Jamie's Jungle (5-6)

Jamie likes the jungle at the back of the airing cupboard.

 It has always been there, so he’s never thought to question it.

He’s never thought to dispute the screeching monkeys, or the rowdy parrots.

And he’s never thought to ask about the rasping snakes and mosquitos the size of toffee pennies. 

They have always just buzzed away quietly, night and day, at the very back of the small, dark room, where freshly ironed sheets and shirts are left to air, and where his brother’s long-forgotten cress-growing experiment has started to take on a life of its own.

He knows no one else can see the jungle and all its noisy inhabitants, but that doesn’t bother him.  In fact, it makes him feel special.  Ever-so special.

He knows where all the odd socks disappear to.

He knows that those paw prints on the clean white table cloth aren’t from their pet cat Mildred but, from the velvety panther that likes to sit atop the fresh, warm linen piles.

And he knows that the groany creaking noises that come at night aren’t monsters on the stairs, but elephants leaning, lazily, against giant jungle trees.

But what Jamie doesn’t know is that there is a mountain, looming like a giant, at the back of the cupboard under the stairs.


I wonder when he’ll figure that one out. 


THAT’S where his favourite football went!