if you find yourself, during this weekend, wishing things would get a tiny bit less serious for a few minutes, pour yourself a cup of melted ice cream and dive into this little story… thank you to Cambois Writing Group for the prompt!
Everyone’s sat round Brian’s big table AGAIN
talking and arguing and planning AGAIN
because there’s going to be ANOTHER street party
and Sunita and me are in our special place AGAIN
because we like to know what’s going on
and we’re getting REALLY worried it’s going to be
just EXACTLY the SAME as last year’s and
just EXACTLY the SAME as everyone else’s and
suddenly we both have a BRILLIANT IDEA.
*
We come out from under the table
and everyone says Oh! as if they actually
didn’t know we were there and Sunita says
‘We don’t think it should be like last year’s party.’
‘What was wrong with last year’s party?’ says Mrs Needles, needled,
‘Nothing,’ I say, quickly, ‘but this is a different year
and it should be a different party.’
Brian nods and gets up and takes me and Sunita
By the hand and leads us to his big chair and says:
‘I think we should make Ben and Sunita
King and Queen of our street party,’ and he hands
his clipboard to Sunita and his Coronation Pencil to me
and everyone sort-of claps and cheers a bit and I say:
‘So we’re in charge of the street party?’
‘You are indeed, your Majesties,’ says Brian, and
he turns to everyone else and says, ‘Pub?’
‘Pub,’ says Ginger, and the grownups go to the pub
and me and Sunita go back under the table
because it is a good place for thinking.
*
‘This is going to be really hard work,’ says Sunita,
wrinkling her face up like a big sultana. But I say,
‘We’re the King and Queen. We just tell everyone
what we want and it gets done, like magic,’ and
Sunita’s face de-wrinkles, like magic, so it is working already.
All we have to do now is work out what we want.
*
We sit in the big chairs in Brian’s dining room
and the grownups come in and we tell them what we want.
Sunita wants the bunting not red, white and blue,
but her favourite colours: green, yellow and orange.
Mrs Needles looks doubtful but she says
she thinks she has some fabric dye at home.
*
When Kamal, the best cook in the street,
shows us the recipe from the newspaper for
Coronation Quiche, we point out that lots of people
have a problem with spinach and that marshmallows
are much more of a party food. ‘But with cheese?’
says Kamal, and Sunita frowns and makes a Coronation pencil mark
on her clipboard and I explain how melt-in-the-mouth
it will be, and after that it is easy to tell him we want
hundreds and thousands instead of cress
in the egg sandwiches, and the sausage rolls dyed purple.
*
It’s street party day and everything is perfect.
Nothing is like it was last year.
EVERYONE was surprised to see melted ice cream
coming from the teapot spouts into their china cups.
The music is defo the loudest of ANY street party –
it’s the toddler group banging on their favourite things to bash.
Later, when we do the dancing,
I wonder what moves we’ll all choose,
and the food is giving everbody LOTS to talk about.
*
There was just one part of the organising
we had to do by ourselves. Two days before the party
Brian came to see us wearing a big fat smile, saying,
‘Good news, your Majesties, the weather is set
to be dry and sunny ALL DAY for the party – hooray!’
‘Hooray,’ we said, but as soon as he had backed away
we dived under the table for a meeting.
‘This is a disaster!’ I said, ‘we need a plan,’
because this was the only part of the party tradition
we wanted to keep.
*
It took a lot of thinking
and a lot of organising and a lot of hard work
but it will be worth it, ‘and maybe,’ said Sunita,
‘this is just the sort of King and Queen we are, after all;
not the old-fashioned kind, but the kind who do things for themselves.’
*
So as the grownups tuck into their
mushroom and chilli jam victoria sponge cake,
they’re so busy saying they’ve never tasted anything like it before
that they don’t notice the children sneaking away.
Sunita and I have to stay to lead the Loyal Toast.
We stand up, making sure not to look at the upstairs windows
quietly opening, and we say the words – backwards –
and everyone raises their champagne glasses of tea
and the watering-can rain comes down
and the BEST STREET PARTY EVER is complete.