
And slowly edged farther away from the elf.
“Is he dangerous?” she whispered, aghast.Fle shrugged.
“Only if he gets out of the jar made of glass.”Just then, the jar rattled, and a soft burp was heard—
Followed closely by a very rude word.
Fle sprang to his feet (as far as he could),
And stuffed the jar under a cloak made of wood.“No more questions,” he said, “about pickling fate.
Let’s talk about teapots. Or how I once flew a plate.”
On a mossy green bank where the daffodils grow,
Sat Alice and Fle with their toes all aglow.
Their lines dipped down in a wiggly stream,
In pursuit of a trout or a daydreamy dream.
Old Fle had a beard that was longer than sense,
He used it to dry off the fish from the fence.
(Yes, there was a fence, in the river somehow—
A trout swam through and said, “Do mind the cow.”)
“Now patience,” said Fle, “is the fisher’s true friend—”
Then his hook snatched his hat and flung it round the bend.
Alice just giggled and pointed with glee,
As a soggy old boot clung fast to poor Fle.
“Have you caught anything?” Alice asked with delight.
“Just a cold,” muttered Fle, “and a ticklish bite.”
He reeled in a sock, then a spoon, then a snail,
Then a rather surprised and still-reading quail.
“Perhaps,” said young Alice, “we should try further down?”
But Fle shook his head and adjusted his frown.
“I once caught a mermaid right here in this brook—
Though she tricked me and swapped all my coins for a book.”
Then something enormous gave both lines a tug!
A fish? A frog? A submerged garden rug?
The rods flew high in a loop-de-loop arc—
And landed them both in the mud with a SPARK!
Covered in slime and some algae and twigs,
Alice declared, “That’s enough chasing pigs!”
But Fle just grinned, with a glint in his eye,
“Fishing,” he said, “isn’t really to try.”
“It’s for thinking, and sitting, and listening to bees,
And falling in rivers and scraping your knees.
And if you’re quite lucky, you might catch a trout—
But mostly you’re lucky just getting back out!”
You don’t have to be mad to visit here, but it helps
You don’t have to be mad to visit here, but it helps
**************************************
Alice fell through a hole in a very odd hedge,
Tumbled past turnips, a cow, and a ledge,
She landed with grace (well, almost—a thud)
In Ballykillduff, face-first in the mud.
She stood and she blinked at the curious crowd—
A goat played the trumpet unusually loud.
A pig sold balloons shaped like clouds and like cheese,
And someone was painting a portrait of peas.
“Where am I?” asked Alice. A sheep in a hat
Replied, “In the village of Ballykillduff! That’s that!”
“We’re preparing,” it said, “for the Sheep Racing Fair,
Where ewes take to flight through the midsummer air!”
She wandered through stalls where the jelly was wobbly,
The fudge slightly rude, and the sandwiches snobbly.
A tractor called Muriel whistled and said,
“Hop on for a tour! Don’t step on my tread.”
She met Grandmother McSnoop who could juggle live frogs,
And a choir of hens that sang sea shanty songs.
Two monks brewed a soda that made her see stars,
And a badger confessed he’d once stolen some jars.
At noon came the races—explosions of wool!
Jetpacks on sheep made the sky rather full.
They looped and they zoomed in a blizzard of fluff,
As Alice cried out, “This is quite mad enough!”
But just as she thought things could not get more strange,
The moon sprouted legs and danced down the lane.
The mayor declared, “That’s our satellite samba!”
And offered her tea served in hats made of llama.
At sunset, the hills all began to recite
Limericks backwards while glowing with light.
The cows held a disco, the ducks held a vote,
And a hedgehog proposed—in a velvet-lined coat.
“Dear Ballykillduff,” Alice whispered with glee,
“You’re wonderfully odd and quite perfect for me.”
Then the beetroot returned and it opened a crack—
“Time to go home, if you want to go back…”
She waved her goodbyes to the sheep and the crowd,
To the tractor, the frogs, and the goose dressed in shroud.
And she whispered as Ballykillduff slipped from view,
“That was stranger than Wonderland—and the scones were quite new.”
Why did Doctor Poo get kicked out of the time-traveling bathroom?
Because he kept flushing the timeline!
It began with birdsong.
Not the kind that screeches you awake, but the kind that tiptoes into your dreams, like a friendly whisper from the trees. The soft chirping of robins and the distant cooing of doves drifted through the half-open window, curling around the curtains like warm breath.
Sunlight, golden and drowsy, spilled onto the floorboards of the little cottage. It painted soft puddles of brightness across the patchwork rug and crept up the armchair where Mr Puddleforth sat, dozing gently with a book open across his lap and a marmalade cat curled on his shoulder like a scarf.
In the kitchen, a kettle began to rumble—not in a hurry, not with urgency—but with the slow confidence of something that knows it will be appreciated when it’s ready. Beside it, a loaf of bread yawned open, still warm from the oven. A pat of butter sat in a ceramic dish, dreaming of being spread.
Outside, the garden stirred. Lavender nodded lazily in the breeze. A bee, whose name was Barnaby, floated from bloom to bloom like a drunk old sailor, humming tunelessly to himself. The clouds above drifted with all the purpose of a day off work.
And everything was unbothered.
No alarms. No emails. No rush.
Just the slow tick of the old grandfather clock in the hall, and the distant chime of the church bells marking the hour with a sound that felt more like a memory than a command.
Young Elsie, who lived next door, padded barefoot into the garden in her pyjamas. She carried a china cup of warm milk and a slice of toast with strawberry jam, and she sat beneath the old apple tree with her feet in the dewy grass. A book open on her knees, she began to read the first line of a story she’d read a hundred times before. The tree listened kindly, as it always did.
And somewhere, just out of sight, perhaps behind the thick hedgerow or at the edge of the woods, something timeless stirred—a sleepy sort of magic, the kind that only shows up when you aren’t looking for it. The kind that slows the ticking of the clock.
The kind that makes you wonder, just for a second, if maybe—just maybe—this Sunday morning might last forever.
And in a way, it did.
He rides through time in a porcelain throne,
With a gurgle, a flush, and a furious groan.
With a scarf ’round his neck and soap in his shoe,
He’s madder than frogs in a fondue stew.
He battles with bog rolls that scream in the night,
And a tap that once bit him in mid-flight.
He’s faced evil curtains and bidets that spit,
And a shower that sings like a soap-covered twit.
He knows your deep secrets (the ones in the drain),
He’s wrestled with bubbles possessed by the Bane.
He’s flown through the sinks of the seventeenth moon,
And dueled with a sponge shaped like a baboon.
He once saved a planet by sneezing in sync,
And tamed a wild loofah with glittery ink.
He banished a ghost with a rubber duck yell,
Then slipped on a flannel and fell down a well.
“I AM DOCTOR POO!” he shouts with delight,
“Defender of bathtime! Avenger of fright!”
He’ll plunge through dimensions, foam on his brow,
And scrub the whole multiverse sparkling somehow.
So if ever your toilet begins to hum,
Or your taps start chanting, “THE TIME HAS COME,”
Don’t call a plumber—don’t panic or moo—
Just whisper three words:
“Doctor. Flippin’. Poo.”
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 