Iris (7) has got a lot of interesting objects out on the floor, including many things from the garden. I am trying to hoover around them.
Iris: Mama, can you stop hoovering? I need to tell a story.
Wren: Stop! Iris is telling a story. It is noisy!
Me: Okay, for a moment and then maybe we need to move your game.
Iris: Story.
Me: Story.
Iris: Maybe the hoovering can be part of it.
Me: Okay, I’m watching.
Iris: Quite a long time ago, in a far away land, there is a green, green place with some very messy things. Not messy when your Mum says your room is messy, but good messy things. Interesting things. Pinecones, stones, shells. Things for animals, lots of animals. That kind of good messy. In this green land the creatures crawled and climbed and crinkled. It was beautiful with animals and it was as silent as a tiny little speck. And a long time passed. Then people came and decided to chuck away the land and bring rubbish. All the animals ran. Everyone wanted a big city and they built roads by the river and cars came driving through. Everything was noisy.
Okay, now you can hoover for a second.
(I begin to hoover.)
Okay, now you must stop.
There was one girl, one girl. One girl in the whole wide world who wanted to save this land. Only one girl thought not about herself. She encouraged everyone to do this. She climbed up and up to the top of a hill and she looked up and she looked down and she looked in the middle. Then she heard a chant.
(Iris strikes the singing bowl)
Things started to grow in this city! And the people started to help. It was coming from on high, from below and from the middle. But then the Americans came and they said, “Ug, this is such a calm place! It is too, ug, dirty! You must change it back to how it was.” And the Americans took all this land for their own and cut everything down. It was a very big racket.
Okay, you can hoover for a second.
(I begin to hoover.)
Okay, now you must stop.
The little girl was sad and hid under a little green hill in the soft grass. Then she heard it. The chant had come back again!
(Iris strikes the singing bowl)
The trees started to grow, woodlands came, twisting branches. And the chant got faster and faster and it helped put the pinecones where they belonged and the pieces of log and bark and animals came back again to this green land. Everyone helped and they were singing as they worked. Even the Americans helped! The little girl looked up at the sky and down at the earth and into the middle and everyone did the same. And when they were finished and everything was in their places they were very happy.
Wren: Why were they happy?
Iris: Because they are doing something good. They know it is good.
Wren: Oh.
Iris: Everything was still, even the animals, as they heard the last chant.
(Iris strikes the singing bowl)
They looked up to the sun, down to the earth and into the middle. They cheered, they were so happy with what they had done. Then suddenly they saw something they would never forget. Butterflies! And they were singing butterflies! (No one has ever seen it before.) Father sky, mother earth, here in the middle make all the animals!
And that was the end of my little tale that tells about things that you might need to think about more and living in this tricky world.
Now you can hoover.
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