I hand write a story every day and send it to my kids.
My Trusty calligraphy Parker pen, who I’ve dubbed Robin, and I love doing these. Some are funny. Some are strange. Some wander off into places I didn’t expect them to go. I’ve written close to a hundred of them now with no signs of slowing down. I’ve written bespoke kids novels, an adult fantasy comedy novel, short fiction and stories. If you need someone to bring an idea, character or peculiar little world to life, I’m available for selected freelance projects. Here’s one of those little stories I was talking about.
Invisible Dog Problems
Scally’s parents were concerned about his invisible dog. He came home with it one day. It knocked things over, ate biscuits it shouldn’t and generally caused no end of trouble.
Obviously, no one believed Scally, and they thought he was making things up so he could get away with misbehaving. So they took him to a doctor. After a few hours of testing, the doctor confirmed that the pooch actually did exist. Most of those few hours were taken up with the doctor trying to figure out what was wrong with Scally’s brain, until the dog jumped onto his lap and licked his face.
This was when things started getting interesting for Scally. With an invisible dog in the house, he found that he could get away with almost anything. He dug holes in the flower bed, demolished one of his Dad’s slippers, stole sausages from the kitchen bench before dinner and even blamed the dog for farting at the dinner table. But he stopped short of pooping on the living room carpet.
Everything was going rather splendidly for Scally until one day, when he blamed Graham, the name he’d given the dog, for eating an entire family-sized bag of gummy bears.
“I’m telling you, it had to be Graham. How could I possibly have managed to fit that many gummy bears into this tiny body?” Scally reasoned.
“Oh,” His Dad scratched his chin. “You’ve got a point there. I’d guess you’d be feeling pretty sick after all that sugar. Like really, really sick.”
Scally did, indeed, feel deeply unwell, but he wasn’t going to let them know that.
“Exactly!” he said. Happy to have fooled his Dad again and feeling quite superior to these daft grown ups.
“Well, you’re a good boy for not eating them yourself. I think we should reward you by going out for a giant… and I mean giant… ice cream sundae.”
Scally couldn’t back down, so off they went to the ice cream parlour. It was Scally’s favourite place in the entire world… most days. But after no more than four spoonfuls, he had to run off to the toilet to be sick.
Feeling pretty sorry for himself, Scally arrived back home with his parents. He knew something was up.
“How did you know?” he asked his Dad.
“Well,” said Dad, “I locked Graham in the garden this morning because he pooped on my lap while I was watching The Transformers on telly.”
Scally sighed.
Just then there was an enormous crash from outside.
Dad looked at Scally. Scally looked at Dad.
“Wasn’t me, I’m sitting right here!!”
Another crash.
Scally ran into the garden.
“GRAHAM! YOU’RE MAKING ME LOOK BAD!”
From that day forward, Scally stopped blaming Graham for things he hadn’t done and started taking responsibility for his pooch.
He even started a strict dog-training schedule.
Dad never got pooped on again.