Daisy and the Trouble with Life (2 page)

They only ever want to do cat things, not lion things.

In the end we had to bang him down with a spade. Gabby hit the wall with the spade handle and I kicked the wall with my trainers. Tiptoes jumped down then all right. He jumped down off the wall on the very first bang. Only not into my garden, into Mrs Pike's. He never comes into our garden any more. In fact I didn't see him on the wall for five days after that.

Gabby says he must have seen us making the mud trap, and it would have been better if we'd magicked him into a hippopotamus. Hippopotamuses love mud.

Gabby's definitely right, so that's what we were going to try today. A better spell and a bigger trap. Except we can't now, because I'm not allowed out to play. Thanks to Mum.

Excuse me a minute. I need to go somewhere again! . . .

When Gabby called for me this morning, I was dressed and ready and everything. I saw her walking up the path from the lounge window.

She'd brought her own spade to help dig the trap with, a stick for stirring the mud and hopefully some words that rhymed with “hippopotamus”. That's the
trouble with writing magic spells
. There are hardly any words that rhyme with “hippopotamus”.

I promised my mum I would stay grounded on the ground in the back garden with Gabby. I promised I wouldn't lift my feet up off the grass or anything, apart from when I needed to put my foot on the spade, but she said, “Stop right there . . . Sorry, Gabby. Not today, Gabby. Daisy's grounded. Daisy did something extreeeeemely naughty yesterday and she'll be staying indoors today. I'm sorry to spoil your fun, but it's important that Daisy does some long hard thinking today. She needs to think long and hard about the naughty thing that she did yesterday. And most importantly she needs to learn her lesson.”

How poo is that! Uh-oh! I need to go somewhere again . . . !

The
trouble with long hard thinking

or even
short hard thinking
is it makes your eyebrows ache.

Especially if you've spent all week trying to think of words that rhyme with “hippopotamus”.

Whippo-plop-a-bus, zippy-what-a-fuss, kipper-platypus, drippospottiness . . . I've tried absolutely everything. But none of them work.

That's the
trouble with magic spells
: if they don't rhyme properly the magic doesn't work properly either.

Anyway, I've given up thinking about hippopotamuses now. What's the point of having a magic spell that rhymes really well with hippopotamus if you can't use it?

I'm NOT allowed out to play with Gabby today, so we CAN'T dig a bigger mud trap and we CAN'T turn Tiptoes into a hippopotamus. Thanks to MUM, Gabby and me can't do any secret club things AT ALL today. So THAT'S THAT!

My mum says if I keep frowning and the wind changes, my face will stay that way. Well, she should have thought of that before she grounded me. It's totally her fault I can't go out to play with Gabby and it's totally her fault I'm having to frown so much.

I mean, just think. If it had been windy this morning when I opened the front door, my face might have turned into the worst frowning face in the world.

For ever!

And who would have been to blame?

It wouldn't have been me.

It wouldn't have been Gabby.

It would have been Mum! It would have been totally all Mum's fault.

And our front door's.

OOH dear . . . I need to go somewhere again. Back in a minute!

The
trouble with our front door
is it sticks.

You have to pull it really hard to open it. I pulled it really hard when Gabby called for me this morning. I pulled it so hard I nearly squashed myself against the wall. Mum thought it was really funny. So did Gabby. But they weren't the ones who got squashed. How would they like to be grounded and squashed at the same time?

The
trouble with being squashed by a door
is it makes you gulp.

And it makes your eyes bulge. Gabby said I looked like a goldfish. Mum said she should take a photo of me and send it to Freddy. Freddy is my goldfish. Was my goldfish. Kind of still is my goldfish. But we had to give him away. We gave him to Mrs Pike to look after. Mrs Pike is the lady next door. She's got a garden pond. That's where Freddy lives now.