SHORT STORIES FOR RELUCTANT READERS |
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EASY AT LAST-SHORT STORIES FOR RELUCTANT READERS
UKBOYSOK
Ten inter-connected, ‘baton-touch’ stories of 10/11 year old British boys and one Japanese boy in 2010.
These stories take 30 minutes to read, and come with scripted lessons to help students with their reading and writing
UKBOYSOK: A Synopsis
‘Heading for England’:
‘England is near the South Pole?’ ‘No, Ryosei. I said England used to be near the South Pole.’ ‘When?’ ‘A long, long time ago.’ ‘Is that why England is cold? You said it’s cold.’ ‘It’s colder than Japan.’ Takeshi Suzuki, an earthquake specialist on a working trip to the UK, is taking his son, RYOSEI, and wife with him. They are on the plane from Tokyo. Ryosei tells his father about the book he’s reading. ‘It’s about boys in England. They’re the same age as me. I want to know what boys in England are like. Oto-san, d’you think they’re the same as boys in Japan?’
‘That ‘Damned United’ Book’:
Stealing the ‘Damned United’ football book for his father’s birthday is JIMMY’S plan, getting arrested by the police is not. ‘Right there and then I hated that book, hated Leeds United, hated the bloke who wrote the book, hated books, hated bookshops, hated the police, hated birthdays, but what was most difficult to admit, even though it was the truth, most of all, I hated myself.’ Jimmy’s accomplice DEGSIE doesn’t care. But Jimmy is full of remorse. How is his dad going to react? He has a big surprise when his dad admits to shop-lifting himself, when he was young. Even more surprising is his dad’s resolution to help Jimmy with his reading. ‘I thought a good place to start would be this,’ he said, picking up ‘Damned United’. Jimmy and his lorry driving dad set off on the road together, his dad deciding road-signs are another way he can help Jimmy to read. ‘Cree…we…Crew…y.’ I couldn’t make my mind up about the correct way to say it. He exploded with laughter. ‘Like ‘grew’ but with a ‘K’ sound.’ ‘Krew.’
‘Degise’s Den of Dosh’:
‘You stink of rotten butter Ryan. But I tell you what, I won’t spread it around.’ DEGSIE, (Declan Malone) continually fights with his older brother, RYAN. Life is hard until one day, walking his 2 pit-bulls, Degsie finds a wallet. ‘240 pounds. I was staring down at £240. In my hands was £240!!! I’d just won the jackpot, the lottery. ‘Here Max, Brute, we’re slum-dog millionaires’. Despite the owner’s name and address being in the wallet, ‘how should I spend it all?’ is all Degsie can think of, until the local Bishop visits school. ‘it’s wrong to steal’, ‘we’ll all be judged by God’, ‘God never forgets’, ‘God knows everything.’ Having hidden the money in the Family Bible, Degsie returns home to find ‘that morning I’d put the notes in Exodus 20, the same place in the Bible the Bishop had been going on about. Perhaps God already knew? Perhaps he could see the £20 notes in my hand? Tormented by God’s eyes, and his brother Ryan eventually discovering the money, Degsie decides he has to return the money. He hands over the wallet to Mr Hussain. ‘Deglan,’ Mr Hussein said, as I was getting up from the kitchen table . ‘Declan, it’s Declan…with a C…Declan.’ ‘Deglan,’ he said. I couldn’t be bothered correcting him again, ‘Here, you very good boy, you take.’ Degsie walks away with £40 pounds, and the next day the local newspaper is at his house wanting to take his photograph.
‘The Bullfight’:
‘There’s Hope for our Future’. Declan Malone, 10 years old, from Dewsbury, proves that not all our young kids are out of control these days. There is hope for all of us if young children like Declan are anything to go by’. You got to be joking, that little….’ Super-fit PC WOOD, who had arrested Jimmy and Degsie for shoplifting, reads the newspaper as he sets off on holiday to Spain with his wife and son, CHRIS. The week’s holiday soon passes, playing on the beach, windsurfing, plus Chris’s dad’s heroic struggles to speak Spanish. Chris’s mum is not happy when his dad takes Chris to a bullfight. Chris is intrigued. ‘The matador knelt down on one knee, right in front of the bull. The bull and the matador were staring into one another’s eyes, their noses almost touching.’ Chris’s mother’s worst fears about the barbarity of bullfights comes true, exposing Chris to the horror of Death. ‘The matador raised himself up on his toes, leaned forward, lifted up his sword, and stepping forward to sink the sword into the bull’s neck when, WHAT! The matador was in the air, his right leg above the bull’s head, his left leg near the ground. The matador fell to the ground, like a discarded rag doll. The bull lowered its head, its huge curved horns, and threw the matador back up into the air.’
‘The Challenge’:
ANDREW CHARLES EDDISON, (ACE), (Chris Wood’s cousin) is unhappy, worried and scared about everything. ‘My mum’s always saying,’ ‘You should be grateful you’ve got your health.’ I never hear her say, ‘You should be grateful you’ve got ginger hair, matchstick legs and a nose the size of a horse’s head. He also has a painful visit to the dentists to endure. ‘What about if it all goes wrong in the chair, you know, like, if the dentist makes a mistake when he is taking my tooth out. Could I die?’ ‘Andy. It’s a tooth, not your heart.’ And there is the scary future for Planet Earth. ‘Eventually, the huge Sun will turn into a Red Giant, which sounds bad and dangerous, and it is. The Red Giant will do what Giants always do. The Greedy Red Giant will eat us all up. The Earth will disappear for ever.’ ACE’s internet search on how to overcome his fear leads him to a quote, ‘If the diver always thought of the shark, he would never lay hands on the pearl’. He now knows he must attempt the famous no-brakes, no-helmet, ‘bike race against time’ along Portsmouth seafront. ‘Only a special few have ever completed it, that’s why it’s called ‘The Challenge’. Summoning all his courage ACE finds himself, ‘overtaking the only car driving next to the promenade. The driver did a double take. He couldn’t believe a cyclist was zooming past him.’ Later, basking in the knowledge of his success, ACE reflects,‘speeding down the prom on the bike, for not one tiny second had I thought of the things that make me unhappy, worried or scared. Not my nose, my hair, my legs, the dentist, my future, the end of the World, Death, none of it. I had faced up to ‘The Challenge’. I had dived in. Finally, at last, for the first time in my life, like the diver forgetting the shark, I was holding up my pearl.’
‘Battles in Pompey’:
Nothing’s the matter with boys, not like girls. All you girls do is sit around your rooms, trying on different outfits, comparing shoes, painting your toenails, pretending you can sing. You’ll never get on that programme unless they re-name it, ‘Britain’s Got No Talent.’ MICKY (ACE’s classmate) argues with his sister SAMANTHA before rushing off to meet his best mate JOHNNY at Southsea Pier for a day of ‘arcade fun’; ‘combing’; ‘dreaming of the future’ ‘naval boat watching’, general messing about, and to complain about girls. ‘When they fall out it’s tears all over the house. Samantha says things like, ‘that so and so is never gonna be my friend ever again’. Half the time it’s something the other girl’s said, something really stupid like, ‘that dress is not your colour’. I don’t get it. What’s the matter with girls?’
Getting into HMS Victory for free leads to a re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalgar on Pompey seafront. Micky’s Admiral Nelson, Johnny’s Admiral Villeneuve. Returning home to play football with his friends, Samantha and her friends are still practising their song, and unwilling to let Micky play football. Disputes arise over the girls’ singing abilities, fake American accents and the extent of their make-up. The girls retaliate. Later that evening Micky’s mother tells him, ‘boys and girls, men and women, might be different in lots of ways, but it would be sad world if one lot disappeared. ‘Mom, what d’ya mean, if one lot disappeared?’ I quizzed her. ‘Work it out for yourself Micky,’ she smiled, as she carried on putting the plates on the table ready for dinner.’
‘Brains is Pants’:
PHILIP, on holiday at his uncle’s in Portsmouth, writes a letter to the bullies in his class. ‘It’s time to talk about YOUR behaviour, YOUR attitude, YOUR problem, and why YOU don’t like kids like me. YOU all have someone like me in your class. …. I’m the kid who often sits right at the front of the class. I’m the one who can answer most of the questions…I’m the one who doesn’t shout out…’. He taunts the bullies to guess what his hobby is. ‘I travel to many places with my hobby. In the last few months I’ve been to America, Italy, and India. I met so many different people. They told me what they were doing…. I told them about my life in England and the bullying I get at school….. My hobby helps me understand other people. To understand others, it’s important to listen. But YOU don’t listen. The only listening YOU do is to YOUR mates, no-one else. And when his teacher arranges a class quiz, Philip’s opponent is his Number 1 tormentor, ALAN BATES, who’s hostility to Philip remains right though to the end of the quiz as he refuses to shake hands with Philip and shouts out, ‘Brains is pants’.
‘I Can’t Be Satisfied Until…’
RAJ, a Hindu and Philip’s friend, has moved from London to a small town in the Midlands, and has to confront local racism, from pupils, teachers, and the town in general. ‘In this town I’ve been asked, ‘Does your dad run the new Indian restaurant?’ Hassan’s dad runs the local ‘Karachi’ restaurant, and it’s not an Indian restaurant. Look at the name, ‘Karachi’. That’s in Pakistan. If these same people came across a restaurant called ‘Paris’, would they think, ‘Ah, an Italian restaurant’. I don’t think so.’ He is tired of being mistaken for a Muslim. With the arrival at school of two refugees, OSAMA and SADDAM, ’Oh no, who next, Adolf Hitler?’ (DAMIEN LEWIS) challenges Raj, Hassan, Osama and Saddam to a cricket match. Raj, a cricket fanatic, has been spending a lot of time practising a googlie, (the winning ball). Damien, on losing the game, throws away his cricket bat, it smashes into a classroom window. MR WILDGOOSE, the head-teacher, mistakes Raj for a Muslim. Raj can’t tolerate the racism any more, and, recalling the words of Dr Martin Luther King, he tells Mr Wildgoose, ‘When Martin Luther King saw things needed changing….. He made a famous speech. One of the lines he kept repeating was ‘We can never be satisfied’. Well I can never be satisfied until certain things that carry on here are sorted out.’ Raj proceeds to spell out his grievances.
‘Is School Rubbish’: Time for a Change
Raj’s old friend in London, MILES is disillusioned with his school, St Olafs (St Nolafs). ‘Mum, I don’t want to go to school.’ ‘Miles, you’ve got to go to school.’ ‘But I don’t want to.’ ‘There’s lots of things I don’t want to do.’ ‘So’ ‘So we don’t get to choose, do we?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I said so’ ‘But why do I have to go to school?’ ‘To learn like everybody else.’ ‘Learn what though?’ ‘How to read and write’ ‘I can already read and write’ ‘So you can do it even better’ ‘Why?’ ‘For the future’ ‘What good is that for?’ ‘So you can get a better job’. Miles decides it is time for a change. Determined to be politician in the future he sets about writing a manifesto for change. He identifies the good things about school and then the bad. He sets down a range of proposals, including pupils having greater freedom to learn what they want, and getting rid of bad teachers. ‘Bad teachers are like, no control, no sense of humour, not organized, shout all the time. They are bulldogs of brain-dead boredom. What are we going to do about them? If rubbish teachers don’t get any better, we should refuse to be taught by them any more….Who said school always has to be the same forever? If we want change we can make it happen now. We can start today’.
'Cuckoo, Cuckoo'
BRETT, (Miles’s friend) has escaped from London with his dad for a week’s holiday in the Scottish Highlands. He sets off for a day on his own in the Great Wilderness, trying to get to Loch na Sealga and ‘An Teallach’ mountain. The further he walks into the Great Wilderness, the more apprehensive he becomes, about his loneliness, the dangers on the walk, and his other worries, soon to start at High school, where big boys bully new ones, and then there is his parent’s imminent divorce. Thinking he will not make it to An Teallach, a cuckoo seems to be guiding him into the valley. The cuckoo flapped its wings with a calm purpose. Lifting itself from its wooden perch within a second it was standing on a pebble so close to me I could see the small veins in the cuckoo’s eyes. I glanced at the cuckoo, which carried on staring across the still waters of the Loch, refusing to meet my look. But as soon as I turned my head to look away from the cuckoo, that’s when it happened. The most magical moment in my entire life.‘Are you all right? You looked worried and very sad,’ said the cuckoo, now looking directly into my eyes. ‘I feel so alone in the world,’ I replied, not for one moment stopping to think I was talking to a bird. The cuckoo kept giving little jumps up and down on the pebble. ‘We’re all alone in the world in a way,’ the cuckoo chirped back, continuing to gently hop up and down on its tiny, thin legs. The cuckoo relates its own life to Brett, ‘never even knowing his own parents, throwing eggs out of the nest, dodging peregrine falcons on the long journey South. Brett’s worries start to melt away. The magical experience of talking to a cuckoo, he keeps to himself as he and his father drive back to London. Each time I searched the sky, I quietly mouthed the words, ‘thank-you, thank-you’, which made me smile, for as I whispered the words, in my head, it sounded like I was saying, ‘cuckoo, cuckoo’.
Flight to Japan:
Ryosei sits with his father on the plane as they talk about how life in the UK and Japan is different. Ryosei tells his father about the book he's read with bad boys, kind fathers, attitudes to death, religion, cycling on the pavement, bullies, modesty, and the small number of foreigners in Japan. ‘But what the book had shown Ryosei was that boys in Japan and England are the same in some ways. They all want to have friends, they like to have fun, and sometimes they get into trouble. He wondered which of the boys he would like to invite to Japan, which one would he get on with best, and which one would find it hardest living in Japan, like not wanting to do the same as everyone else. And if they didn’t like rice and couldn’t use chopsticks, then they’d really have trouble.’
To receive the full set of stories see the contacts page of www.easyatlast.weebly.com
Ten inter-connected, ‘baton-touch’ stories of 10/11 year old British boys and one Japanese boy in 2010.
These stories take 30 minutes to read, and come with scripted lessons to help students with their reading and writing
UKBOYSOK: A Synopsis
‘Heading for England’:
‘England is near the South Pole?’ ‘No, Ryosei. I said England used to be near the South Pole.’ ‘When?’ ‘A long, long time ago.’ ‘Is that why England is cold? You said it’s cold.’ ‘It’s colder than Japan.’ Takeshi Suzuki, an earthquake specialist on a working trip to the UK, is taking his son, RYOSEI, and wife with him. They are on the plane from Tokyo. Ryosei tells his father about the book he’s reading. ‘It’s about boys in England. They’re the same age as me. I want to know what boys in England are like. Oto-san, d’you think they’re the same as boys in Japan?’
‘That ‘Damned United’ Book’:
Stealing the ‘Damned United’ football book for his father’s birthday is JIMMY’S plan, getting arrested by the police is not. ‘Right there and then I hated that book, hated Leeds United, hated the bloke who wrote the book, hated books, hated bookshops, hated the police, hated birthdays, but what was most difficult to admit, even though it was the truth, most of all, I hated myself.’ Jimmy’s accomplice DEGSIE doesn’t care. But Jimmy is full of remorse. How is his dad going to react? He has a big surprise when his dad admits to shop-lifting himself, when he was young. Even more surprising is his dad’s resolution to help Jimmy with his reading. ‘I thought a good place to start would be this,’ he said, picking up ‘Damned United’. Jimmy and his lorry driving dad set off on the road together, his dad deciding road-signs are another way he can help Jimmy to read. ‘Cree…we…Crew…y.’ I couldn’t make my mind up about the correct way to say it. He exploded with laughter. ‘Like ‘grew’ but with a ‘K’ sound.’ ‘Krew.’
‘Degise’s Den of Dosh’:
‘You stink of rotten butter Ryan. But I tell you what, I won’t spread it around.’ DEGSIE, (Declan Malone) continually fights with his older brother, RYAN. Life is hard until one day, walking his 2 pit-bulls, Degsie finds a wallet. ‘240 pounds. I was staring down at £240. In my hands was £240!!! I’d just won the jackpot, the lottery. ‘Here Max, Brute, we’re slum-dog millionaires’. Despite the owner’s name and address being in the wallet, ‘how should I spend it all?’ is all Degsie can think of, until the local Bishop visits school. ‘it’s wrong to steal’, ‘we’ll all be judged by God’, ‘God never forgets’, ‘God knows everything.’ Having hidden the money in the Family Bible, Degsie returns home to find ‘that morning I’d put the notes in Exodus 20, the same place in the Bible the Bishop had been going on about. Perhaps God already knew? Perhaps he could see the £20 notes in my hand? Tormented by God’s eyes, and his brother Ryan eventually discovering the money, Degsie decides he has to return the money. He hands over the wallet to Mr Hussain. ‘Deglan,’ Mr Hussein said, as I was getting up from the kitchen table . ‘Declan, it’s Declan…with a C…Declan.’ ‘Deglan,’ he said. I couldn’t be bothered correcting him again, ‘Here, you very good boy, you take.’ Degsie walks away with £40 pounds, and the next day the local newspaper is at his house wanting to take his photograph.
‘The Bullfight’:
‘There’s Hope for our Future’. Declan Malone, 10 years old, from Dewsbury, proves that not all our young kids are out of control these days. There is hope for all of us if young children like Declan are anything to go by’. You got to be joking, that little….’ Super-fit PC WOOD, who had arrested Jimmy and Degsie for shoplifting, reads the newspaper as he sets off on holiday to Spain with his wife and son, CHRIS. The week’s holiday soon passes, playing on the beach, windsurfing, plus Chris’s dad’s heroic struggles to speak Spanish. Chris’s mum is not happy when his dad takes Chris to a bullfight. Chris is intrigued. ‘The matador knelt down on one knee, right in front of the bull. The bull and the matador were staring into one another’s eyes, their noses almost touching.’ Chris’s mother’s worst fears about the barbarity of bullfights comes true, exposing Chris to the horror of Death. ‘The matador raised himself up on his toes, leaned forward, lifted up his sword, and stepping forward to sink the sword into the bull’s neck when, WHAT! The matador was in the air, his right leg above the bull’s head, his left leg near the ground. The matador fell to the ground, like a discarded rag doll. The bull lowered its head, its huge curved horns, and threw the matador back up into the air.’
‘The Challenge’:
ANDREW CHARLES EDDISON, (ACE), (Chris Wood’s cousin) is unhappy, worried and scared about everything. ‘My mum’s always saying,’ ‘You should be grateful you’ve got your health.’ I never hear her say, ‘You should be grateful you’ve got ginger hair, matchstick legs and a nose the size of a horse’s head. He also has a painful visit to the dentists to endure. ‘What about if it all goes wrong in the chair, you know, like, if the dentist makes a mistake when he is taking my tooth out. Could I die?’ ‘Andy. It’s a tooth, not your heart.’ And there is the scary future for Planet Earth. ‘Eventually, the huge Sun will turn into a Red Giant, which sounds bad and dangerous, and it is. The Red Giant will do what Giants always do. The Greedy Red Giant will eat us all up. The Earth will disappear for ever.’ ACE’s internet search on how to overcome his fear leads him to a quote, ‘If the diver always thought of the shark, he would never lay hands on the pearl’. He now knows he must attempt the famous no-brakes, no-helmet, ‘bike race against time’ along Portsmouth seafront. ‘Only a special few have ever completed it, that’s why it’s called ‘The Challenge’. Summoning all his courage ACE finds himself, ‘overtaking the only car driving next to the promenade. The driver did a double take. He couldn’t believe a cyclist was zooming past him.’ Later, basking in the knowledge of his success, ACE reflects,‘speeding down the prom on the bike, for not one tiny second had I thought of the things that make me unhappy, worried or scared. Not my nose, my hair, my legs, the dentist, my future, the end of the World, Death, none of it. I had faced up to ‘The Challenge’. I had dived in. Finally, at last, for the first time in my life, like the diver forgetting the shark, I was holding up my pearl.’
‘Battles in Pompey’:
Nothing’s the matter with boys, not like girls. All you girls do is sit around your rooms, trying on different outfits, comparing shoes, painting your toenails, pretending you can sing. You’ll never get on that programme unless they re-name it, ‘Britain’s Got No Talent.’ MICKY (ACE’s classmate) argues with his sister SAMANTHA before rushing off to meet his best mate JOHNNY at Southsea Pier for a day of ‘arcade fun’; ‘combing’; ‘dreaming of the future’ ‘naval boat watching’, general messing about, and to complain about girls. ‘When they fall out it’s tears all over the house. Samantha says things like, ‘that so and so is never gonna be my friend ever again’. Half the time it’s something the other girl’s said, something really stupid like, ‘that dress is not your colour’. I don’t get it. What’s the matter with girls?’
Getting into HMS Victory for free leads to a re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalgar on Pompey seafront. Micky’s Admiral Nelson, Johnny’s Admiral Villeneuve. Returning home to play football with his friends, Samantha and her friends are still practising their song, and unwilling to let Micky play football. Disputes arise over the girls’ singing abilities, fake American accents and the extent of their make-up. The girls retaliate. Later that evening Micky’s mother tells him, ‘boys and girls, men and women, might be different in lots of ways, but it would be sad world if one lot disappeared. ‘Mom, what d’ya mean, if one lot disappeared?’ I quizzed her. ‘Work it out for yourself Micky,’ she smiled, as she carried on putting the plates on the table ready for dinner.’
‘Brains is Pants’:
PHILIP, on holiday at his uncle’s in Portsmouth, writes a letter to the bullies in his class. ‘It’s time to talk about YOUR behaviour, YOUR attitude, YOUR problem, and why YOU don’t like kids like me. YOU all have someone like me in your class. …. I’m the kid who often sits right at the front of the class. I’m the one who can answer most of the questions…I’m the one who doesn’t shout out…’. He taunts the bullies to guess what his hobby is. ‘I travel to many places with my hobby. In the last few months I’ve been to America, Italy, and India. I met so many different people. They told me what they were doing…. I told them about my life in England and the bullying I get at school….. My hobby helps me understand other people. To understand others, it’s important to listen. But YOU don’t listen. The only listening YOU do is to YOUR mates, no-one else. And when his teacher arranges a class quiz, Philip’s opponent is his Number 1 tormentor, ALAN BATES, who’s hostility to Philip remains right though to the end of the quiz as he refuses to shake hands with Philip and shouts out, ‘Brains is pants’.
‘I Can’t Be Satisfied Until…’
RAJ, a Hindu and Philip’s friend, has moved from London to a small town in the Midlands, and has to confront local racism, from pupils, teachers, and the town in general. ‘In this town I’ve been asked, ‘Does your dad run the new Indian restaurant?’ Hassan’s dad runs the local ‘Karachi’ restaurant, and it’s not an Indian restaurant. Look at the name, ‘Karachi’. That’s in Pakistan. If these same people came across a restaurant called ‘Paris’, would they think, ‘Ah, an Italian restaurant’. I don’t think so.’ He is tired of being mistaken for a Muslim. With the arrival at school of two refugees, OSAMA and SADDAM, ’Oh no, who next, Adolf Hitler?’ (DAMIEN LEWIS) challenges Raj, Hassan, Osama and Saddam to a cricket match. Raj, a cricket fanatic, has been spending a lot of time practising a googlie, (the winning ball). Damien, on losing the game, throws away his cricket bat, it smashes into a classroom window. MR WILDGOOSE, the head-teacher, mistakes Raj for a Muslim. Raj can’t tolerate the racism any more, and, recalling the words of Dr Martin Luther King, he tells Mr Wildgoose, ‘When Martin Luther King saw things needed changing….. He made a famous speech. One of the lines he kept repeating was ‘We can never be satisfied’. Well I can never be satisfied until certain things that carry on here are sorted out.’ Raj proceeds to spell out his grievances.
‘Is School Rubbish’: Time for a Change
Raj’s old friend in London, MILES is disillusioned with his school, St Olafs (St Nolafs). ‘Mum, I don’t want to go to school.’ ‘Miles, you’ve got to go to school.’ ‘But I don’t want to.’ ‘There’s lots of things I don’t want to do.’ ‘So’ ‘So we don’t get to choose, do we?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I said so’ ‘But why do I have to go to school?’ ‘To learn like everybody else.’ ‘Learn what though?’ ‘How to read and write’ ‘I can already read and write’ ‘So you can do it even better’ ‘Why?’ ‘For the future’ ‘What good is that for?’ ‘So you can get a better job’. Miles decides it is time for a change. Determined to be politician in the future he sets about writing a manifesto for change. He identifies the good things about school and then the bad. He sets down a range of proposals, including pupils having greater freedom to learn what they want, and getting rid of bad teachers. ‘Bad teachers are like, no control, no sense of humour, not organized, shout all the time. They are bulldogs of brain-dead boredom. What are we going to do about them? If rubbish teachers don’t get any better, we should refuse to be taught by them any more….Who said school always has to be the same forever? If we want change we can make it happen now. We can start today’.
'Cuckoo, Cuckoo'
BRETT, (Miles’s friend) has escaped from London with his dad for a week’s holiday in the Scottish Highlands. He sets off for a day on his own in the Great Wilderness, trying to get to Loch na Sealga and ‘An Teallach’ mountain. The further he walks into the Great Wilderness, the more apprehensive he becomes, about his loneliness, the dangers on the walk, and his other worries, soon to start at High school, where big boys bully new ones, and then there is his parent’s imminent divorce. Thinking he will not make it to An Teallach, a cuckoo seems to be guiding him into the valley. The cuckoo flapped its wings with a calm purpose. Lifting itself from its wooden perch within a second it was standing on a pebble so close to me I could see the small veins in the cuckoo’s eyes. I glanced at the cuckoo, which carried on staring across the still waters of the Loch, refusing to meet my look. But as soon as I turned my head to look away from the cuckoo, that’s when it happened. The most magical moment in my entire life.‘Are you all right? You looked worried and very sad,’ said the cuckoo, now looking directly into my eyes. ‘I feel so alone in the world,’ I replied, not for one moment stopping to think I was talking to a bird. The cuckoo kept giving little jumps up and down on the pebble. ‘We’re all alone in the world in a way,’ the cuckoo chirped back, continuing to gently hop up and down on its tiny, thin legs. The cuckoo relates its own life to Brett, ‘never even knowing his own parents, throwing eggs out of the nest, dodging peregrine falcons on the long journey South. Brett’s worries start to melt away. The magical experience of talking to a cuckoo, he keeps to himself as he and his father drive back to London. Each time I searched the sky, I quietly mouthed the words, ‘thank-you, thank-you’, which made me smile, for as I whispered the words, in my head, it sounded like I was saying, ‘cuckoo, cuckoo’.
Flight to Japan:
Ryosei sits with his father on the plane as they talk about how life in the UK and Japan is different. Ryosei tells his father about the book he's read with bad boys, kind fathers, attitudes to death, religion, cycling on the pavement, bullies, modesty, and the small number of foreigners in Japan. ‘But what the book had shown Ryosei was that boys in Japan and England are the same in some ways. They all want to have friends, they like to have fun, and sometimes they get into trouble. He wondered which of the boys he would like to invite to Japan, which one would he get on with best, and which one would find it hardest living in Japan, like not wanting to do the same as everyone else. And if they didn’t like rice and couldn’t use chopsticks, then they’d really have trouble.’
To receive the full set of stories see the contacts page of www.easyatlast.weebly.com