Grendle Green, Brian Doswell [dar e dil novel online reading txt] 📗

Grendle Green Hops All Around The Pond
by
Brian Doswell


A bedtime story for five nights of the week, starting on


Monday

On Monday, Grendle start his big adventure

It was early on Monday morning when Grendle decided to have an adventure. It was spring time and the grass around the big black rock was lush and green, full of the sort of flies and bugs and creepy crawly things that frogs love to eat.

Grendle had spent a very lazy weekend sitting on a small rock at the edge of the pond watching the flies buzzing to and fro over the water. Every time a fly came too close, Grendle would shoot out his long green tongue and snatch the fly. He had eaten so much that he felt he must have some exercise or he would be so fat that he would pop.

He tried hopping up and down. One, two, three hops to the left and then one, two, three hops to the right. Grendle thought that this was almost a good idea but the problem was that after hopping to the left, and then hopping to the right, he ended up exactly where he started.

Grendle sighed, “All that effort and I’m back where I started from.”

Grendle thought about it for a while, and then he decided to keep hopping to the left for one whole minute and see where he ended up. Grendle did twenty-seven hops in one minute, and then he stopped. Sadly, frogs do not always hop in straight lines and every time Grendle hopped to the left, he turned a little bit to the left, so that after twenty-seven hops he had hopped around in a circle.

Grendle sighed again, “All that effort and I’m back where I started from.”

This time Grendle thought about it for much longer, long enough for him to be hungry again. By chance, at the same moment that Grendle realised that he was hungry; he saw a very tasty looking beetle in the grass a few inches away from where he sat.

Grendle thought, “Yes . . . that one will do for my breakfast.”, and he hopped in the direction of the beetle with his tongue ready to spring out and gobble his meal. At that moment, the beetle decided to move on and, even as Grendle hopped towards him, the beetle ran away to the next patch of grass. Grendle hopped again, but the beetle ran away again.

Grendle tried extra hard with his next jump and landed just in range for his sticky tongue to reach the beetle. In an instant, he caught the beetle and was munching away at his breakfast.

While he sat munching, Grendle thought very hard about trying to hop in a straight line. If he continued to hop in a straight line forever, he might never come back home. He thought about his mother and father and his one hundred brothers and sisters all living under the big black rock and he decided that it was time for him to have an adventure. He would hop in a straight line all day and see where he ended up. And so he did.

Grendle said “Goodbye”, to as many of his brothers and sisters as he could see, and then he was off. Grendle decided to stay close to the edge of the pond so that he would always be able to go for a swim when he got tired of hopping. Grendle loved to swim, especially in the summer when it was very hot under the big black rock.

Grendle thought that hopping and swimming were the best exercise in the world. He could eat proper food, and sit in the sun all day, and sleep all night, as long as he did his proper exercises in the day time.

Grendle tried very hard to hop in a straight line but it was very difficult for him. Every few minutes he had to turn a little bit and hop back to the edge of the pond. The more he hopped the better he got at hopping in a straight line. By mid-day he could hop for several minutes in a straight line before he had to turn back towards the pond.

There was a path beside the pond for people to use. Grendle could often see boys and girls on bicycles or scooters on the path. Compared with his brothers and sisters these boys and girls were very, very big, but Grendle was not scared of them because he thought of them as friends.

A boy came past on a shiny new bicycle. The boy was pedalling very hard and Grendle was worried that the boy might not see him in the grass and that the boy might ride over him. Grendle looked around for something to hide under until the boy had moved on; the only thing big enough was a torn piece of newspaper.

When he was comfortable under the paper, Grendle peeped out to see where the boy was, just in time to see the shiny black tyres go by on the path. Grendle ducked back under the paper. He listened carefully for the noise of the tyres on the gravel path and when he thought that it was quiet, he looked out again. He could see the boy some way away but he was turning round to come back again.

Grendle said, “Oh dear, I could be stuck here all day and I have to get on with my adventure.”

The boy rode his bicycle up and down the path until Grendle heard the boy’s mother call out to him to go home.

“At last”, he thought, “now I can come out from my paper hideaway.” Just as he was about to start hopping, a big hand came down on the paper and lifted it up into the air with Grendle wrapped inside it.

Grendle could just see out of a fold in the paper and realised that he was high above the ground. At first he was a little bit scared but then he thought, “Perhaps this is what a real adventure is all about.”

He floated through the air in his ‘pretend’, paper aeroplane for what seemed a very long time. Then, with a sudden rush he came down on top of a lot more pieces of paper.

“I’ve landed.” he said, “I wonder where I am?”

Grendle waited for a moment until he was sure that his paper aeroplane was not going to take off again and then he used his nose to push the paper out of the way, so that he could see where he was. He seemed to be in the bottom of a tall wire basket in the middle of a pile of paper and plastic bags. In fact he was in a waste paper basket beside the path. Grendle had never seen a basket as big as this one and he was not at all sure how he would get out of it, but he knew that if he was going to have a proper adventure, he would have to find a way out.

He waited until he was sure that there was no one who could see him and then he hopped around inside the basket to explore his new home. The basket was made out of wire in the shape of a net with lots of holes. Unfortunately, none of the holes was quite big enough for Grendle to escape. He could see through the holes and he knew that if he could find one big enough to get through, he would be back on the grass beside the pond. He hopped around again and again but there was still no hole big enough for him to escape.

Grendle was beginning to feel hungry again. Frogs get hungry quite often, and it was a long time since he had eaten a nice juicy fly. He decided to stay in the basket and look for a nice tasty snack before trying again to find a way out. He noticed a tin can with some writing on it. He could not read the word ‘cola’ but he knew that it smelled like the sort of place the he would find a big juicy fly. He hopped over to where the tin can was and waited. He did not have to wait very long before a big juicy fly came and sat on the can. It was probably the biggest fly Grendle had ever seen. The fly made a loud buzzing sound all the time and Grendle was able to creep up on the fly before the fly could hear him.

Out popped Grendle’s tongue, and into his mouth went the fly.

Perhaps this would be a good place to stay, he thought, but then he did still want to escape from his wire basket cage. He hopped around the edge of the basket again and he was just about to give up when he saw the boy on his bicycle heading towards the basket at full speed.

“Oh dear,” said Grendle, “I don’t think he is looking where he is going.”

No sooner had the words come out of his mouth, than the front wheel of the bicycle hit the basket.

There was the loudest “BANG” ever, and the basket fell over with the bicycle and the boy on top of it. All of the pieces of paper and tin cans spilled out onto the grass and Grendle was thrown at least two feet away into the long green grass. He could hear the boy laughing so he knew that the boy was not hurt in the crash. Now, this was his chance. He was free. He hopped away as quickly as he could. He did not mind if he was going in a straight line or round in a circle, but he did not want to end up back in the wire basket.

After a whole minute of jumping, he stopped and sat up as tall as he could be, to see where he was. He could see the pond on his right and the path on his left, so he knew that he was still going the right way for his adventure. He hopped some more, trying to stay beside the pond as he went. It had been a very warm day and he had hopped for a very long time. Now it was getting dark and he felt very tired. He looked around for a stone that he could hide under while he slept and he spotted one just beside the water.

“Good night world”, said Grendle, “I wonder what sort of adventure I will have tomorrow?”


Tuesday

On Tuesday, Grendle learns how to ride a skateboard.

Grendle woke up on Tuesday morning in a strange place. There was no sign of his one hundred brothers and sisters, and no sign of the