The Lion Who Didn't Like Cheese

A trilogy in one part

Once upon a time, deep in the heart of Cardiff, there lived a friendly lion, called Karen. She lived in an oak tree overlooking the disused railway depot whose engines used to deliver the coal, slate, and salt that the local miners would dig up. The depot had been closed for a few years now, and Karen missed the steam engines who would puff past, blowing their whistles every day, puffing warm smoke through her mane in the warm welsh hillside of a summers day. She especially missed the morning steam engine which would trundle into the near siding at a quarter to eight every day to pick up the children to chuff them to school. She missed the young voices of the children who would run around by the base of the tree, laughing and playing tag until the train arrived.

Sometimes she would leap down from the tree to play tag too, if she was feeling very brave. The children loved to see Karen bounding about, her tongue lolloping in the warm morning air, her tail flailing behind her in glee. One of the children, Jim, was her own special friend, and he would sometimes give Karen sandwiches that his mum had made freshly that morning. Karen would gratefully lick them up with pleasure. If only all lions could have a friend like Jim! Jim's mum would make him different sandwiches every day for variety - little did she know that he was sharing his lunch with a lion! Karen appreciated Jim's mother's care in sandwich-making, and she ate mustard and cress sandwiches, turkey and horseradish sauce hoagies, and bacon lettuce and tomato baps. Her favourite, however, were the large beetroot "double decker specials" that were Jim's mothers own special recipe. When she ate these, the fur around her mouth would turn purple with beetroot juice spilt from an overenthusiastic lion's mounth. Oh how the children would laugh, and call her "Purple Lion". Karen would laugh along aswell, in her own liony way.

One day, Jim and the others arrived as normal with their satchels packed with lunchbox and pencil case. As he saw his lion friend bounce into view, Jim undid his satchel and took out some neatly packaged sandwiches. As he held them out to Karen, she sniffed at them, uneasily. "What's the matter Karen?" asked Jim, concerned about his large jungle cat chum, "don't you like cheese?". Karen shook her head dolefuly.

Upon seeing this, one of the older boys shouted out "Hey, the Lion doesn't like cheese! The Lion's scared of cheese!". The children all fell into a stunned silence at the truth about the lion that they had thought of as their friend. Karen hung her head in shame.

The next day, most of the children turned up with pices of cheese to taunt her with. They waved pieces of Roquefort, Edam and Wensleydale at poor Karen mockingly, until she retreated up the oak tree, never to be seen again.
Never to be seen again that is, by most of them.

A couple of lonely months passed for the shamed lion, until one evening in late December. Just as the snow was beginning to fall, she heard a young boy's footsteps leading to the bottom of the tree.

"Karen?" called out Jim. "Are you there? I've come to wish you a Merry Christmas."
"You mean you will still be friends with me, even though I don't like cheese?" asked the lion.
"Yeah, don't worry about it. It's nothing - I don't like sandwiches!" replied Jim.
And with that, Karen leapt down from the tree, and the two friends went off to build the largest snowman that you or I have ever seen.

But that's a different story.