Chapter Three – Daddy and the Dragon


Boo woke up bright and early on a sunny Sunday morning.

She was at Daddies house this weekend. Last night she met Daddies new girlfriend at Billy Burgers. Inexplicably Daddy had made his hew girlfriend pay for her own meal, which she thought was really odd, but maybe she was old fashioned and perhaps it was normal to pay for your own dinner on a date, even it if was to Billy Burgers After they all had dinner and she had suffered all the usual ‘little girl’ questions from, she had to then then watch as her daddy slobbered all over her for ten excruciating minutes to say ‘goodbye’.

As it was still very early, Boo crept down to the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice. Sitting on a breakfast stool she gazed out of the window and was suddenly aware of her dragon gazing back in at her.

Boo hopped off the chair and opened the kitchen door, letting the dragon in. Once over the threshold, Boo hugged him. Well as much as it is possible to a ten foot tall, dragon when you are a nine year old girl.

‘What are you doing here’, she asked, ‘You know that this is a Daddy weekend’.

The dragon looked around the kitchen, he looked hungry as usual.‘I’m hungry and I thought that you might have some dragon snacks with you’. The dragon was now trying to open cupboards in the search for snacks.

‘Daddy says that I am allowed to use the toaster now, would you like some toast and Marmite?’, she replied finding a loaf of bread, some butter and a large jar of Marmite. ‘Do dragons even eat Marmite ?’ she asked puzzled.

‘Obviously they eat Marmite, but never, ever Vegemite’

Boo giggled and turned almost a full loaf of bread into Marmite on toast. Each time she cooked the toast she added more and more Marmite.Before long it became a contest to see who could eat the most marmite. Unfortunately, Boo lost as it seems that the dragon could stand almost half a jar on a single slice of toast !

Between them they finished not just the open jar, but the spare jar and the ’emergency use only’ jar that was at the back of the cupboard. The dragon then declared himself to be thirsty, so Boo filled the washing-up bowl with water, added an entire tray of ice cubes and watched in amazement as the dragon drank the water, crunched the ice-cubes then blew steam rings out of his ears.

Sometimes dragons like to do this as it amuses their humans.

‘So, what are you up to today, anything fun?’ asked the dragon. Boo pondered the question for a moment, ‘Well……. I want to go for ice-cream, but Daddy says that he needs to mow the lawn and he wants to clean his car too. But after that, we will be able to go.

‘It was now the dragon’s turn to ponder. ‘Perhaps I can help out with the lawn and the car and you can get ice-cream for lunch ?’ a short pause followed, then  ‘Anyway, isn’t it time for your daddy to get up already ?’

Boo shook her head, ‘No, Daddy likes to stay in bed on a Sunday morning until at least ten o’clock, often a lot later if he has one of his girlfriends over. Besides I need to finish off my homework, the teacher told us all about endangered animals, so I have been writing about your friend that you took me to see.’

Boo, still dressed in her pyjamas and her dressing gown showed the dragon her essay and the picture of the leopards that she had drawn. The dragon smiled his scary smile and for a moment she was tempted to reach into her bag for a granola bar.

Boo sat at the dining table and spent the next hour putting the finishing touches to the essay while the dragon snoozed at her feet, occasional smoky rings from his nostrils would make her giggle but eventually she finished writing and checking, then counted the words ‘two thousand, one hundred and nineteen’, added the picture to the bundle of papers and put them all in her satchel.

She looked at the clock in the kitchen, it was almost ten, time to go and wake daddy. She poured him a large glass of orange juice, told the dragon to hide, which he once more did behind a set of ridiculously short curtains that barely reached his belly button.

Boo sighed and told him to hide in the garden shed.

Boo carefully placed the orange juice on the night stand, then, taking a short run, pounced onto daddies sleeping form landing right in the middle of his belly.

The resultant swearing is unpublishable in this story.

Once he had realized what was happening and once Boo had flung open the curtains, he had mellowed. ‘Daddy, can we go for an ice cream please’.

Boo’s daddy was grouchy still ‘We will see, once I’ve cut the lawn and cleaned the car, now run and get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs in twenty minutes.’ He picked up his phone and his orange juice, checking for missed calls or messages.

Boo ran to the bathroom, splashed some water near her face, made sure that the soap was wet and that the towel looked used, re-plaited her hair in the mirror, brushed her teeth and ran to her bedroom to change into her favorite skirt, which is as regular readers will know, a blue pleated one, obviously paired with her usual wooly tights.

Minutes later she was back downstairs, looking out of the kitchen window, she could see her dragon in the shed, looking rather cramped, so she decided to rescue him and see if he could make a start on the tasks. Boo explained all about lawn mowers and stripes on lawns. The dragon thought that pushing a lawn mower around all morning was ridiculous. Forgetting that he was still in the shed for a moment he took flight to get a few sheep that would do the job ‘much quicker, much quieter and were much tastier’.

The roof of the shed was hurled at least a hundred meters into the air as the dragon took to the sky, three of the four sides simply fell over and the door was blasted off it hinges so hard that it would be found a coupled of weeks later in a canal.

In Holland.

Boo, who had been in the shed at the time was completely unharmed, she just walked away from the wreckage and the mangled tools and avoiding the shattered remnants of the roof, which had by now landed right in the center of the lawn, she went back inside.

The dragon returned within a few minutes, he had four sheep with him and a satisfied grin, which along with some evidence of wool stuck in his beard seemed to indicate that he might just have started the journey back with more than just four sheep. The sheep seemed more than a little worried and they started to eat the grass like woolly lawn mowers, they even marched up and down, but the stripes that they produced were a little wobbly.

When Boo’s daddy finally came down he first saw the wreckage of the shed before he spotted the sheep. Despite his best efforts he could not stop the sheep, who seemed to be bent on eating the grass in an almost scientific way. He went back inside and called the Police, the Fire Brigade and then finally the RSPCA. Sadly nobody believed him, nor would anyone send someone out to see. By the time he had finished calling people the sheep had finished their tasks and they had congregated near the wreckage of the shed.

Boo pointed out that he no longer needed to mow the lawn, ‘Oh and I’m not sure that the mower would work, even if we knew were it was, or we could get past those scary sheep, ‘so lets go for ice-cream now please, Boo is a hungry Boo’.

‘Well, I still need to clean the car, we can go later, nobody has ice-cream in the morning’.

Still puzzling over the sheep, he reversed his car out of the garage, connected the hose and started to rinse the car, when a funny thing happened, the hose simply fell apart, eight clean cuts in the hose, cleaner than a razor blade, cleaner than a laser appeared.

‘What the heck, this is a brand new hose, it should not fall apart like that’ he said examining the pieces.

Boo giggled, she saw her dragon swoop in at lightning speed and drag his claws over the hose, cutting it like it was nothing, which to a dragon of such strength of course it wasn’t anything at all. Boo’s daddy disappeared in to the garage to find a bucket, emerging a few minutes later with a bucket of soapy water, which he placed next to his car. The bucket was too close for a repeat of the swoop and slash, so the dragon, partly concealed by hiding behind a low hedge, simply spat a fire-ball straight into the bucket as soon he had gone back into the garage to get a sponge.

Because dragons do not know their own strength, the outcome was just as predictable as it was spectacular. The bucket exploded, the fireball being way too large to be contained in a 99p Asda bucket, flattened and dispersed under the car, melting all four tyres with one large ‘POP’.

The final vestiges of the fireball melted a pair of wellingtons that were by the garage door and lightly singed a large begonia.

Boo’s daddy ran out of the garage scared that someone had blown up his car. He was almost relieved to find it was only the tyres that had blown up. The melted plastic remains of the bucket spread over the driveway and the side of the car looked rather odd too.‘

Boo, be careful, I think that the water comes out of the tap a little too hot’.

He made another set of calls to the Police and the Fire brigade, this time he did not feel it necessary to involved the RSPCA this time however.

After a few minutes the fire brigade arrived, disappointed that there was no inferno to put out as they were, they did show some interest in the remains of the bucket and the car that was now stuck to the driveway with its melted tires. But, as they say, ‘Nothing short of a meteorite could have caused it’ The lack of an impact crater did little to deter this line of thought.

Boo and her daddy thanked the firemen and went back inside.

‘Well, I guess that as I cannot mow the lawn’, he glanced outside to see just three highly nervous sheep still standing guard over the wreckage of the shed, ‘and I cannot clean, or even move my car’

‘Yes’, said Boo, trying to remember where her coat was and starting to plan the ice-cream extravaganza in her head.

‘I suppose I could catch up with football for an hour or two’

‘Sigh’ Boo pouted, Boo stomped, Boo threw herself in the chair.

‘But daddy, you promised ‘Ice Cream’.

‘Later Boo, daddy is watching TV’

There was a clunk, then a sizzling noise, then the TV picture turned to snow.

‘What the…..’.

Boo’s daddy ran outside. He already knew what had happened, the satellite dish had fallen off the wall a few years ago in the high winds.

He raced around the side of the house and looked up and the hole in the wall where the the dish used to be. The remains of the dish were in the back garden near the sheep.

The two remaining sheep both looked terrified.

‘OK Boo, let’s get some ice-cream’, shaking his head.

‘Yay, I’m going to get a quad scoop Knickerbocker with sparklers and extra, extra extra sauce. Oh and sprinkles, do not forget the sprinkles, they are important.

’In the distance she spotted the dragon, flying lazy loops in the sky, giggling as she grabbed her daddy’s hand and led him to the ice cream parlour.