It’s a bit of a long story, but here is the abridged version.
A long time ago in a jungle many miles away, there lived a little monkey.
He was a cheeky little monkey and was always getting into mischief and forever getting lost.
Cheeky monkey was also not very loved. So one day he answered an advert in
the Jungle Times for employment to become a companion to a little girl .
He spoke to one of his elephant friends and made a trunk call to England and
amazingly he got offered the job.
He packed his suitcase full of bananas, said good bye to all the other monkeys and bought
a ticket on the banana boat.
Pretty soon he had beaten all the other teddy bears and soft toy bunnies to the top job.
He was companion Number One.
And boy was he happy. He went everywhere.
One summers day while we were all having a picnic in the forest, he got lost.
We asked the park rangers to find him and nobody could.
So as a very concerned parent I raced off and bought a little lion soft toy which was the nearest equivalent to Cheeky monkey. (some imagination is required here)
Well the Lion became known as Leo, but strangely enough he disappeared after a week in a shopping mall. ( I think possibly he couldn’t take the pressure of the job and conveniently disappeared)
About this time, Cheeky monkey suddenly reappeared!
He had fallen asleep in the picnic basket and not heard anyone calling him.
ARE YOU STILL AWAKE READING THIS?
So Cheeky monkey was actually renamed as ‘Leo' from that day onwards.
The lion obviously took on further employment at the shopping mall, as we never saw him again. He was a lazy lion.
As a preventative measure, I then found another Cheeky monkey who got the job as Leo’s stunt double. Just in case 'Leo' (the renamed monkey) happened to go AWOL again. This one was named 'More Leo'.
Well at first there was a bit of rivalry a bit like Woody and Buzz in Toy Story.
But when things settled down, Leo and More Leo got on famously. They both liked being hurled around the room together, used as weapons of mass destruction and going through the washing machine together.
All the things cheeky monkeys do.
Its actually a tough job and requires a degree of physical fitness, unmatched by any of the other soft toys. Occasionally More Leo would get left behind or vice versa and each one of them would take a well earned rest.
WAKE UP….PLEASE! I’m nearly there. Yes, its a shaggy (monkey) dog story, with not much point.
As you might already know, this is the Year of the Monkey 2016.
So we’ve decided to make a monkey range of cards.
The Cheeky Monkees range is coming very soon.
And guess what... Leo has gone missing again!
He might be heading off to China this time, to join in the celebrations, or back to the jungle for more bananas. He might have been Monkey-napped and we’ll receive a ransom note soon.
More Leo, of course is very upset without his companion and so is one little girl.
The truth is, we lost him from the shopping trolley in Sainsbury's.
If anyone does see Leo on their travels… please be sure to let us know.