A Drake by George!

In the quiet village of Highfield, a massive stranger arrives, calling himself Captain Francis Drake, a retired sea captain with a booming voice that seems to fill every street. He buys two cottages, demolishes them, and raises the flamboyant Windward House, a gabled villa packed with exotic vases, Chinese porcelain, and cages of cats, monkeys, parrots and even a giant tortoise covered in newspaper clippings of his voyages. The townspeople watch, half‑amazed and half‑bewildered, as his arrival turns ordinary life into a spectacle.

Drake’s larger‑than‑life presence quickly becomes village gossip, especially when he storms into the parlor half‑clothed, wielding a shaving brush like a sailor’s mop and spraying lather over priceless curios and restless animals. The first to confront him is the dour local squire, the Dismal Gibcat, whose perpetual scowl and litigious ways clash humorously with Drake’s blustering self‑importance. As his eclectic menagerie settles in, the residents find themselves drawn into a whirl of eccentricity, curiosity, and the hinted promise of both friendship and conflict.