Tales from the Broom Cupboard

David Reeves

Description

Joe and Alex have new adventures during lockdown when they discover a time machine under the stairs. With their newfound friends, Flash, a cheetah and Slither, a python, they travel all over the galaxy, past, present and future, meeting amazing people and having a great time as their pets develop magic powers. Meet Mr Leek and the Little People with the boys as they discover new worlds.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781398449466
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

T ales from the B room C upboard
David Reeves
Austin Macauley Publishers
2023-01-06
Tales from the Broom Cupboard About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement 1. Fun and games before a magical journey 2. An Amazing Temple 3. 1875 or 875? 4. A multi-coloured stowaway 5. Chocolate logs and Mr Leek 6. Creaking in the cold 7. Seeing things in the sea – a long way away 8. Of seas, food and deserts 9. Underwater with the dinosaurs 10. Cooking magic 11. Trinity and Humpbacks 12. Puffins and pufflings in the sun 13. A day with the Saxons and a new machine 14. Jewels in the village 15. Very small in the river 16. Small boys on the food planet 17. Food and flying dogs 18. Courage in the Stone Age 19. Ten Centimetre Encounters With Nature 20. Tiny again in a beautiful river 21. Four rock planets 22. Helping out in hospital – and some magic! 23. Saving the water buffalo with Sophie and Kirsty 24. Naughty mice and a happy meeting 25. Canada in the snow, a big bear and whales 26. Bonjour Mr Monet 27. The Moon and the Universe and some magic 28. Fossils on mountains and Mercator 29. Little people and brave pets 30. Mr Leek’s kindness and the little people 31. Old friends and farewells
About the Author
David Reeves was a teacher of Russian, English and Humanities. He has always used storytelling to inform, excite and inspire children. He wasn’t able to tell his grandsons these bed-time stories personally, so they were written to them via email during the coronavirus lockdowns. Hopefully the boys were able to escape for a while.
Dedication
To Alex and Joe for all the fun we have, to little Jess who might want to read the stories one day, and to Ellie for reading the stories to the boys.
Copyright Information ©
David Reeves 2023
The right of David Reeves to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398449459 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398449466 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2023
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
Mariya Ali Ameen, thank you for your beautiful illustrations.
1. Fun and games before a magical journey
Slither had become bored with staying in. He knew he could easily slip unnoticed through the letter box, and make his way surreptitiously out of the garden and down to the river in the meadow in the chance of meeting some friendly grass snakes, but it didn’t seem fair, when Alex and Joe couldn’t join him.
So he decided to explore the house room by room in the hope of trying his ever-growing strength out on some new objects.
First into view, or rather, taste, because he was using his tongue ever flicking to sense the air, was a recently completed Lego ship about 30 centimetres long, with funnels and all sorts of details on the decks. He coiled himself around the ship and squeezed – with a crack and several worrying clicks the ship turned into heap of coloured Lego bricks.
Oops , thought Slither, but that was easy!
Next, in the bathroom he spotted a tube of toothpaste. You know what came next surely – striped toothpaste all over the mirror, wall and floor. Wheeeee! thought a stripy Slither – that was fun!
He made his way downstairs leaving a trail of red and white behind as he descended. Into the kitchen…what fun, he thought, a melon . He had watched food tricks with Al and Joe the day before – the one where two girls add more and more elastic bands to a green melon. He carefully wound himself ever tighter so that the melon couldn’t escape.

Now, just a gentle squeeze should do it…hmmm…a little more…hmmm…right I’ll give it all I’ve got errr…errr… with a resounding SPLAT! The entire melon exploded into tiny soggy red and green fragments. Oh er , thought slither, I seem to have completely redecorated the kitchen.
Al and Joe had heard a sort of splatter noise and looked at each other suspiciously. ‘Slither?’ They rounded the corner to the playroom to find a striped, soggy python about to try his strength on a large pink balloon. ‘Slither, no!’ cried Al. ‘You’ll—’
BANG! Too late…Slither jumped up in the air as high as the tabletop and landed writhing in plate of paints, which had just been prepared for some school artwork.
Al grabbed him and rushed outside, dropped him in a bucket of water and went off to find a cloth to clean the mischievous snake. Neither of the boys was best pleased with Slither – it took them an hour or two to clear up and it had been Joe’s model that got squashed to smithereens.
Flash looked on at all of these antics from the warmth of his basket in the sunroom. He too was bored with same old routine indoors but being a big cat just did things in a sleepy sort of way, and he certainly had no ambition to try out his strength. He had heard Joe telling Alex that cheetahs were the fastest land animals, so what had he got to prove? He had once asked next door’s moggie for a race, but the little ginger Tom took one look at him and shot up a tree, glaring down at him in a hostile sort of way.
He ambled over to the cupboard door under the stairs and sat there panting gently, until Joe noticed him. ‘Oh…time machine is it then, Flash?’ asked Joe. Flash licked his lips with that rasping tongue of his. ‘But I don’t think Slither will be coming – he’s been completely awful today,’ said Joe.

But Alex and Joe decided that it would do them all good to zoom off somewhere with no restrictions about keeping apart, maybe somewhere without any people at all. They set Guess Coordinates. ‘You have no idea where you will eventually land.’
Alex added a few extra gravities in case it got a bit bumpy (he had just had a large lunch). With a slippery crunching sort of sound, the time machine came to a halt. ‘I wonder where we are?’ said Al.
‘Oxygen reading is fine,’ said Joe. They opened the door, and the most awe-inspiring sight met their eyes…
2. An Amazing Temple
The two boys stood speechless, gazing at what they saw. In front of them was a large lake, flat calm. In the lake with a path leading to it was a huge building, which glistened golden in the strong sunlight. All of the huge building was covered in gold. In the heat of the day, and it was very hot indeed, the whole atmosphere of the place was almost overwhelming. Many people in bright clothes with the men wearing turbans, mostly orange in colour, were milling around. Some people were walking into the building whist others came out along the same path.
‘I wonder where we are,’ said Joe. People passing by seemed to be unafraid of Flash, who was standing quietly next to Joe. Slither was peering inquisitively from out of Alex’s T-shirt. ‘Some really important place I reckon,’ said Alex. ‘What year is it?’
‘2004,’ said Joe. ‘I checked on the screen in the time machine. Oh, and I pressed the invisibility button so we won’t alarm anyone, and I’ve got the scanner on my wrist so that we can find it again.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Alex. ‘What do you think we should do now?’
Just at that moment a deep and friendly voice behind them said, ‘Good afternoon boys and welcome to Amritsar. You are in India, and this is the most important temple in all of India for us Sikhs.’ The man was dressed in light loose clothes, and he too wore an orange turban. ‘If you like I’ll show you around. By the way, I like your pets – we see pythons in India, but the cheetah only lives in Africa of course. My name is Mr Singh.’

The boys were totally amazed that such a building could exist and introduced themselves and Flash and Slither. They made their way around the side of the lake and joined a slowly moving queue along the pathway which led into the building. It was even more dazzlingly gold as they got nearer and nearer. ‘It must be covered in a huge amount of gold leaf,’ said Al to Joe.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Singh, ‘you are right. And now we go in.’
Inside, the temple was an absolute riot of colour – reds, orange of course and yellows mainly, from curtains and drapes. Then they noticed a man sitting cross-legged at a folding table. He was reading aloud from a very large and old book. It was called the Guru Granth Sahib. He used a pointer to guide his reading and flicked a sort of large soft paint brush every two or three seconds over the page.
‘This is our sacred book,’ whispered Mr Singh. ‘And it is read every day from dawn until dusk. The brush is called a Chauri, and it is a mark of the greatest respect to use it like that.’
Al and Joe were totally engrossed with the ceremony and the smell of the incense sticks and the sounds of the people and the rainbow colour of the inside the temple. ‘Never seen anything like this,’ said Joe.
‘Me neither,’ whispered Alex in continuing amazement.
‘Now,’ said Mr Singh, ‘I must take you a long a little further to the langar where we shall eat some Kara Parshad.’
The thought of food distracted the two boys from the sounds of the temple, and they found themselves being offered a small dish of food. It was sweet and warm, and reminded Joe of what the nicest ice cream he had ever eaten would be like if it had completely melted.
‘This is what we give to all visitors to the temple whether they are Sikhs or not,’ said Mr Singh. ‘It is to remind us that we are all part of the same human race and Sikhs always welcome strangers no matter where they live or where they come from.’
Joe and Al ate their food and had a drink of water. Flash and Slither had