Alice in Ballykillduff

Alice in Ballykillduff: The Great Sheep Stampede

It was a perfectly peculiar Tuesday afternoon when Alice found herself upside down in a wheelbarrow full of turnips, tumbling at great speed through a hedge and into Ballykillduff. She had been following a particularly arrogant beetroot back in Oxford when it had winked and shouted, “Catch me if you can, vegetable girl!” and vanished through a curious crack in the reality beneath the rhubarb patch.

Naturally, she gave chase.

When the wheelbarrow finally came to a halt (after bouncing off three dry stone walls and narrowly missing a confused-looking badger wearing a hi-vis vest), Alice stood up, brushed the turnip leaves from her pinafore, and blinked.

Before her lay the strangest scene she had never imagined.

A vast field, fenced with multicoloured baling twine, buzzed with excitement. Bunting flapped from cow horns. Old ladies sold radioactive-looking jelly from tractor bonnets. Men in tweed shouted about odds and underdogs. Children rode wheelie bins like noble steeds. And all around were sheep. Hundreds of sheep. Wearing goggles. And jetpacks.

A brass band struck up a mangled version of “Sheep May Safely Graze,” and a large, moustachioed man wearing a sash that read GRAND SHEPHERD stood atop a podium made of silage bales and bellowed:

“LADIES AND GENTLEMICE! WELCOME TO THE ANNUAL BALLYKILLDUFF SHEEP RACES!”

Alice blinked again.

A sheep wearing sunglasses sauntered past and said, “You might want to stand back, duckie. The last outsider got flattened by a turbo-ewe.”

“But where am I?” asked Alice, as was becoming tradition.

“Ballykillduff!” said the sheep. “Where the sheep fly faster than sound and the farmers argue in four dimensions!”

Alice was about to ask more, but just then, a green tractor drove up and introduced itself.

“Good day,” said the tractor. “Name’s Muriel. Talking tractor. Semi-retired. I once dated a combine harvester named Janet, but she ghosted me. Hop in if you want a better view.”

Alice climbed aboard.

From her perch on Muriel’s bonnet, she watched the line-up of sheep at the starting line. Each one was being fitted with miniature racing helmets and aerodynamic wool fluffers. A team of hairstylists were blow-drying their fleeces to reduce drag. An announcer screamed into a megaphone:

“AND IN LANE ONE, WE HAVE FLUFFY DESTINY! LANE TWO, MECHANICAL BLEAT! LANE THREE, THE RETURNING CHAMPION… WOOLIUS MAXIMUS!”

The crowd roared. A man with seventeen hats on his head shouted, “GO ON, MY SON!” and collapsed with excitement into a trough of beet soup.

Muriel revved.

Alice clutched her seat.

A goat in sunglasses blew a whistle—and the sheep were off!

With an explosion of jet-propelled bleating, they soared through the air. Loop-the-loops, mid-air somersaults, and dramatic grazing breaks were all part of the course. One sheep sneezed and knocked out a cloud. Another baaa-ed so loudly that time reversed for five seconds.

And then, from the sky, a shadow descended.

A cow. With helicopter blades strapped to its back.

“Moo-ve over, sheepy fools!” shouted the cow, which everyone recognised as Daisy von Doom, the notorious bovine who had been banned from the races for moo-nopolising the turf.

Chaos erupted. Farmers fainted. Sheep bleated in Morse code. A small committee of ducks began writing a strongly worded letter.

“I MUST STOP HER!” Alice cried, leaping onto a racing sheep as it zoomed past.

“Wheeeee!” cried the sheep. “Do you have a valid jockey licence?!”

“No, but I’ve wrestled walruses and debated chess with a hat!” Alice shouted, as they soared upward toward Daisy.

In an aerial showdown above Ballykillduff, Alice and her woolly steed spiralled with Daisy von Doom in a battle of bleats, moos, and philosophical insults.

“I THINK THEREFORE I MOO!” Daisy cried.

“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH ABOUT GRAVITY!” Alice screamed back, launching a jar of marmalade at the cow’s rotor.

The marmalade hit.

Daisy spun out, mooed dramatically, and crash-landed into the jelly stall, which exploded in a fountain of raspberry wibble.

Alice and the sheep glided to a soft landing on top of a very surprised accordion player.

The crowd erupted in cheers. The Grand Shepherd wiped a tear from his eye and declared, “THE OUTSIDER HAS SAVED THE RACES! MAY HER NAME BE CARVED INTO THE TURNIP STONE OF GLORY!”

Alice bowed, blushed, and whispered to the sheep, “Can I go home now?”

But the sheep only winked and said, “You’re already in the right place. This is the only place where the madness makes sense.”

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And with that, the wheelbarrow reappeared, the beetroot gave her a sarcastic salute, and Alice tumbled backwards through the reality-crack, covered in jelly, laughing all the way.

THE END (Or perhaps just the interval before the Goose Grand Prix.)

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