The Magic Carton

Dad’s lawnmower broke down so after a lot of muttering and cursing, he even kicked it once or twice, he knew he needed to buy a new one. The girls, Meg and Daisy had been nagging him for weeks about getting a pet rabbit, so Dad built a cage with wheels and put the bunny inside, he was quite proud of himself! It was his version of an organic lawnmower! His invention didn’t work very well, the grass grew faster than the rabbit could eat it and Mum complained about getting wet feet when she hung out the washing. He did think of getting more rabbits but he did anything about it, he saw a picture in some junkmail showing a super-duper powerful lawnmower.

‘I’ll have one of those!’ he decided.

It arrived one day from Amazon in a big cardboard carton! It was a souped up, super powerful lawnmower that you didn’t walk behind, you flew behind it! Well it went so fast, you had to! The girls thought, nah, a lawnmower is a lawnmower and not being petrol-heads, ignored the roar of the turbo-charged engine! They were busy on their mind-numbing electronic devices! But outside Dad held on grimly as the lawnmower roaring across the lawn, his body horizontal behind it and with no apparent control at all! It was a spectacular sight!

Granddad was visiting and was amused, (he laugher his head off actually) and inspected the carton and said to the girls, ‘You know, this could be a Magic Carton!’ Both girls looked up from their devices when they heard the word ‘magic’.

‘Hop into the carton Meg,’ Granddad said, ‘see where it will take you.’

Meg hopped into the carton, not because she wanted to but to be polite to her Granddad. She rocked in it and wiggled her bum to and fro, but nothing happened. So she climbed out a bit disappointed.

‘Hmmmm,’ said Granddad, ‘you have to imagine. It’s a bit like a dream but you are awake. It’s all in your head. Here, Daisy you have a go. Pretend you are, um, you’re driving Mummy’s car.’

Daisy climbed into the carton and she got it straight away! She had watched Mummy driving her car so she knew exactly what to do! But she wasn’t going to drive any ordinary car, oh no, she was in a fast yellow one with no roof! She made the noises of driving, ‘Brmmmm, brmmmmm!’ and ‘Screeeeech’ when she jammed the brakes on! She wiggled the pretend steering wheel, left and right as she avoided other cars!

Then she had another idea, she thought how cool it would be to ride in Kristof’s sleigh! She wasn’t going to be Anna though. She liked Anna ok, but she really liked Elsa so she just imagined she was Elsa in the sleigh with Olaf telling them where to go! They whizzed through the snow and she rocked so violently that the carton tipped over and Daisy fell out!

Meg saw the fun that Daisy was having and wanted to have another try.

‘My turn now,’ she said, ‘my turn now. I know what to do!’ She actually hadn’t thought of what she wanted to be riding in and the first thing that came into her head was the Queen! Well they had been singing the Jubilee Song at school! So she sat up regal-like sitting the coach saying, ‘Clip clop, clip, clop!’ and waving to the crowd.

‘Look! They are waving at me!’ she shouted excitedly.

‘Hop in with me Daisy!’ Meg called, ‘let’s go somewhere together!’

Daisy hopped in and Meg said, ‘We’re in a time machine, where do you want to go? But I’m driving!’

Wow, what a fancy time machine it was with its levers and cogs and a flash double seat and with a tinted windscreen!

‘I want to go to see Dinosaurs!’ said Daisy emphatically. And with a shudder they were off, spinning through time!

They saw all the dinosaurs that they had heard about at school and had seen at the museum but they didn’t get too close to T Rex, Meg thought that he might be too dangerous! They decided to fly just a bit higher than him to give him a fright!

They could just about do anything in the Magic Carton: fly a jet plane, ride a horse, rocket off to Mars, be like Dr. Who in his Tardis, go underwater in a submarine or even float in sky by balloon over the Serengeti watching elephants and giraffe

It was good to see the girls having fun and imagining what they would like do and where they would like to go! Grandad left them to it and had a cup of tea waiting for the lawnmower to come back from the park down the road.

He smiled at all the fun made possible by a simple Magic Carton – that wasn’t magic at all!