Cyril and Daisy, attempt #2

I have this game that I occasionally play with Muffet at bedtime, where I pretend to be either a little girl called Daisy or a little boy called Cyril. They are both about the same age as Muffet, and go to a school called Hongleton, the location of which is a bit vague, but it’s nearby to Muffet’s school. Daisy and Cyril are taught by teachers who have similar names to Muffet’s teachers: Mr. Prado, Ms. Ambulance and Mrs. Prib. Cyril is a little bit stupid, and has difficulty with his seven times table, and counting beyond twenty.

The odd thing about this game is that Muffet plays along completely with it. After Cyril or Daisy “have to go”, and Daddy is back again, she will say, “Cyril was here!” and report on what Cyril said, and what she said to Cyril, as if I wouldn’t know.

On a recent occasion, Cyril was telling Muffet how he “liked” Daisy, and wanted her to be his girlfriend. Cyril had told his friend Nigel to report his affections to Daisy. Nigel was to tell Daisy to come to a rendezvous with Cyril behind the school wall, where Cyril would be waiting for her and would kiss her. Cyril said he then waited, lips puckered, behind the wall. But when Daisy arrived, she had brought several of her friends with her, and they all laughed at Cyril, which upset him.

Muffet listened to Cyril’s story carefully. Afterwards, she said “No, no, Cyril. That’s not what you should have done. Girls like to have a ‘love moment’ with a kiss.” No doubt Cyril will take this advice on board when he next tries to kiss Daisy.

The Apple Tree

Once upon a time, in a house not far from here, there lived a little girl called Mary. The house had a beautiful garden in the middle of which stood a fine apple tree, which every year grew exactly six big, green, juicy apples on it. Mary loved those apples. She’d pick one on the first day of every month, and take it to school with her, and eat it with her lunch. Such juicy, sweet apples: all the other children wished they had one.

One year, instead of there being six green apples, there were seven, and the seventh wasn’t green at all. It was a deep purple colour, with little sparklies all over its skin. Mary was very curious. She asked her Mummy and Daddy about the seventh apple, and they told her she should eat the others first, and then they would see about the strange apple.

So Mary ate the other apples, until finally the first of the seventh month arrived, and she asked her Mummy and Daddy if she could eat the purple apple. All three of them went into the garden, and Daddy reached up and plucked the purple apple from its branch. Then they went inside, where Daddy found a large, sharp knife. He said “Let’s see if this apple is alright to eat!”. And he cut it, clean in half, with a sharp chop of the knife.

The two halves fell apart, and Mary gasped in delight as she saw it was hollow! Inside was a small, shiney, silver ring. Mary picked it up, and saw, engraved on the silver ring, the following inscription:

“To Mary, Thankyou for eating my apples. Love from the Apple Tree.”

The ring fitted perfectly on her little finger.

Farmer P

Farmer P grew pumpkins. He had two fields full of them. At night he would wander around the pumpkin fields in his pajamas, talking to his pumpkins, because he loved pumpkins so much. To give you an idea of how much he loved pumpkins, let me tell you that he only ate pumpkins, nothing else but pumpkins. Pumpkin pie, pumpkins on toast, fried pumpkins in pumpkin sauce, and always he would wash it all down with a nice glass of chilled pumpkin juice. When he ate his pumpkin meal, he sat at a table made from a large pumpkin, and in a chair hollowed out from a pumpkin. His house was filled with pumpkin ornaments, and lit by pumpkin lightbulbs.

I should say that Farmer P was an odd looking chap: his skin was a sort of orange-y colour. You know, he looked a little bit like a pumpkin himself.

One year, when it was nearly Hallowe’en, Farmer P’s neighbour, Farmer B, came knocking at the door, wanting to ask for a pumpkin to make his children a Jack O’Lantern with. But there was no reply, even after he’d banged on the door for ages. Finally, Farmer B looked in through the windows of Farmer P’s house. And what do you think he saw? A sight too awful for words.

Farmer B rushed off to fetch the doctor. The doctor came, and he and Farmer B beat down the door of Farmer P’s house. There, in the middle of the sitting room, was a huge pumpkin, wearing trousers. It was Farmer P. He had turned into a pumpkin.

“Oh my goodness!”, exclaimed the doctor. “We must get him to the hospital, immediately!”

The pair of them grunted, huffed and puffed as they carried Farmer P the Pumpkin out of the house, and heaved him onto the back of the Farmer B’s pick up truck. Then they drove off towards the hospital, at great speed, with Farmer P the Pumpkin rolling about in the back.

Halfway to the hospital they stopped for a bite to eat, because all that heaving and pushing had made them very hungry. And while they were inside eating their supper and talking about poor old Farmer P and what was going to happen to him at the hospital, they didn’t see a group of naughty children climb on to the back of the pick up truck with shouts and laughter.

Do you know what those naughty children did? They took their little spoons and knives and made a huge Jack O’Lantern out of unhappy Farmer P. And then they left him at the roadside, with a flashlight inside him.

And if you listen very carefully around Hallowe’en time, you can hear him screaming, in a small, pumpkin-ey sort of voice “Ow, ow, ow, I hate being a pumpkin!”

Arthur Snodgrass

Once upon a time there lived a very rich King, in a castle with a drawbridge, surrounded by a moat. He lived there with his Queen, and just one servant, the gatekeeper, who looked after the drawbridge.

One day, a man called Arthur Snodgrass appeared at the edge of the moat, and shouted across: “Is there anybody there?”.

The gatekeeper shouted back “Yes! Who are you, and what do you want?”

“Arthur Snodgrass”, the man shouted back, “And I wish to speak with the King!”

The gatekeeper lowered down the drawbridge, slowly, slowly, until it spanned the moat, and Arthur Snodgrass walked across. “Thankyou.”, he said. “You’re most welcome.”, said the gatekeeper.

In the King’s throne roam, Arthur Snodgrass introduced himself. “I am Arthur Snodgrass, and have I got a surprise for you!”

“You have?”, said the King.

“Yes! I bet you’re sick and tired of this castle, and need to get away for a while, and so I have come to offer you a free holiday.”

The King looked excited. “Ooooooh!”, he said, “A holiday! I’d love a holiday. I haven’t been on holiday for years.” And then he shouted for the Queen to come in from her powder room. Which she did, upon which the King asked if she wanted to go on holiday.

“Oooooooh! Yes! Very much. But where shall we go?”

Arthur Snodgrass said: “To Hawaii, on my boat. Here – I have all the details on this scroll.”

He unrolled a large scroll of paper, while the King and Queen looked over his shoulder. On it was a lot of writing, in very flowery but small letters.

“Super duper!” said the King, taking the scroll, and told the Queen to pack the bags. “We shall leave immediately.”

After a while the Queen had finished packing the bags, but when she tried to lift them, they were too heavy. So she called for the gatekeeper to help her. And the three of them marched off, with Arthur Snodgrass following: the King holding the scroll, the Queen holding a powder puff, and the gatekeeper hauling the huge bags.

Across the drawbridge they walked, the gatekeeper huffing and puffing and complaining how heavy the bags were, until they reached the other side, where they paused to catch their breath.

Just then, behind them, they heard the drawbridge being raised. Up and up it went, until it clanged shut at the top.

And then, horror of horrors, Arthur Snodgrass appeared on the battlements.

“Ha ha ha. You suckers!” he shouted, in a very nasty way. He had tricked them – and now he had all the King’s gold and jewels, and the castle as well. What a very nasty man he had turned out to be.

“Oh, bother!” said the King.

The three of them made a little hut by the side of the moat, and lived there, not very happily, for ever after.

Blue Barnacles

A row of blue barnacles rode the spray and spume from the liner’s prow, playing pass the parcel with a small piece of grit. When the grit reached the end of the row, the last barnacle dropped it, and it fell into the ocean, tumbling down through the brine, down into the darkness beneath. It came to rest on top of a doric column, which swayed slightly, almost imperceptibly, from the impact, and then slowly started to fall. The column’s top touched against another column’s side, which in turn began to fall. And a vast row of domino columns fell, one after the other, crashing to the seabed and throwing up clouds of sand and small crabs, who wriggled valiantly to regain their footing.

And so the tumbling continued, until the final column crashed against the Colossus of Rhodes, submerged for thousands of years, encrusted with coral spongiforms, its massive base chiselled and square like an ideallised lozenge. A groaning sound, a moaning sound, and the Colossus cracked down its middle, splitting in two perfect halves and revealing, like a freshly cut avocado, an object at its centre, a hidden chamber, containing a golden chest, whose lid then opened, smoothly but oil-less, to release a breathtaking being. A mermaid, long silvery white hair waving in the current, exquisitely fine features, her lips relaxed in a benign smile, her breasts firm but wobbling somewhat, adorned with starfish pasties of a brilliant yellow, her scaley tail tip flicking water side to side as she rose slowly upwards, up to the surface.

And there, in a simple fishing boat, a group of sailors hauling in their nets, were amazed to see her emerge from the coruscating sun dappled aquamarine, silently, gracefully, the water tumbling off her svelte form. It was the greatest marine discovery since that of the Coelacanth in ’39.

The One Eyed Giant

Once upon a time there was a one eyed giant. He was a fisherman, and lived on a boat. He sailed the seas catching fish for his supper and sometimes he roared at the seagulls.

One day the giant was out on deck fishing when a particularly large fish jumped out of the water, and hit the giant on his head, sending his eye flying out rolling across the deck, and overboard. Plop it went, into the sea.

“My eye! My eye!” the giant wailed, stumbling and crashing around his boat. “Where is my eye?!”.

He jumped overboard and swam around frantically trying to feel for his eye in the water. But it was hopeless, and after a short while he clambered back onto the boat before he was too far away to find it again.

He sat down on the deck and was very miserable. There he sat, for several days, getting more and more miserable, sobbing and crying about his awful predicament. And he got hungrier and hungrier because he could catch no fish for his supper.

Finally, he crawled into the boat’s kitchen, which we call the galley, and he started fumbling around, opening all the cupboards and drawers, trying to find something, anything to eat. When he’d been through the cupboards and drawers and found nothing, he remembered that there was food in the ‘fridge! He crawled to the ‘fridge, opened it up, and reached inside. And inside he felt a hard, round object with his hand …

“My eye! My eye!” he shouted, and popped the object into his eye socket. “I can see! Wonderful!” he exclaimed, and went to look at himself in the mirror.

And when he got to the mirror he saw that, instead of his eye, he had an egg in his head.

The End.

Gerald the Snail

Once upon a time there was a little snail called Gerald, who lived in a tiny garden. Every day, as he was munching the leaves on the plants in the garden, he would look into the distance at a house across the road that seemed a long, long way away, and think how green and lovely the garden there looked, and how much he wished he lived in that garden instead of the one he was in.

Well, one day he decided he was going to do something about his wish. He packed himself a little lunchbox of leaves, and set off towards the garden over the road. Now, for you and me, it would be a short walk across the road to the garden, but for Gerald it was a major expedition. Slowly, slowly, slowly he started to slither down the curbstone until he was at the edge of road, and then he slowly, slowly, slowly headed for the other side.

Whoosh! went a car as it sped by. Whoosh! went another car. Gerald was very scared, but he kept going. As he went, he left a little trail of slime behind him, so you could have seen, if you’d been there, the route he took, which was a snail-ey version of a straight line, and not very straight at all, really.

Whoosh! went another car, just in front of his head! Now he was getting very tired, and he decided to stop for a little nap, right in the middle of the road! How dangerous was that?! But because it was right in the middle of the road, and not many cars went right in the middle, he was lucky, and he woke up a few hours later with renewed energy, and started off again for the garden. Slowly, slowly, slowly he slithered onwards.

Whoosh! went a lorry past his tail, and OUCH! just clipped the end of it. Right at the pointy bit. Ouch ouch ouch! Poor Gerald was sore, but he kept going.

Finally, exhausted and barely able to muster any more energy, he reached the other side of the road, climbed onto the curbstone, and sat there panting, as tired as tired can be.

And then he heard a big cheer. He looked up and saw that he was surrounded by a crowd of snails, all clapping and cheering. One of them spoke: “We’ve been watching you for ages. We saw you set off from the other side of the road yesterday, and we were so scared. None of us has ever been outside this garden, and we have always wondered what it was like. We saw how the lorry clipped your tail, and how brave you were. You are a hero and we want you to be our king!”. Then all the snails clapped and cheered, and some of them threw their shells in the air, and caught them.

Gerald was crowned King of the Snails, and he and the other snails lived happily ever after, eating the lovely green leaves in the garden.

The Unhappy Patch of Dirt

This story is about a patch of dirt who was very bored and unhappy. He was lying in a very boring place. there was nothing to see or do where he was. All he did was just sit there, day in and day out, getting more and more bored as time went on.

Then, one day, there was a thunderstorm, and the rain started to come down in torrents, and the patch of dirt started to get very wet, very wet indeed. Slowly, but surely, he turned into a patch of mud, and started to slide down the hill. He was quite excited because nothing like this had happened to him before. He didn’t know where he was going, so he was a bit frightened as well as being excited. Down the hill he went in a muddy mess, going faster and faster until finally, splosh, he came to a muddy stop at the doorstep of a house at the bottom of the hill.

Presently a little girl came out of the house holding her umbrella, and seeing the pile of mud on her doorstep she said “Oh! Who are you?”. The dirt replied, in a very muddy voice, “I’m a patch of dirt, and it rained, and I came down the hill, and I ended up here, and I don’t really know what to think about it.” The little girl clapped her hands with delight. “How exciting!”, she exclaimed, “Can I plant some flowers in you?”. The dirt replied that yes, she could, and that he thought he might like that. So inside the house went the little girl, and shortly thereafter returned with a small packet of seeds. She opened the packet of seeds and, taking each seed in turn, she poked a hole in the dirt with her little finger (which tickled the dirt and made him giggle) and she planted each seed in it.

A few weeks passed, and the mud dried up to dirt, and little shoots of flowers started to poke out from it. The dirt was so happy, he could barely speak. And the little girl would clap her hands with pleasure every time she came out of her house, at the sight of the growing flowers she’d planted.

Needless to say, they all lived happily ever after.

Arabella and the Bath Bomb

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Arabella. It was her birthday, and she was very excited because the postman had just delivered a small parcel for her. Her daddy took a look at the parcel and said “Well, goodness me, it’s from Great Aunt Muriel. You’d better open it.”

So Arabella ripped open the parcel and pulled out a big, purple sparkly bath-bomb! Of course she immediately wanted to have a bath and use it. So her mummy filled the bath, and Arabella got ready to get in. Her daddy was looking at the instructions, and said “Hmmm … it says that it’s a magic bath-bomb. I wonder what that means.”.

They soon found out. When Arabella was in the bath, she plopped the bath-bomb into the water. And the water turned into ice-cream! Well, what a surprise. Arabella ate as much of the ice cream as she could, and then her mummy put the rest in the freezer, for another day.

The next night, Arabella wanted to have another bath. This time they plopped the bath-bomb into the water, and the water changed to mud! Slippery wet brown mud! Oh dear me, she had to have a shower after that, but it was fun.

The third night Arabella was even more excited to try out her bath bomb. Her mummy and daddy stood by while she plopped it into the bath water. What would happen? You wont believe it, but all the bath water disappeared with a whoosh, and all that was left was a little goldfish flapping around in the bottom of the tub. Daddy put it in a fish bowl, and Arabella put the bowl on her night-table.

And so, on the fourth night, Arabella was ready again for another bath. Mummy and daddy stood by, together with Arabella’s nana, who had flown in specially from Florida, and a few neighbours who had been invited round to watch, and a reporter from the local newspaper. The bath-bomb was plopped into the water. And it fizzed, and bobbed around, and disolved away leaving a lovely smell of lavendar.

Everyone looked very disappointed. Daddy fetched out the wrapper which he’d kept in the bathroom cabinet, and read the bath-bomb label again. “Ah-ha!”, he said. “It says ‘This bath-bomb is a magic bath-bomb.’ and there’s some finer print down here that says ‘Magic only guaranteed for first three uses’.”

So that was that. It only lasted for three baths. Arabella was a bit sad, but she wrote a thankyou note to Great Aunt Muriel anyway. And Great Aunt Muriel wrote back and said she would send another, on Arabella’s next birthday.

Oliver the Octopus

An octopus called Oliver lived in a tank. Every evening his owner would open the top of the tank, and drop small pieces of food into the water for Oliver to eat. One … Two … Three … Four … each piece of food would float slowly down and Oliver would catch each with one of his legs. Until he had eight pieces of food. And then he would eat them, one by one, at his leisure.

Well, one day, Oliver’s owner was away on holiday, and he asked a little girl called Arabella to feed Oliver for him. That evening, Oliver waited patiently for his supper. Presently, Arabella arrived and opened up the tank lid. But instead of dropping eight pieces of food into the water, she took a massive great handful and threw them all in at once! Oh dear me, poor Oliver. He jumped up and down catching what he could, but very soon his legs were all full up and he was very frustrated and annoyed.

The next day, Oliver was waiting for his supper again, but this time, when Arabella opened the tank lid, he jumped up and down in the water shouting “Heh! You!”.

Arabella almost jumped out of her knickers with surprise! Oliver shouted “Don’t throw the food in a lump, drop it in pieces, you silly billy!”. So she did. And Oliver collected the pieces One … Two … Three … Four … Five … Six … Seven … Eight! And then he ate them: Gobble … Gobble … Gobble … Gobble … Gobble … Gobble … Gobble … Gobble … BUUUUURP!

And from that day on, until the end of the holiday, Arabella and Oliver remained the very best of friends.

The Big Fat Hairy Spider

I would like to tell you about the big fat hairy spider who lived in a damp cave. I’d tell you that he was very unhappy because a drip of water from the roof plop-plopped on his head, like a Chinese Water Torture. I’d describe how he was so chilly all eight of his legs shivered, until one day he was so gloomy he decided what he really needed was a vacation, and he got on the ‘phone to the travel agent and she said she’d send him a package of brochures featuring vacations suitable for cold, damp, big hairy spiders. And I’d tell you how excited he was when the following day the post arrived with the brochure package, and how he avidly thumbed through them looking at the photos of the blue seas, beaches, sunshine, and the nubile female spiders sprawled on loungers in their octinis. Then I’d tell you how he finally set off on his chosen vacation, and arrived at the sunny resort, and spent a wonderful fortnight relaxing, sipping pina coladas from real hollow coconut shells, and reading lots of trashy novels. And finally, I’d tell you how he returned home to his damp cave, with the drip, and despite its inconveniences realised how glad he was to be home.

But I wont.

The Slide

Once upon a time there was a little boy called Johnny, and he was playing in the playground, when he saw a big red slide nearby, and decided to have a go on it.

So he started to climb up the slide. It was a very big slide, and he kept climbing and climbing, higher and higher, until he was so high it became very windy and the slide rocked slightly from side to side, and he could see the other children in the playground far below, like little ants.

Up and up he went until finally he came to the top, where there was a place to stand. There was another little boy there, and he was crying. Little Johnny said to the other boy “Hello, what’s your name?”, and the other little boy said “Peter”. Little Johnny asked Peter why he was crying, and Peter said he was very frightened because it was so high up on the top of the slide.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Little Johnny, “let’s go down the slide together!”. So Little Johnny and Peter sat close together, and pushed off down the slide, holding tightly on to one another. Faster and faster they went, zooming down and down, whooshing along, like a bullet, and getting closer and closer to the ground.

When they got to the bottom they zoomed right off the slide, and flew through the air, and went *crash*,*bang* straight through the window of an ice cream shop! And they both landed in an enormous tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream, which splashed all over the walls.

The shopkeeper was very cross. He ‘phoned their Mummys and Daddys, and told them what had happened. Shortly after, Little Johnny’s and Peter’s parents arrived at the shop, to take the naughty boys home.

But the naughty boys had eaten all the ice cream, and couldn’t move, they were so fat. So they had to stay in the ice cream shop with the shopkeeper, and help him sell ice creams to the other children, as a punishment, until they got to a normal size again.

And then they lived happily ever after.

The End.

The Magic Bean

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Emily, and she lived with her Mummy and Daddy in a little house in the forest.

One morning, Emily was playing in the garden when she found a very interesting looking bean. It was small and brown and covered with lovely little gold spots. She rushed into the house and said “Mummy, Daddy, look at this bean I just found in the garden!” Her Daddy looked at the bean, and he said to Emily “You should plant this bean, and maybe it will grow.”

So Emily went back out into the garden, and with her trowel she dug a small hole and put the bean in it. Then she covered it with soil, and watered it with her watering can. And then she went to bed, because she was very tired.

In the morning, when she woke up, it was very dark in her bedroom. Emily looked out of her bedroom window, and all she could see were big green leaves! “Emily, come down and look”, she heard her Mummy shouting. So they all three went out into the garden, and there, where she’d planted her bean, was an enormous plant. It streched way up into the sky, and the leaves rustled in the wind.

Of course, Emily and her Mummy and Daddy started to climb the beanstalk. Up and up they climbed, higher and higher, until, when they looked down, their house was just a little speck below. On and on they went up the beanstalk, until finally they came to a cloud, and they got off.

Suddenly, they heard a big, deep booming voice from nearby. “What are you doing in my cloud?” boomed the voice. It was a Giant. A big, fat, hairy Giant, sitting right there, in the cloud.

“We’re very sorry,” said Emily, “but we found a bean and I planted it, and it grew, and we came up, and we’re sorry”. And she began to cry.

“Hrrrrmph” said the Giant, “That bean must have fallen off my plate when I was having my supper last night. Now GO HOME.”.

The Giant leant across to Emily, and he looked kind, and sorry that she was crying, and in his hand was the biggest gold coin you’ve ever seen, and he gave it to Emily, who stopped crying, and smiled at him.

So Emily, her Mummy and her Daddy climbed back down the beanstalk, all the way until they arrived back in the garden. And as they stepped off the beanstalk, they heard a booming voice way above say “Byeeeeeeee”, as the beanstalk ripped out of the soil, and slithered up into the sky, showering them with soil.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The End

The Sausage

Once upon a time there lived a little sausage. His name was Cyril, and his home was at the bottom of the ‘fridge, in between the rashers of bacon, and the lettuce.

Every evening, the darkness of the ‘fridge was interrupted when the door opened and a person peered in, looking for something to eat. “Eat me, Eat me!” little Cyril would cry. But because he was a small sausage, and had only a very faint squeaky voice, the person never heard him, and would take something else.

One day, the door opened as usual, and Cyril blinked and looked around him to realise that he was the only thing left in the ‘fridge! “Eat me, Eat me!” he shouted in his squeaky little voice.

This time the person saw him, and picked him up. “Ooooooh, ” said the person, “a lovely little sausage! How did I miss you before? I shall have you with some mashed potatoes and gravy!”.

Little Cyril was so excited. While the potatoes cooked he lay in the frying pan getting a lovely tan, and heard himself sizzle.

Finally the potatoes were ready, and the person mashed them up with butter, and slopped them out on a big white plate. “There you are!” said the person “A lovely bed of mashed potatoes!”. And he laid Cyril gently down in the fluffy potato bed. Then he poured a lovely warm, brown gravy over Cyril, and ate him.

Cyril fainted with delight. When he came to, he found himself in a warm, squishy, gurgly place with lots of other bits of food. He had a new home in the person’s tummy! And he lived there happily ever after.

The End.

Out here we is stoned … immaculate