The night before he was married, Peter-Bowman had a stag party. Sort of. As such things often do, the affair took on all the usual aspects of a dream. Rather more so in Peter-Bowman's case however, as he was asleep at the time his stag party took place.

Peter-Bowman had gone to bed early so as to be fresh for his wedding. He felt that one should always start a new adventure after a good nights sleep. Peter-Bowman had heard it said that people rarely got very much sleep on their wedding night. Beds were often mentioned, he had noticed on the few occasions on which he had witnessed talk about wedding nights, but not as an aid to sleep. He expected that the sort of hotel that people went to on their honeymoon was probably to blame. Not enough money to plump for a decent mattress, or even enough money to plump up the existing one. Peter-Bowman had already decided on taking a number of sleeping tablets to ensure that he got to sleep, no matter how lumpy the mattress was. Just in case, he had decided to get an extra large amount of sleep the night before to make sure that he would not be cross and grumpy and unable to enjoy his honeymoon.

As he slept, Peter-Bowman dreamt. This is what Peter-Bowman dreamt:

He found himself the proprietor of a large castle that was constantly being invaded by a variety of small green butterfly. The butterflies would arrive at dusk and proceed to drink all of Peter-Bowman's beer. This was not as large a concern as it would be to most people because he didn't like beer very much and usually preferred to drink grape juice. The butterflies didn't care for grape juice, so all in all they got on rather well together. Peter-Bowman and the butterflies would sing and dance and drink until the dawn when the butterflies would all have to suddenly leave or risk being turned into turnips. Peter-Bowman knew this because one night a butterfly had failed to leave in time and had promptly become a turnip when the first rays of the sun had struck. Not wanting to be wasteful, Peter-Bowman planted the turnip in the back garden of his castle and soon had a lovely crop of turnips, all singing in joy whenever he went outside carrying a banana. The banana came in useful as a conductors baton and they all made a most glorious sound. After this the butterflies no longer came. Their peaceful invasion was routed and taken over by an army of lizards.

In general they were in fact very peaceful lizards. They tended their fields and raised their families in the shadow of the castle without fear, knowing that Peter-Bowman was a wise and good ruler of the land. In fact, the lizards were so laid back and relaxed that very few things could rise them to anger. The only thing that was known to do so was a choir of turnips. The lizards were a bit odd about choirs of turnips. They found them unconstitutional. In fact, their central complaint was that having choirs of turnips in the castle suggested that choirs of turnips were in some way royally approved. This was an obvious discrimination against choirs of lizards. The lizards felt that they could sing at least as well as a bunch of turnips. They were completely wrong about this, but this small point was judged irrelevant by a hastily assembled lizard tribunal of war. So it was that early one morning a detachments of lizards began to dig an intricate network of tunnels beneath the singing turnip patch.

At this stage, Peter-Bowman knew nothing of the imminent invasion. He was happy in the castle. Most evenings he performed with the choir of turnips to rapturous applause. The guinea pigs in particular were enthusiastic about the music. Since the guinea pigs ran the local news and entertainment industry, very soon everybody had heard about the excellent choir of turnips. Many came to listen to the music. Thus, the crowd was exceptionally large on the night the lizards broke through.

At first the breakage was minor. A few members of the audience noted that the sound was not quite as full as it had been earlier in the evening, but they thought that this was most likely a strategic move on the behalf of the conductor, lowering the volume for a time in order to make the final outburst more spectacular. Gradually the hole in the sound widened in concert with the hole in the dirt produced as more and more lizards snatched their assigned turnips and gagged them. Eventually half of the turnips were unable to continue singing. It was at about this point that Peter-Bowman realised that something was wrong. Too late to do anything about it. He moved towards the nearest lizard somewhat threateningly, but his heart wasn't really in it. His heart was imprisoned in his chest and so unable to take a useful part in the surrounding events. Peter-Bowman considered tearing out his heart and throwing it at the lizards - his heart had always been far better at repelling invaders than any other internal organ. His heart informed him that this was not a very good idea as it was really quite comfortable where it was and was not very certain at all of being able to continue in its duties of keeping him alive if he used it as an attack weapon. A passing hippo concurred with Peter-Bowman's heart.

'Keep it in your chest and listen to the music.' The hippo nodded sagely and vanished towards the free refreshment buffet.

Peter-Bowman listened to the music. The hippo had given good advice, as hippos so often do in a time of crisis. The music was not the same as that produced by the full choir of turnips, no, but there was something about it that had his ankles twitching. Several lizards had paused in their turnip gagging activities and begun to join in with the song. They didn't sing very well but the mere effort was endearing to Peter-Bowman. So it was, on that balmy Spring night on the graceful lawns of the Chateau Peter-Bowman that the combined lizard and turnip choir of greater Dreamton was inaugurated. They sang well that night, the guinea pig press reported:

Last night I had the greatest privilege it has ever been bestowed upon me to endure as I witness the birth of a new form of music that will surely take our great cultural traditions and sew them together with baling twine. The event at which this took place, as I am sure you are aware, was the traditional evening sing song at the castle of the choir of turnips. In the midst of the concert, some lizards arrived looking for trouble. But trouble was not in that night, and so instead the joined with the turnips in a massed choir of joy. I think it could be said that this choir has a great future going for it, were it not for the unfortunate hippo explosion that demolished the castle and the grounds and woke up the dreamer, causing all of us to dissolve like the midnight sun into a small puddle of cranberry juice.

When Peter-Bowman read this report, whilst sitting amidst the ruins of his castle the day following the interesting and informative concert, he realised that he couldn't possibly be reading it as he must have woken from his dream the previous night. In order to avoid embarrassing the guinea pigs (they would be sure to write nasty things about him in the next edition if he had blatantly ignored what they had written in this article and continued dreaming), he immediately awoke and discovered that it was the morning of his wedding and a real estate agent was knocking on his phone box.