Nobbly Oak Woods

I haven't written a blog piece this week, as I have been working on a children's story ('Book 'em Danno!' will explain my thinking). I have no idea what I will do with this story, now that is basically finished, but I thought I would share it with you anyway. Feel free to print it off and read it to your kids (presumptuous I know), would love to hear any feedback, good or bad. A normal service will be resumed next week (hopefully).

Nobbly Oak Woods

Our story starts in Nobbly Oak Woods, it is quite an ordinary place to live. The bats aren't too hungry, the owls aren't too noisy, the trees aren't too scary, and the creepy crawlies aren't too big. Altogether not a bad place to live, if you like talking animals that is. If you were to walk across the thin green bridge, over the pile of rocks that look like a spider, and through Tickly Grass Meadow, you would come across a cosy little cottage. It looks just like the one Hansel and Gretel found, except this one isn't made of sweets, and a horrible Witch does not live inside.

Inside this house live five beautiful forest Princesses. Forest Princesses look like normal castle Princesses, except that they don't live in a castle, and they don't have a wicked step-mother who is always trying to do nasty things to them. In fact they do not have any parents at all, they were made by a magician, because all the creatures and tree's in the woods were lonely, and they wanted somebody to sing to them. So they called the Magician on the wood horn, paid him with berries, flowers, and some nasty smelling mushrooms. Hogrot, for that was the magician's name, waved his wand in a big circle, and Hey Presto, the Princesses appeared.

They all looked exactly the same, beautiful but bald. Everybody wondered how they would be able to tell them apart, but Hogrot gave them all a 'wait for it' look, and one by one their hair began to grow. Hogrot gave a small smile, and introduced them to everybody, everybody except Nodrig the bunny, who had fallen asleep.

First was Sunshine who had long blonde hair, the colour of buttercups.

Second was Raven with hair as black as the cupboard under the stairs.

Third was Lily whose hair was as white as a snowman's belly.

Fourth was Hazel with brown hair that shone like a chestnut.

Fifth was Scarlett with a shock of red hair that looked like strawberries, but smelt of, well hair.

The whole forest laughed, and clapped, and cheered, and once everyone had quietened down Hogrot took a huge bow, and POP, disappeared leaving a small puff of smoke and the slight smell of old mushrooms. The forest folk then led the Princesses into their new home, and left them alone to settle in.

Over time the Princesses learnt all the forest songs (except "Googly is a codswallop" because nobody really liked that one), and they would spend their days, singing, dancing, and having a fun old time. Sometimes they would draw pictures of the wood folk, and they were also good at making the most colourful clothes from the leaves and flowers that grew around their cottage. The years went past and nothing really changed, everyone was happy, and colourfully dressed, and the Princesses remained as beautiful as ever, and everybody lived happily ever after.

THE END

What do you mean you want more, I thought everybody liked a happy ending? What more is there for me to tell you? I told you about the hooded horseman and his quest did I not? Silly me, I would forget my head if it was not screwed on. OK I shall continue my story, sit back down, get yourself ready, and back to Nobbly Oak Woods we shall return.

The hooded horseman stopped at the edge of the woods and looked in. All the animals, and at least three of the trees, covered their eyes and turned away. The horseman ignored them, and made his way into the woods. He kept his horse at a slow trot, until he entered the clearing in the middle of the woods. There he announced in a booming voice "I am Prince Griswold, and I have searched these lands from Greentop Mountains, to Wispy Hollow, looking for a beautiful princess to marry." Everyone looked at each other with a worried frown. "I have searched every Castle, and they have all been empty. These woods are my last chance to find a bride. Be there any here?"

Nodrig the bunny, who was not asleep for a change, heard these words, and ran off to the cottage to tell the Princesses. Being a lazy bunny, and one not used to running, Nodrig was out of breath when he reached the Princesses. For 5 minutes they all watched him with puzzled looks on their faces, whilst he tried to gasp out what was happening. After many deep breaths he managed to blurt out "There is a Prince in the clearing, and he is looking for a princess to marry. Comb your hair and put on your best dress, and follow me."

Twenty minutes of busy running around and hair combing later, the five Princesses left the cottage, and started the slow walk to the clearing, with a puffed out Nodrig trailing behind them. Quite a crowd had developed once they got there, and as soon as they entered the clearing everybody went quiet, except Coughy Joe the Mole, who was, well coughing.

"Come forth beautiful maidens. Let me cast my eyes upon you" ordered Prince Griswold loudly. "At last I have found myself not one, but five lovely Princesses. Come closer so I can see you all the better." They all looked at each other and then took a step closer. The Prince took his time looking at them, and then announced "I have found myself a Wife, for any one of you fine young girls will do!"

With that he pulled off his hood so that everyone, including the five beautiful Princesses, could see him. It would be quite safe to say that Prince Griswold was the ugliest person in the whole kingdom. The trees were so shocked all their leaves fell off, the frogs forgot how to croak, the family of otters starting crying, and the ducks started barking. The whole clearing had one big kerfuffle at the hideous site before them.

It is quite hard for me to describe the Prince to you, but I will try my best. One of his eyes was yellow, and the other was mushy pea green, and droopy. He had four big hairy warts on his very pointy chin that was also quite long. His nose was big, round, and red like a clown's, except it was covered with lots of pus filled spots, that were all oozy and running. His ears were 2 different sizes and shapes, and neither of them were a nice size or shape. He also had green and brown hair that looked like it had not been washed since Eldred the Foolish was King, and that was a long time ago. We all missed King Eldred, who had died trying to get his ping pong ball out of a lion's mouth, but that is a story for another day.

The Prince jumped off his horse, and kicked Nodrig out of his way. The Princesses may have been able to fall in love with an ugly Prince, but a cruel one, never. They all turned around and ran off into the woods as fast as their legs would carry them.

Sunshine ran and ran and ran, until she spotted a cottage very like her own. Outside this cottage was a sign that read "WANTED PORRIDGE TASTER, ENQUIRE WITHIN". Sunshine stopped, read the sign, and knocked on the door. A big Bear with a very friendly face answered the door, "Come in, Come in, let me introduce you to my wife and son. By the way, what type of porridge do you like?"

Raven and Lily always did things together, so they went straight to Two Toad Pond. Once there, they grabbed one of the toad's each, and gave them a big wet kiss. Everybody knows that when a beautiful maiden kisses a frog, the frog turns into a Prince, but what is less known is that if you kiss a toad the opposite happens. By the time Prince Griswold arrived, Two Toad Pond had turned into Four Toad Pond, and one of the toads had white hair, one had black hair, and the other two looked very happy.

Hazel looked around not knowing what to do. Mr and Mrs Mole called over for her to follow them, and that is what she did. They led her around the three Oak trees and to the entrance of their burrow. The hole was not big enough for Hazel to fit through, so she dropped to her knees and started digging a hole until it was big enough for her to wiggle through. Once she had crawled along the tunnel, she found a large opening, and saw Mr Mole standing over a fire, brewing a large pot of tea. "One lump of two dear?" said Mrs Mole as she handed Hazel a tea cup.

Scarlett ran as fast as she could into the woods and straight into the arms of Wolfy the Misunderstood. He wrapped his red coat with a big hood around her, "Matches your hair darling" he said, and then he rushed her off to his Grandmother's cave to hide.

Prince Griswold searched for the five Princesses for two days and two nights, and still he could not find them. The more he searched, the angrier he got, the angrier he got, the redder his nose became, until BANG, his nose exploded. If you thought the Prince was ugly before, well you should have seen him then. Not even a blind skunk, without a sense of smell, would have been able to love him now.

The prince jumped back onto his horse, and rode out of the woods, the sounds of the forest folk laughter, ringing in his very ugly ears. He decided to give up looking for a wife, they seemed to be a lot of trouble to find, and to be honest, he hated horse riding as well. He returned to his castle, a long tall building with only one window, and one servant, a tiny person who weaved a lot. The prince could never pronounce his name, so he called him "You". The prince never left his castle again, and You found a golden haired bride of his own, leaving the ugly and angry prince alone.

REALLY THE END

Book ‘em Danno!

Ever since Katy and Mate (four and two respectively) started sharing a room over a year ago, myself and the good Wife (as opposed to the bad Wife who pops her head up come nagging time), have developed a routine in the mornings that enables us to grab an extra hours dozing time. Mate normally wakes first at about 6am, so I quickly grab him and take him downstairs, chuck him in the sofa bed, and jump in myself for the extra snoozing time. Katy will then wake up at 7am, and snuggle in with her Mum, watch some TV, until boredom and hunger hits at about 7.30am, then we are all reunited.

This works fine unless they both wake up at the same time, say 6.45am, then nothing seems to work, and all hell breaks loose. So we have started an experiment where, when this happens, I just go into them, turn the light on, throw him a few building bricks and her, a book, and just let them get on with it. We don't get the same amount of nap time, but it can be quite fun just listening to them.

Mate has been able to say everyone's name in the house except Katy, but he sussed that out last week, and the words are now all spewing out like verbal diarrhoea. This morning Katy started teaching him new words to say, and helping him with the pronunciation. It all started fairly easily Mum, Dad, Dawn, Katy, Dog (followed by lots of barking from him, and impatience to move on from her), head, tongue (?), clap (followed by lots of clapping, more Katy impatience, woof obviously taught her nothing), hippopotamus! This last one came as a bit of a surprise, especially as Katy can't even pronounce it herself.

I blame my Wife for this, for whilst she is the chief correct-speller-and-all-things-grammar, of the house, she cannot pronounce the long words for toffee. Hearing her attempt to read Katy any book involving dinosaurs is a comic lesson in mispronunciation. John Clesse may be head of the "Ministry of silly walks", but my darling Wife is Vice-chairman of the "Tongue-Tangling Society". I actually fell off the bed laughing the last time she tried to pronounce "Cretaceous", and don't even get me started on "Styracosaurus", too funny.

She has now, quite unreasonably in my opinion, refused to read the night-time story, thus depriving both me, and the kids, of quality mickey-taking time. Now book reading is on my list of chores, along with cooking, gardening, washing, and anything else that requires breaking a sweat. I used to be very self conscious about reading out loud, everything I read came out in a John Major type dull monotone, but armed with the thought that 'how could I be any worse that their Mum', I have started to excel.

I can do the voices, the animal noises, the growls, the roars, the quiet bits, the LOUD BITS, I sometimes even sing. I am a legend in my own Imagination. My very best attribute is the ability to read the rhyming books really fast. This enables me to get downstairs, and into a chair and a beer, a lot quicker than normal. Katy does not even feel short-changed, as she loves it just as much when I muck the words up, as when I ace it.

Another change now that books are in my domain, are the mocking-mummy books. These are normal (but unfamiliar to Katy) books where I can change the plotline to regal her with one of the Wife's drunken exploits. The names are changed to protect the innocent (and guilty), and it can be quite a challenge to fit, say 'drunkenly asking a policeman for a Tango' into a child's story.

This whole process of writing these blogs, has given me a healthy respect for children's authors. I used to be quite dismissive, not of the genre, but of certain types of stories, and would be quite dismissive "Katy, that one is rubbish, put it back". I mean, how hard can it be to write a story for children?

Well, quite hard it seems. I thought it would be quite cool if I could write a story for Mate and Katy, maybe get them to colour in some pictures for it, and maybe even get it published. Such lofty ideas, I had it all planned out. I sat down and started writing the outline for the plot, with the intention to then go back, flesh it out, and add some dialogue. After a few hours pondering, and typing, deleting, and pondering, with some more typing thrown in for good measure, I had my plotline nailed.

I love the word crestfallen, so descriptive, and so apt in this case. To a muted drum roll I give you my story.

There are seven beautiful princesses living alone in the woods, with only a talking bunny and a clumsy deer for company. A Prince comes to rescue them, but he is so ugly, they all kissed frogs to escape, and turned into dinosaurs. All except one, who run off with a wolf with beautiful red fur, and lived happily ever after, raising abandoned baby monkeys. The Prince was so distraught, he locked himself in a tall tower, with only weaving midget for company. The End.

What was I thinking, published, you must be joking. Even if it was, I am sure Disney's copyright lawyers would have a field day with it, such a blatant mishmash and rip off if ever I saw one. I genuinely did not realise as I was working, that I was just rehashing old films. Blame Disney for getting so far into our psyche, I don't know?

I have decided to leave children's books to the experts, experts like Debi Gliori, whose book "No Matter What", I read a while back. It is a fairly simple tale of small fox and his Dad. Small keeps asking his Dad if he would love him if he was grumpy, a bear, a bug, etc. His Dad answers that he will always love him, no matter what. "But what about when you're dead?" Small then asks. The Dad then shows Small the stars in the sky, and explains, "Look at the stars – how they shine and glow, but some of those stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies. Love, like starlight, never dies."

I think Shakespeare was the greatest wordsmith and poet, but I think even he would have been proud of that description. It certainly brought tears to my eyes when I read it, and still does to be honest.

Writing kid's books easy? I somehow doubt it, but getting better recognition for your work from this Dad, just got a lot easier.

Imagination more important than Knowledge?

The imagination can be a scary thing you know, it only takes a couple of random thoughts to mix together, and brew up overnight, and you can end up with some of the craziest dreams. I think one of the hardest parts of being a parent, is the bad dreams you have about your kids. I have had some proper doozys, and they very rarely end well, but I had one the other night that was not par for the course.

I dreamt it was a Sunday morning, and we had popped around my Mum and Dad’s house in Barking. Some socially irresponsible preacher had knocked on the door, wanting to spread the word of the Lord. Always a pet hate of mine, I mean, if I had wanted to be preached to on a Sunday, I would have just gone to church, and let a professional do it. I can understand the market for mid-week door to door preaching, but on a Sunday, know your market mate.

Anyway Reverend Disruption, knocked on the door, my Mum answered, Katy bolted out of the door, and started running like her pants were on fire. The bottle neck created by the preacher trying to give us a leaflet, wasted precious seconds, but was dissipated by a Karate chop delivered by my Mum to his shoulders and down he went (way to go Mum, I didn’t know you had it in you). I jumped over him and started running after her. I looked up the road just in time to see her turn a corner, damn she was fast. I got to the corner, had a choice of 4 directions, and could see no sign of her. If we lived in less of a concrete jungle, I could have used all my Cub Scout knowledge and followed the trail, but I guess there is only so much you can change in a dream.

I had a brainwave, I ran back to the house and turned my Mums laptop on (told you she was cool didn’t I!) I opened up my twitter account and got typing, all the while remembering the 140 character rule. I typed the following:

Child called Katy missing from Barking area. Please help with search and RT this. Photo at http://www.twitpic.com/2s8nv 07873280109 if seen

I know most non-users of twitter do not understand it, and think it is just a bunch of sad old people, telling a load of people they don’t know, inane facts like “making breakfast”, or “putting pants on and getting dressed”, or even as spotted yesterday “#noundiessunday “(you know who you are, shameless). But in my heart of hearts, I know it is more than that. It can be used as a power for good, and not a power to spam, or so I hoped as I hit the tweet button.

So whilst the rest of my family was out searching, there was I manning the Laptop and praying for a miracle. For 15 minutes (that felt like 15 hours), nothing happened, then all of a sudden I started seeing Katy’s name and photo all over the web. Twitter has a ‘Trending Topics’ list running down the side of it. It is the top 10 things people are talking about on twitter, and is updated in real time. For example, today’s list includes Eurovision, Star Trek, and #3turnoffwords. All of a sudden ‘Katy missing’ started trending to the top. There were now more people talking about my daughter than Angels and Demons! Take that Dan Brown, make a conspiracy about that if you can (I hope he doesn’t read this, as I am a huge fan, honest!)

I wandered outside in a mild daze. Walking to the top of the road, everything sounded slightly too noisy for a Sunday morning. I did not realise you could actually hear urgency, but that is what my ears were picking up, all around me was the sounds of footsteps and serious conversations, and yet there was no one in sight. I reached the spot where I had originally halted my search, and looked up for the first time. There was a sea of humanity, all walking with a sense of purpose, as far as the eye could see (which was not far due to the tears of fear and hope that clouded my vision). All of them looking for my daughter, all summoned by the Great God of Twitter.

There is a 3 floored block of flats nearby, and I climbed the stairs to the top, and went onto its flat roof. It reminded me of standing on the bridge by the old Wembley Way, after a cup final (We lost 3-2 to Luton???) and looking back at the crowds exiting the stadium. A similar scene faced me now, and the people all had the same grim expression as back then as well. Except this time my heart was full of hope, instead of hate at a missed penalty. They were looking under cars, over fences, and even in wheelie-bins. People were knocking on doors, getting people to check their gardens, and then those people would also join the search.

This went on for about an hour, every minute feeling like a day, I just did not know what to do. I kept walking around in a circle like a headless chicken, no use to anyone. Suddenly the noise and the atmosphere changed. A wave of smiles and back slaps came rippling toward me. It made no sense, what was going on. The smiles turned to laughter, and I just looked uncomprehendingly at the wall of people in front of me. The story took another biblical turn, when the people parted, as if before the Red Sea, with me as Moses. There emerging from the ever widening gap, was my soot covered daughter, in the arms of the oldest, most toothless, and in my eyes, most beautiful man in the world.

The old man simply tipped me a wink, placed Katy in my arms and said “Yours I believe.” My fellow twitteratti would describe these as #3hotwords, but to me they meant just one thing. Safe.
I knew this feeling of happiness and relief would, at some stage, turn to anger at her running away in the first place, but for this moment I would just wallow in the scent of her, and think about punishments later.

I woke up a bit more dazed and confused than usual, be that because of the dream, or be that the fact it was 7am and Mate had allowed me an extra hour in bed. Who knows, but I do know that Katy got a lot more hugs that day. Oh, and I put a sign up on my door saying “No Jehovah’s Witnesses”, better safe than sorry.