Synopsis

Small family business ‘Alf’s Plants’ is in trouble. The massive conglomerate ‘Power Flowers’ have set up a branch on the edge of town and poor old Alf can’t hope to compete. Things are so bad that Alf’s had to diversify by digging up his blooms to plant fruit and veg where there used to be flowers.

But still, despite the eager assistance of his adopted son Dan, Alf can’t seem to make ends meet well enough to support his two daughters, the fair and helpful Beauty and the less-than-fair and not-particularly-useful Vanity and her dim-as-mince boyfriend Herbert Fitz-Melling.

Alf calls a family meeting and tells everyone that he’s going into town to try to persuade the bank to help them out. He asks if there is anything they might like him to bring back. Vanity would like a tiara or a designer dress, but Alf tells her there’s not much chance of that. Beauty asks for a single red rose.

On his way back from town, Alf, exhausted and disappointed, stays over at a seemingly deserted weirdly-magic mansion, where in the vast gardens he snips a single red rose to take home to Beauty. After all, amongst such boundless bounty, surely no-one could begrudge a single bloom? But then the owner of the mansion appears, and, dismayed and distraught that Alf has sought to steal from him, forces our hero to bargain for his life. The price?

“On your return home, mark you whatever it is you first set eyes on. This is the bargain we shall strike. That which your eyes first find shall thenceforth be mine, within one week, or else... you die. What say you?”

So, nothing to worry about really. If Alf closes his eyes before he turns the corner for home, and then opens them again,  what might be the first thing he sees? A rusty wheelbarrow? The cherry tree? Dan’s old gardening shoes? Let’s face it... what has he got to lose?

Characters