Boo woke up early, today was the last school day before a long, valentine weekend. She had packed the cards that she needed for school into her bag and was looking forwards to seeing Mommy later.
Dragon was missing once more, this was not really abnormal, because he did not really like spending too much time at Daddies house. He usually explained that it had something to do with the lack of cheese and snacks, Boo however thought that it may have something to do with the amount of chaos that seems to happen every time he is there.
She looked out of her bedroom window, the new ‘shed’ was almost as tall as her window. It was, as she thought last night, pretty much the same size and shape as the garden. The shed also looked like it was leaning to one side slightly.
Boo ran downstairs and into the kitchen. The door was wedged in the door frame and Daddy had put a long bungee around the fridge to keep the door on. He was reading the newspaper.
‘Local Sheep all missing, farmer looking for pyschopatic Bo Peep’ screamed the headline of the local paper. The headline was accompanied by a photo of an empty field and a bored looking sheepdog.
Boo noticed a smaller headline, ‘Cheese production stepped up to meet demand, milk prices on the rise’.
She rolled her eyes, that Dragon was trouble.
Daddy had made her some toast. Sadly it seemed that he had switched to brown, nutty bread with big seeds and crunchy bits, even sadder, no amount of Nutella seemed to make it taste good.
Daddy wandered outside to take a look at the shed, so she followed him. Two large doors slid open to reveal a cavernous interior. The garden seemed to be mostly intact under the shed from what they could see. But it was very dark in there. Foolishly Boo flicked what looked like a light-switch on the wall, then remembered that there was no chance of any power. There was none.
The ride-on mower that they had noticed last night was still in the middle of the lawn, but now they noticed that behind it was a collection of attachments for digging, pruning, harvesting and several other things that she could not figure out. Daddy just stared at the collection. “There must be thousands of pounds worth of gardening hardware here, where did it all come from ?”.
Boo suggested that perhaps the insurance company had arranged it all and that they had felt sorry for him, what with the exploding sheds and all of the misfortunes he had been through recently.
A few minutes later they were walking to school, Boo had her cards in her bag to give out, her lunch money and was looking forwards to the disco later tonight. There was a complicated plan that involved Mommy collecting her, showers, changes and snack eating after school, but it she was sure it would all work out.
Once in the playground she hugged Daddy goodbye and ran to join her friends and wait for the bell.
Almost immediately she spotted Emma. Standing next to her, looking mortified was James. James was holding a rose. It seems that Emma had picked it for him on the way to school and he was obviously trying to figure out how to deal with the embarrassment of walking around school all day with a flower.
Boo smiled.
At that moment, a very shy boy came up to her and handed her a card. At the same instant that she accepted it, he ran off at great speed into the crowd. Boo was puzzled, she did not recognise the boy, he looked very young too. ‘Hmm, interesting’, she thought. She looked at the envelope, her name was on the front and ‘SLWAK’ was written in red ink on the back. She did not recognise the writing, but getting the letters the wrong way around could mean only one thing, ‘Harry’, she said out-loud.
‘Erm, yes, h-h-h-h-h-hello B-b-b-b-b-b-b-oo’ he stammered. Boo jumped, she had not seen him walk up to her. Harry was a couple of inches taller than Boo, which light, sandy coloured hair that was always in his eyes. He smiled. Boo Smiled back. ‘Thank you Harry’.
At that moment, the bell rang.
‘Are you going to the disco tonight ? ‘ he asked
‘Of course, you ?’
‘Yes, I’ll see you there’
Harry ran off to join the line for his class.
Boo smiled, then realised that she still had to figure out how to deliver his card and wether or not she should deliver the one to Steven…….
A couple of hours later, she was sitting in her classroom, the teacher was explaining how to how to add fractions up…..
‘If you have two fractions that you need to add up, simply convert them into the same denominator, add the top numbers, then simplify it…..’
Boo was rather bored, she knew how to do this, Mommy had told her this last year when they were baking and they needed to add up the ingredients to see how much it weighed 1/2 pound of flours, 1/4 pound of butter, 3/8’s of something else. This was too easy. She took to staring out of the window.
It was then that she noticed Dragon. He was perched rather precariously on the top of the bike shed roof. He seemed to be using a bicycle pump to clean out his ears. He would dip the pump into a puddle, then blast his ears with it.
‘Boo, are you listening to me, or are you staring into space again ?’
‘Yes, of course I am listening’, Boo lied.
‘Well, I think you should tell the class how to add up two fractions then, oh, 7/16 and 19/64 then please.’
‘Oh that is easy, all you need to do it express 7/16 in terms of 64th, which is as simple as 64 divided by 16, which is 4, then multiple the seven by 4 and that gives you 28 over 64 and 28 plus 19 is 47, so that gives you 47/64 and that cannot be re-factored, so the answer is 47/64.’
Her teacher, who was obviously trying to work it out in his head, looked confused for a moment, he had come up with 37/64 and quickly checked his math, ‘Well, yes, class, there you have it, exactly how you do it, now please open you book at page sixty-three and see if you can do the sums on that page.
Boo smiled and looked out of the window, Dragon had disappeared from the bike shed, she wondered where he had gone while turning to page sixty-three.
The rest of the day was a blur, suddenly it was lunch time, then it was PE, then it was time for her spellings, once more she got ten out of ten and then it was time to leave. he did not see Dragon all afternoon, which was pretty normal.
Once Boo got home, it was time for a quick shower and a change into her party dress. She had just finished brushing her hair when Dragon flew in through the window. he was looking really pleased with himself, which was often not that good a sign.
She hurriedly passed him a couple of bags of Smokey Bacon crisps, which were inhaled and then a chewy flapjack, which kept him busy for a couple of moments.
‘Did you deliver your valentine cards yet ?’
Boo realised that she had left them in her school bag along with the card that was from Harry. She quickly fished them out, the one to Harry was already written, as was the one for Mommy and the one for Dragon, the one that she was thinking about giving to Steven was unwritten.
‘Erm, no, I don’t suppose you could…..’
As quick as a flash Dragon grabbed the three written cards and positively hurtled out of the window again.
Within moments he was back. ‘Job done, and thank you’. Dragon grabbed Boo and gave her a slobbery kiss on her nose. ‘Thats the first valentine card I have had since Juliet sent me that one, back in, oh, I cannot remember the year, it was a while ago though ?”
‘Hang on, Dragon, Juliet was a fictional character in the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, by William Shakespeare. Not a real person.’
‘Ahh, that is where you are wrong young Boo, The character Juliet was as real as you and I, her real name was Gianozza, but most folks called her Juliet. She came from Siena and she was madly in love with a boy called Mariotto. Unfortunately the families were feuding and she was forced into marriage with someone else who’s name I forget now. Eventually Mariotto, who was actually know as Romeo, died a tragic death and poor Juliet died of grief a while later. ‘
Boo considered Dragon for a moment.
‘You are not making this up are you ?’, she reached for her tablet and started to look into this new information. Boo quickly found that Dragon was right, Romeo and Juliet was not a unique work, it was based on several other works and the oldest was the story of Mariotto and Gianozza.
‘Wow, you are amazing’, she glanced at the clock, but I have to go…..’