11 pretends later on that she never said. Ah well. We love His Holiness. Now, the best pet of all is Paddy. Just in case we weren’t bonkers enough, we have Paddy. We won him at an agricultural fair where we were selling eggs. You see, we also keep chickens: Korma, Biryani, Goujon, Kebab, Fritter, Roasty, Oxo, and a little fluffy one called Lemony. We name our chickens after menu items because, truth be told, when they stop laying eggs, Mom cooks them for dinner. They are not pets, she is always reminding us. Back to Paddy, though. We came home from that agricultural fair with empty egg boxes and Paddy. You see, there had been a raffle at one of the stalls, with lots of lovely prizes: free cinema tickets, a huge box of chocolates, a pass to a theme park... and a life-size toy alpaca. At least, we thought it was a toy alpaca. There was a picture of it on the stall: a fluffy alpaca wearing a red sombrero. I thought it might look funny in the corner of my bedroom. So, we bought a strip of raffle tickets and forgot all about it. Just as we were getting ready to leave the fair, some official-looking person with a clipboard came rushing up to us, saying, “Congratulations! You’ve won first prize in the raffle!” Now, we never win anything, so we were properly excited and ran over to the stall, where they had opened a horse trailer and were trying to coax out the world’s stubbornest alpaca. A real live alpaca, spitting and stomping! Apparently, he was not at all happy about being dragged out of his little house. It was almost worth it just for the look on Mum’s face. “But... but we can’t take an alpaca home!” Mum protested. “I thought it was a toy!”
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