My story

One of my hobbies, that I really like doing, is writing stories! It’s like entering a compleatly different world, where you have the power to make anything you like happen there! Here’s one of my stories that I really enjoyed writing. It would be great it if you took a read of it, and even if you leave a comment on what you thought of it!

Enjoy reading!

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“Come on Dad!” I yelled from the second aisle of the supermarket, “Mum’s counting on us!”
“All right, all right,” he grumbled, putting back the video he was looking at, “I’m coming.”
 

Today was Saturday. For most people, Saturday meant “fun”. Going on holidays, watching movies and playing basket ball are what most kids do. Not me! I have to shop with Dad, because my mum was sick. And I warn you now, shopping is not a very nice job to do. It’s usually left for Mum to do, but because she was sick, I had to. I guess I should put it this way; it has to be done by some one, even if they love it, or they hate it.
 

I remembered whining to Mum at home. I was trying to get out of doing it. “Can’t it be Dad’s job?” I had said, “He’s an adult. I’m just a child.” Mum refused to let me off the hook. She knew that I hated it. I bet that’s why she made me come!
We had finally made an agreement. “You will both go,” Mum said, “Then it will be quicker.” I was pleased with this idea. All I had to do was sit in the trolley, while Dad got the food. It was as simple as that! But I was wrong, very wrong. I didn’t know that Dad was that bad at shopping. He turned it around. I’m now the one doing all the work, and he is having the time of his life, looking at all the stuff he likes.
 

I called Dad again. “Hurry up Dad!” I yelled. There was no answer. I turned the trolley, and headed back to the previous aisle. He wasn’t there. He had disappeared!
I pushed the trolley right down to the end of the aisle. “Watch it, boy!” snapped an old lady as I nearly collided with her.
“Sorry!” I yelled, as I whizzed around the stand of toilet paper, but my turn wasn’t sharp enough. I bumped the bottom roll, and they all came toppling down from the top.
 

I tried to get away before anyone else saw me. I pushed my trolley forward, but it wouldn’t budge. It was caught on something. I looked under the trolley and saw that some toilet paper had wrapped itself around the wheel. “Damn it,” I said to myself. I climbed under the trolley, and tried to unwrap it.
 

Suddenly, I felt a cold, dark shadow appear over my back. I slowly turned around and looked up. It was the manager, who didn’t look at all happy. “I see you’ve knocked down the pile of soft paper,” he said, grinning. I didn’t like the look of his smile. I could tell he had a cruel idea. “Please Mr,” I begged, “It wasn’t me, it was the trolley.”
“And what caused the trolley to run into a pile of toilet paper?” he said, as his thin smile widened.
 

I stayed silent, asking myself over and over again how I could get out of this. Suddenly, an idea popped into my little head. This idea was a classic, and was bound to work. “Hey!” I yelled, pointing at an open window, “What’s that?” He turned around to see what I was pointing at. Now was my chance. I got up and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me. “STOP THAT BOY!” he yelled, as he saw me running.
 

I ran to the end of aisle one, and then stopped. There was a freezer in front of me- a perfect hiding spot. I quickly opened the door. A puff of cold gas came out, and I climbed inside. The door shut automatically, and I climbed under the bottom shelf, which was empty. A packet of frozen corn bits came tumbling down from the upper shelf, narrowly missing my head. I wiped my forehead, glad that it didn’t hit me.
 

Then I saw the manager run past, looking for me. It was just like a game of Hide and Seek, but better. When I was sure that he had gone, I got up and tried to push the freezer door back open, but it wouldn’t move. “Oh, no!” I cried, realising what I had done. It was one of those doors which only opened from the outside. I had locked myself inside the freezer!
 

I moved along to the next door, and pushed it. I thought that it might be different, but it wasn’t. I tried all the doors, but it was no use. They were all one way doors, which meant that I was stuck in the freezer, forever. I sat down on the cold, hard floor and sighed. I thought that I was going die of frostbite. I was already feeling very cold. It was worse because I was only wearing a t-shirt. Suddenly, one on the doors opened at the other end. Was it the manager? Or was it someone else. Someone that could save me!
 

I quickly walked to the opened door, being careful not to knock any food. As I got closer, I noticed that it was the old lady, who I had nearly crashed into before. “Help me!” I yelled, “Help me, I’m in here!” The lady suddenly fell over backwards, landing in her trolley. She started to scream, and the door shut again. I could see her yelling and kicking her legs around in the air. Her trolley rolled backwards, and bumped into a shelf of popcorn bags. One of the bags burst open, and popcorn flew every where, most of it landing in her trolley.
 

Without notice, Dad came walking around the corner, carrying the video he had been looking at. He seemed to be looking for me. I banged on the glass freezer door, and tried to get his attention, but he didn’t see me. Then, I remembered that I had my mobile phone in my pocket. I quickly pulled it out, and rang Dad’s mobile, which he had in his pocket too. He answered it and said hello. “Dad, it’s me,” I said. “I need you to help me.”
“You need me to buy you a pea?” he asked, confused.
“No!” I yelled, “I need your help!”
Dad looked around. “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” he said, “There’s this lady who is making a lot of noise.”  
“I’M STUCK IN THE FREEZER!” I yelled, but he still couldn’t hear me. I switched off the phone, and started to cry.
 

The manager, who had been looking for me, suddenly came running around the corner of the aisle to see what all the yelling and screaming was about. He saw the old lady in her trolley, and helped her out. The lady was shaking, and pointing to the freezer door. “The frozen food can talk!” she said, shaking, “They told me to help them. Help them get out of the freezer.”
“Nonsense!” snapped the manager, “Food can’t talk. When was the last time you saw your doctor?” He walked away, leaving the lady in shock.
 

A door then opened at the other end of the freezer, and a hairy arm reached inside. I ran to the door, and found Dad, pulling out a packet of peas. “Dad!” I yelled as I climbed out the open door before it shut, “You saved me!”
“There you are Michael!” he said, hugging me, “I thought I lost you.”
“I was stuck in the freezer,” I said, “I tried to ring you, but you couldn’t hear me properly.”
“Yes, I remember that!” Dad said, “You said you wanted me to buy you a pea, so here I am. But they only come in big packets, is that OK?”
I laughed. “That’s fine, Dad,” I said, pleased that he had rescued me, “Anyway, do you want to buy that video you were looking at?”
“I was just about to ask you that!” Dad said.
 

I remembered that the trolley was stuck in the toilet paper, so I told Dad that I needed to get something. As he went to get the next item on the list, I headed down the aisle, to get the trolley. But on the way, I bumped into the Manager. “Ha!” he yelled, “I found you!” I gulped, knowing that I was in for something big. “I want you to stack the toilet rolls!” he said, laughing. I was very surprised.
“Glad to!” I said, walking over to where the rolls had fallen.
He quickly stopped laughing. His mouth was wide open, and he was surprised that I did it so willingly. I think that he was even a bit disappointed that I wanted to stack them. He was hoping that I wouldn’t want to do it, so he could laugh at me while I stacked them.
 

I picked up the first roll, and put it back onto the stand. It felt so warm, compared to the freezer. It was actually fun, stacking all of the rolls. “I could get a full time job doing this,” I said to myself. It took me a while, but I finally finished stacking them all. Then, I got the trolley, and met Dad at the end of the line. He was reading the back of the video case. “This movie is supposed to be really funny,” he said, not taking his eyes off it, “It’s about a boy who tried to run away from his Grandmother, but every thing he did went wrong. The old woman chased him everywhere, so he decided to hide in her…”
Dad began to laugh without finishing his sentence. He has such a loud voice, that his laugh kind of echoed through the shop. People started to stare at him in the line, but he didn’t care.
 

That story was very familiar to me. The manager had been chasing me, and I hid in the freezer, thinking that it was a good hiding spot. But it wasn’t. I’m lucky that Dad had saved me.
“Sounds like my story,” I said, not thinking, “Being chased by the…”
Dad looked at me.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I lied, “I just tried to put myself in that boy’s shoes.”
“Oh, good,” Dad said, looking back at his video, “For a second then, I thought that some one had been chasing you.”
I felt a bit embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell Dad that I had knocked down a pile of toilet roles. He would tell Mum, and she would get angry.  
“What did you have to get, anyway?” asked Dad.
“The trolley,” I replied, “I left it at the end of an aisle.”
 

We finally reached the counter, and paid for the groceries and video. “Have a nice day!” the shopkeeper said.
“Oh, we will!” Dad yelled from the door, “As long as I have this video with me!”
“Dad,” I said, nudging him, “Don’t show off!”
 

Dad handed me some bags of food to carry and we walked down the steps. All of a sudden, something came bouncing down from the top step and hit Dad’s foot. It was a toilet roll, and it started to unroll. “What’s this thing doing here?” he asked.
“Haven’t got a clue,” I answered, “Maybe it fell out of someone’s bag.”
“Are you sure you don’t know?” Dad asked mysteriously.
We kept on walking down the path. I couldn’t help but grin at my wild story. I’m sure that Dad didn’t know about my little secret.
 

Or did he?
 

Some of my achievements

Youth Leadership: In grade 6 my class went through a program called “Youth Leadership”. It was all about building your confidance in public speaking. The lady who ran the program was known as “The Dragon Lady”. She was strict, but was nice and a very good teacher. About once every two weeks you would have to do a speech that you wrote yourself. The first one had to be about yourself, then the other two could be on any topic you liked! I did one on spiders, and one on teachers. They were both very funny. When I did my speech on teachers, I was nervous. But then, I saw a boy laughing in my class. This built up my confidance, and I started putting a lot of expresion into my voice. I was chosen to read one of my speeches at the Youth Leadership Graduation night, so I choose my spider speech which I thought would appeal to the parents. The night came, and I read my speech. People laughed, which was exactly what I liked. I read my last line “And keep away from the spiders website!” and sat back down again. Then, I was up again to read my line of “Sister Stephanie and the Gang” poem. Some people in the class were chosen to read parts of this poem. The poem was very funny! Because it’s one of my favourite poems, I’d like to share it with you all. Here it goes… Introducing “Sister Stephanie and the Gang!”

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Sister Stephanie and the Gang!

The supermarket proved to be
A trial for Sister Stephanie.
 

“Oh rats!” she grumbled to herself,
“The birdseed’s on the highest shelf
Unless I gain some extra height
My Charlie won’t get fed tonight.”
 

The manager who lingered near
Said, “Having trouble, sister dear?
Our shelves are much too high, you say?
Well I see it a different way.
 

“The problem is, you’re much too small!
A tiny speck, a ping-pong ball!
A monkey would be bigger than you
And rather better-looking too.”
 

Sister Stephanie left the store
But came back with a mighty roar
The windows smashed, alarm bells rang,
The nuns had formed a bikie gang.
 

The gang was fierce, the gang was mad
The gang was old and leather-clad
With chains and crosses, clubs and spikes
The nuns revved up their superbikes.
 

Then up and down the lanes they sped
With Sister Stephanie up ahead
“Yippee!” she cried, as piles of tins
Were scattered just like bowling pins.
 

They crushed the nuts, they blew away
The continental food display,
The squashed the squash, the split the peas,
They toppled all the toiletries.
 

The manager who’d been so rude
Was knocked into the frozen food
And there he lay is cold repose
With two fish-fingers up his nose.
 

The bikies rumbled home to tea
Except for Sister Stephanie
Who searched the smoking battleground
Until a pack of seed she found.
She paid the manager and smiled,
“I’m sorry that the girls ran wild
But really, you should not poke fun
At poor defenceless nuns, my son.”
Then off she roared upon her Harley
Home to feed her vulture, Charlie.

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If you thought that was funny, you would absolutely LOVE watching it being acted out, with expression and movements to go with each line. That was one of the things we did in Youth Leadership.

Then it was time for the awards. I was given best speech award by the teachers and the Dragon Lady (who isn’t really a dragon lady after all). This was a real achievement for me. I have the best speech award standing up in my room right now. Every time I see it I remember what a great time I had in Youth Leadership!

By the way, you probably want to read my speeches.

Speeches coming soon.

Another achievement of mine was getting commended in a National Story Writing competition (Junior Section) in 2005. My story was called ‘Chill Out Shopping’ which I really enjoyed writing. It was a great experiance being handed the certificate. And I have my whole story right here on my blog! “Lemme read it!” You say. 

To read my Chill Out Shopping story, go to “My story (Chill Out Shopping)” on this blog. It’s as simple as that!

 

Poems

Welcome to my poems section of my blog. Here you will find some poems that I have written. I will be adding new ones when I write them.

My poems:

Yellow
I love the colour yellow, you see,
It means a lot of memories to me,
As yellow as the warm sunshine,
As yellow as a golden chime,
As yellow as my budgie’s chest,
As yellow as a birds straw nest,
As yellow as butter melted on toast,
As yellow as what I love most,
As yellow as my old bird’s beak,
As yellow as the fun I seek,
As yellow as the lemons on my tree,
As yellow as my friend’s personality,
As yellow as my family’s love,
As yellow as a golden dove,
I love the colour yellow, you see,
It means a lot of memories to me.

Popcorn

Making popcorn
Pop pop pop!
Exploding kernels
To the top,
Keep the lid on
Hot hot hot,
I love popcorn
Pop pop pop!

Friendship (Also on my ‘Friendship’ post) 

Friendship is a gift of love, 

As beautiful as a small white dove, 

You find it somewhere, here or there, 

A friend could be someone dark or fair, 

Friendship is full of love and trust, 

Caring for your friend is definitely a must. 

You go through good times, fun and delight… 

Do not leave because of a fight. 

A friend will brighten your day for you, 

Will clear you out of sadness and blue. 

A smile, a grin, a friendly wave, 

Will clear away your miserable daze. 

Friends are just like precious jewels, 

So don’t leave them behind and look like fools. 

Treasure your friends are you will see, 

That they make your life so happy and free! 

Fly Away home- Amy’s Journey

Class film- Fly Away Home 

When did her journey start: when she goes to Canada or when she finds the eggs?

These were two special events for Amy in the film Fly Away Home. However, the question is “When did she actually start her journey: When she went to Canada or when she found the eggs.” Well I don’t think that her story started at any of these events. I believe that her journey started when she met her father in hospital for the first time in years.

Of course, it would take some getting used to before Amy could comfortably socialise with her father. Remember, she had only just met her father after years of spending time with her mother, who had sadly died in a car crash. Her mother’s death, as well as everything being so different in Canada, had affected Amy’s emotions, causing her to rudely react to her father.

But when Amy found some geese eggs that had been abandoned by their mother, it revealed that she had a soft heart. She took the eggs and cared for them, until they hatched.

As the geese grew, Amy realsed that they needed to fly south to avoid the harsh, winter conditions that approached. They needed to get to a suitable climate where they could live and find food. This is where Amy began her quest to fly the geese home.

Amy and her father started to work together, both having a similar goal in common (to fly the geese home). They found a use for her father’s flying machine that he built. During this time, Amy learnt new things such as how to fly the flying machine. Together, Amy and her father worked hard, boosting the relationship between them and increasing trust for each other. They worked together until the day came when they were ready to fly the geese home.

This was a big challenge for Amy, but her father helped her along the way and supported her through it. Amy gained more persistance and trust for her father, and I think that their relationship would just keep getting better afterwards.

Why do we have to take our school holidays early just because of the Commonwealth Games?

The title says it all. Why do we have to take our school holidays early just because the Commonwealth Games is on? To sit around all day and watch sport? But what if you don’t want to watch sport? If they have school holidays for this event, why don’t they have them for events such as music and art? For example, when an art festival is on! There are no school holidays for this event. If we have early holidays to watch other people play sport on television, why aren’t the school holidays early for an art festival so people can go and look at the artwork?
“What’s so bad about the holidays being put forward for the Commonwealth Games?” You ask. Well, I have a list of reasons right here!
Bad things:

  • Because the term is so short, all the teachers give us a whole lot of tests to do before the end of the term. This means more homework and less time to enjoy your own stuff. Right now I’m finding that I’m getting a lot of homework and lots of tests.
  • Because the school holidays are so early, it means that we’ll have a really long term next term. School, school and more school! It will just keep on going and going without any holidays!
  • It feels that we don’t need another holiday just yet. We’ve just had 6 weeks off school!

I think that this isn’t right. What do you think?

 

The 8Alive Program

Honestly, 8Alive wasn’t as fun as I expected. One of the first activities I did with my class was about healthy eating. The task was to create a brochure to proove that you knew how to stay healthy. We found the information on the internet. This activity used up two lessons, and the teachers made an excuse that we had to make it because we were going to be using it in a Health and P.E class. While making the brochure, I kept looking at my watch. Time seemed like it was going so slow. “Hurry up, I want the bell to go!” I thought. However, doing this activity taught me a lot about what foods are healthy and the types of food to eat most.

Another thing we did in 8Alive was work on our journals. We decorated the covers, and then wrote about the things we did inside. This was quite fun. It took up a lot of the week though. Then we got a square piece of cloth and we got the chance to show off out creative art skills by decorating it. When everyone had finished this, each cloth was going to get sewen together to make a big shield to represent our class.

One of the other activities was called ‘power girl’. Power girl was an imaginary  girl with lots of good personality qualities. The lesson that I did was all about girls. The teacher spread out a whole heap of girl stuff  such as fake phones and make up on the floor. Each member of the class picked an object and then explained what it has to do with girls. Then we acted out these barbie dolls in a situation where one of them was being excluded. I didn’t really enjoy the ‘Power Girl’ lesson much.

Now for the best activity of the week. Victorian Market! This was an excursian. We got into groups of four, and were told an item to find and buy in the market. Also, we had to fill out a sheet with questions on it. My group had to buy some felt-tip pens. Strangely, they were very hard to find. We spent the day looking around the huge market for stuff that we liked. I bought a cute, stuffed penguin toy for my bother, as he loves penguins and a silver key ring with a Z on it for me! Then, we went over to the bag section, as I needed a new bag to go shopping with. I spotted a silver bag that I wanted to buy which cost $20.00. It had lots of different compartments, and the others said that it looked good on me. I spent ages looking at the other bags and then came back and decided to buy the silver one. I took out my wallet to buy it, and then found out that I was $5.00 short! This really disappointed me, as it was a great bag. It was light and soft and a really nice colour. I asked the owner if I could have it for $15.00, but he said no. I decided that I’d have to come down to the market on the holidays and buy it. Well, it was lunch time and I bought some hot chips and juice. The others ate Mc Donalds, but I didn’t want that kind of food. One of the members got separated from the rest of the group in the food court, however, we found them soon afterwards. We went through the cheese and meat section looking for the answers to the questions on our sheet. It stunk, so we tried not to stay long in it. We got the answers and managed to find some felt-tip pens just before we had to leave. This had been a great day, and I would like to go back to the Victorian Market as they had so many great stuff I wanted to buy.

The 8Alive program runs all year at different times, so hopefully some of the in-school activities will get better. Anyway, the good thing about 8Alive in school is that we don’t get any homework out of it!!!

Two Weeks with the Queen

Recently, I read this great book called Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman. I found the book quite sad, but it also is based on things that happen in real life. When Colin found out that his brother Luke has cancer and was going to die, he decided that he had to do something to cure it. His parents sent him off to England to stay with his aunt, and Colin decided that he was going to visit the queen and make her find the best doctor in the world so that Luke could be cured. Colins’s crazy ideas to save Luke were quite amusing. Then one day, Colin met a man crying in the street outside a cancer hospital in London called Ted. Colin got to know this bloke quite well, and found out that he had a good friend with Cancer who was going to die too. Colin does all he can to try and help his friend get through his troubles. Although Ted was very upset and knew his friend was going to die, he kept on visiting his friend everyday. Towards the end of this story, Colin realised that he needed to be with Luke. He used his determined personality to get back to Luke in Australia, and this is how the story ended.

I really like how Morris Gleitzman used his imagination on the front cover of the book. Each letter of Two Weeks With The Queen was made into an event that happened in the book. For example: The “T” was made with the shoes that Colin got for Christman in the beginning of the story.

There was one part of the story where Ted was giving out chocolate frogs in the Cancer hospital. He did this to clear away people’s Misery Guts. One of Morris Gleitzman’s other books is called Misery Guts. I think this was quite creative of him to do this.

Fly Away Home

This is a lovely film about a girl called Amy who used her fathers flying machine to fly some geese home. The story is based on a real-life man who had the idea of building an ultra-light plane to fly orphaned geese south during migration time. In the film, Amy (Anna Paquin), who is 14 years old, found some geese eggs. She looked after them, and soon they hatched into about 12, very adorable geese. At first, Amy tried to hide them from her father. However, he soon found out about them. Amy, her father, Susan and her uncle trained the birds to fly, and afterwards, they set off on a journey to fly the geese home. I won’t reveal everything that happens in this beautiful film. You will have to watch it yourself!