It was while she was in Turkey in 1902,
That Aunt Turgid found her gift, her calling. To dispel boredom during a thunderstorm and a verucca outburst, she began reading the favoured and celebrated child’s book (Rare Infectious and Tropical Diseases). In fact, she read it backwards, as it sounded better, and you could still look at the pictures. Well, amidst the flashes of lightning, men selling carpets, smoking bubbly things,and verucca socks, a massive audience of lizards assembled before her.
They sat on warm rocks, tails up and wagging, eagerly awaiting the next sentence. After a back to front chapter on Laughing Death and complications with rigor mortis, the lizards grew in number to 650. The more she read, the more lizards arrived. The lizards carried away the little man with his overpriced rug (if you bought one, you were robbed!), discarded chairs, tables and tipped over a swimming pool. By tea time, there were 3000 lizards, paying close attention to the procedure for “Restraining Rabid Husbands With Dog Bites” (in reverse, you understand – so the more she read, the healthier people seemed to be).
When it was time for her to return to England, the lizards followed. And overran West Sussex. The council was pretty crabby about it for sometime, until Aunt Weevil built a secure pen in the garden. I don’t know where she got all the bloody wood from, but there you go.
Mad Aunt Bernard's Tortoise Poetry 
I have always thought that foreign travel was risky. She should have holidayed in this country – far safer and she would not have incurred the wrath of the West Sussex Council.
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