The three strange keys

Once upon a time in the imagination of Enid Blyton lived a Princess held captive by a wicked witch in a tower. The story went that she could only be set free by three strange keys...

A Key to give the witch a fright

A Key to scale the wall

A Key to carry a burden light

Right over the palace wall

The keys turned out in fact to be a red turKEY and brown monKEY and a grey donKEY.

I loved this story and over the years have read it countless times. It was in an old collection of short stories that belonged to my Mum when she was a little girl, and now I read them to my son.

When the Three Muses shared their creative challenge for the week as any type of key... well, naturally one of these three strange keys sprang immediately to mind - I like to think outside the box!

~So, I settled down with a box of pencils and pulled up some pictures of fine red turkeys. I looked at quite a few. The thing with turkeys is that... well, actually they are not at all bootiful. In fact, they are rather ugly what with their wobbling wattle thing and beady eyes. They all seemed to be giving them the evils for eating them on festive occasions and I started to feel most guilty and considering vegetarianism.

No turkey was clearly going to either drawn or eaten in this house last night. I turned instead to the next hero of the tale - the monkey. Staring at this cheeky face for a couple of hours was really no hardship. He's just too cute! I loved drawing him too - watching him take shape on the page; his eyes peering up at me looking all interested in what I was doing.

Thank you my little mon-key. You did a grand job.