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For Hannah and Tom – my own little treasures Contents
Have you been invited to all these sleepovers?
Hello! Lyndz here. How are you? I don’t suppose you’ve got a bit of time to hear about how the Sleepover Club went treasure hunting, have you? Oh, good! Come into the garden and we can sit on the swings while I tell you all about it. The rest of the Sleepover lot thought I should be the one to tell you the story of our treasure-hunting adventures seeing as it all started off right here, in the garden. See the big ash tree over there? Well, that’s where Buster… Oh. I haven’t even introduced you to Buster! He’s our dog. Do you like dogs? Even people who aren’t really into animals, i.e. Fliss, end up liking Buster because he’s so funny and friendly and GORGEOUS! He’s our Jack Russell terrier and has always got his little nose into something or other. It was actually Buster’s cute little button nose that started us off on our search for treasure this time. Let me tell you how it all happened. It was Saturday morning and the five of us – that’s me, Rosie, Frankie, Kenny and Fliss – were sitting around the breakfast table at my house. We’d just had an awesome Sleepover the night before and were giggling about Fliss’s sleep talking which had woken all of us up through the night. “You were saying something about having your hair cut, I think,” Rosie said, spreading marmalade on her toast. “You definitely said something about your fringe anyway.” “Yeah, and I heard you say, ‘Shave it all off please – give me the baldy look!’” Kenny joked. (If you didn’t know, Kenny is the biggest wind-up merchant in the world. Don’t believe ANYTHING she tells you!) Fliss squealed and clapped her hands onto her long, blonde hair at once. Even though she’s known Kenny from the first day we were at primary school together, she still falls for Kenny’s wind-ups every time. “There’s no way in the world I’d have said that, Kenny,” she said seriously. “Unless I was having a nightmare!” The rest of us chuckled. “I dunno – I think a skinhead might suit you,” Frankie said thoughtfully. “What do you reckon, girls?” “Noooooo!” Fliss squeaked in horror. “Don’t even SAY that word to me!” “They’re only kidding you,” I told Fliss, patting her arm. “I never heard you say anything about getting your head shaved anyway. When I heard you, you were muttering about mashed potato!” “Ooh, was I?” Fliss said. “That’s because my mum’s on a diet again and we’re not allowed to have any potatoes in the house. Or biscuits. Or chocolates. Or cakes. Or cheese. Or… ” “And out of all those things, mashed potato is what you miss the most?” Frankie asked, raising an eyebrow. “You freak!” “Oooh, but come on, though… soft, fluffy mash… ” Fliss said dreamily, with a faraway look in her eyes. “I could eat it for breakfast!” My mum was buttering some more toast for us and laughed at those words. “Fliss, I don’t have time to do you some mash for breakfast but if you stick around for lunch, I’ll make sure there’s some on the table,” she said. “How does that sound?” Fliss went a bit pink. She always goes a bit funny and shy around other people’s mums and dads. “Thank you, Mrs Collins,” she said politely. “That’s really REALLY kind of you!” Mum laughed again, Fliss was sounding so thrilled. “Glad to help out,” she said. “Same goes for the rest of you if you want to stay for veggie sausages and mash?” Even though we were all stuffed with toast and marmalade and boiled eggs and porridge at this point, every single one of us said, “Yes, PLEASE!” as if we hadn’t been fed for six weeks. The Sleepover Club have biiiiig appetites! After breakfast, we went outside to mess about in the garden with Buster. It was a really sunny day and before long, we were running off our big breakfasts with a game of leapfrog. Our garden is quite long and wide so we were able to keep leapfrogging around in a big circle. Buster got all excited and kept running round our legs until I got worried he was going to get jumped on, and moved him out of the way. Buster was a bit put out by that, I think – he hates being left out of anything, especially a game that involves lots of running around – but obediently trotted off to do one of his favourite things, which is sniffing around the flowerbeds. If you’ve got a dog yourself, you’ll know all about the sniffing thing. They just can’t resist having a good old sniff of anything they come across – in the street, in the park, even in your own garden when they’ve sniffed it a million times already! Still, it just goes to show that dogs must know something we don’t know because it was Buster’s sniffing that started us off on the treasure hunt. He must have sniffed around our garden a gazillion times by now and never found much that was interesting – the odd bone, a dead mouse one of the cats had caught, some compost – you know, nothing more exciting than that… but today, all that sniffing paid off. WOOF! WOOF! If you’ve got a dog, you’ll also know that different woofs mean different things. Big, deep woofs are to try and sound scary when the postman is at the door.
