What a pickle

Robbie and his friends had come up with a wacky idea. They gave each other a week to go shopping with their mum's, slip an item into the shopping basket, pay for it at the checkout and get it home without mum noticing until the shopping was unpacked. Surprisingly, all six of the group that concocted this idea succeeded. Robbie's friend Nick had managed it with a raspberry jelly, Robbie had sneaked through a jar of pickles.

"What on earth is this?" asked mum as she unpacked at home. 

Robbie came clean and mum couldn't help but laugh.  She also told  Robbie in no uncertain terms, not to do it again. Robbie took a photo of mum holding the jar of pickles to show his friends and was quite happy when mum told him she would take it to her book club raffle. After all, nobody in the family particularly liked pickles.

The following day, mum came home from her book club.

"There's good news and bad news" she announced.

"The good news is, I won a prize in the book club raffle. The bad news is that I won the blasted pickles again."

Everybody laughed.

"I'll take the pickles round to Mr Barclay" Suggested Dad. Mr Barclay was their next door neighbour.

Now once a week, Annabelle emptied Mr Barclay's rubbish bins to earn a little bit of extra pocket money. The next day, as she took the rubbish outside, one of the bags split. Annabelle thought she had picked it all up, but she failed to notice the jar of pickles as it fell to the ground and rolled gently to their front door. Mum was completely bemused as she opened the door a little later and found the pickles lying on their step.

"I'll go and bury them in the wood" suggested Robbie. He jumped on his bike, took a trowel and dug a fairly deep hole. He put in the jar of pickles and covered them with earth.

The following day, the family heard the gate open at the end of the path and Dad felt sure he caught a glimpse of the mysterious dog that had helped him a few weeks previously. There on the step, was a muddy jar of pickles.

"I'll clean them up and take them into the office. One of the girls will probably take them " Said Dad.

That evening, Dad came home with a glum look on his face.

"I told one of the girls to take the jar on my desk" He said. "They took the wrong jar and went off with my humbugs" He wailed.

"I know" Said mum. "I'll donate them to the jumble sale being held at the village hall. If we then don't go to the sale, we can't get them back."

So that's what they did. But that evening, there was a knock at the door and there stood Mum's friend Mrs Pennington-Smythe.

" I saw these at the jumble sale" She said, holding up the jar of the pickles. "You always seem to have some around the house when I've been here recently so I thought you might like them."

The whold family collapsed in hysterical laughter leaving a bemused Mrs Pennington-Smythe to leave with a baffled expression on her face.

The jar of pickles were moved to a corner of the garage as a family mascot and always brought a smile to any member of the family when they saw them.

 Thanks to Morgan Johnstone for suggesting the two words - Jumble & pickles.

Horrible homework

For the first time in like, ever! Robbie had been enjoying his homework. In an inspired attempt to teach his class history, Miss Knowles had introduced them to the concept of 'Horrible history' from around the World and had set them the homework of finding the most gruesome things possible.

Some had gone better that others. Robbie's small poxed make-up had frightened music teacher Miss Jarvis so much, that she had dropped a trumbone onto her left big toe.

 Another boy on the class had come to school with a fake axe through his head but had got it jammed in the door and had given himself a nosebleed. Unfortunately, the nose bleed had seeped through to Miss Knowles's packed lunch and she had become quite grumpy.

There had been putrid pirates and evil Queen's galore and one boy had even come in with a papier mache horses head that ended up being the classroom mascot for the rest of the year.

All the class had learnt loads about terrible diseases, evil tyrants and unpleasant methods of punishing people.

Then one morning, just after the project had ended, Robbie's friend Nick seemed to go a funny shade of light green and apparently lost the ability to talk. He pushed his chair away from Robbie so fast that he actually toppled over and ended up crushing Katie Dunn's new school satchel.

Robbie was confused but couldn't get a coherent sentence out of Nick.

 Nick just said "Orrrrrlaminkkle' or 'Plagggguespoooootik'

Robbie put it down to Nick's team suffering a bad loss the night before and got on with his simple arithmetic problems.

But suddenly, as the day went on, Nick started doing the strangest things .

He got a blanket from lost property and put it on Nick in the middle of recorder practice in music. He sneaked out of school and bought Robbie an iced bun at lunchtime. He kept bringing cups of water and at one point offered Robbie a warm, wet towel.

At the end of the day, Nick went rushing to Miss Knowles and whispered in her ear.

Miss Knowles wasn't known for her hysterical laughter but this particular bout went on for about 5 minutes. At last, she regained her composure and called Robbie over.

"No Nick" she said. "Robbie is not dying and does not have the plague. Those freckle-like spots and rashes are not symptoms of the bubonic plague. They're specks of paint from earlier today when Robbie was helping us finish off our Horrible history display for assembly" "He obviously missed a bit when he washed his ha......AH-hahahahaha..."

Miss Knowles collapsed again in uncontrollable mirth.  Nick went a bright shade of crimson and crestfallen, skulked out of the classroom feeling a bit of a twit.

Robbie, although he could see the funny side, was kind of touched that his friend Nick had cared so much.

That night, Nick asked mum to knock up a batch of homemade iced buns. He took them round to Nick's house and they happily munched them whilst watching not horrible histories, but a replay of Nick's favourite team winning away from home. 

 Story based on the two suggested words - Dying & World.