Daisy and the Trouble with Life (13 page)

I'm better! I must be better!

I wish Gabby would come and call for me now.

Trouble is, I'm still grounded.

Even though I'm back to normal, I've still got nothing to do. I've still got no one to play with, and nowhere to go.

Being grounded is even worse when there's nothing wrong with you.

I wish I could magic myself to a faraway place, where there's loads of things to do. A place like you see on the telly or in holiday magazines . . .

Like Cornwall!

Trouble is, I don't know any words that rhyme with Cornwall either. So I can't do the magic spell.

Me and Mum went to Cornwall for our holiday last year. We stayed in a place called Mevawishywashy, or something like that, and it was so far away, by the time we got there it was dark!

Mum says that's because we should have left earlier. She said when you drive somewhere as far away as Cornwall, you need to get up really early to avoid all the traffic.

Trouble is, I couldn't find my colouring book for the journey, or my other welly. And then when we got on to the big road, we had to go back for my crab line. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to catch any crabs.

The
trouble with crabs
is they nip.

Especially when you try and get them into your bucket.

One day, me and Mum were sitting on the harbour wall with my crab line when this really big crab grabbed my piece of fish. Mum said to count to ten before I lifted my line, otherwise he might fall off. So I did and he didn't, but when we tried to get him off the fish and into the bucket, his claws bent right back and tried to nip us. And forwards and sideways.

Mum held him over our bucket and tried to shake him off, but he still wouldn't let go. Then he did.

Not over the bucket – right by my leg! So I panicked, and then my welly fell off into the sea, which wasn't my fault, and then the crab fell into the sea too, and my mum kicked over the bucket, and then all our other crabs escaped too and fell back into sea with the big crab!

That's where my mum says they all live now. In my welly.

The
trouble with welly shops in Cornwall
is most of them only sell yellow ones.

Gabby's wellies are green with a frog face, but they didn't have any like those. In the end I got a red pair. They pinch my toes a bit but I didn't tell Mum or I would have had to have yellow again.

The
trouble with yellow wellies
is Paddington Bear wears them.

Rebecca Isaacs wore yellow wellies in the playground once and Jack Beechwhistle called her Paddington all day!

That's why my wellies will never be yellow again.

Which reminds me, if Mum ungrounds me tomorrow, I'm definitely going to need my red wellies.

Especially if we make it a really really big mud trap with lots of water and extra mud.

I won't be a moment. I just need to ask Mum where my wellies are . . .

Mum says my sausages will be ready in five minutes. And she says my wellies are in the shed. Apparently they are still drying out after my last school trip.

The
trouble with school trips
is they should tell you to take a change of clothes. Especially if there are going to be ducks there.

There were loads of ducks at Lime Tree Farm.

The
trouble with the ducks at Lime Tree Farm
is the ones with green heads are far too greedy.

Which means the other ducks hardly get a chance to eat any of the bread that you throw at them.

Gabby and I had saved every last bit of our packed lunch especially for the ducks. Apart from our chocolate biscuit and our tangerines. Gabby said the ones with green heads were daddy ducks. She said if you wanted to feed the mummy ducks and the baby ducks, you had to throw your bread really close to their beaks so the daddy ducks couldn't get to it first.

The
trouble with throwing bread at ducks
is it's really hard to get it in the right place.

Especially if your bread has got strawberry jam on with no pips.

Every time I threw a piece of my sandwiches to a mummy or a baby duck, it went in the wrong place and a daddy duck ate it.

One of the baby ducklings was really cute. He was yellow and fluffy instead of brown and fluffy like all the other ones, and I really wanted him to have a piece of my sandwich without crust on. But even when I pointed to where I was going to throw it, he couldn't get there in time.

If I threw to the left, a daddy duck got it. If I threw to the right, a daddy duck got it. If I did a long throw, a daddy duck got it, and if I just dropped it down the edge, a daddy duck got it.

In the end I got really cross. After about twenty throws, Gabby's sandwiches had completely run out and I only had one piece of my sandwich left.

It was a really nice piece too, with no crust on and oodles of strawberry jam inside.

And I REALLY wanted the yellow fluffy duckling to have it.

And then I fell in. I was kind of hoping it was Jack Beechwhistle‘s fault, but it wasn‘t.

I was kind of leaning over the pond trying to get the yellow baby duck to come to me when a load of daddy ducks all came over to me at the same time.

I tried to shoo them away but when I waved them away with my arm, I kind of lost my balance and fell into the pond.

It wasn't very deep, but it was really wet, and the mud at the bottom was really yucky. And my school uniform got soaked.

Gabby screamed, the ducks swam away really fast and Mr Cheetham jumped in to save me.