Sue Mongredien - The Sleepover Club on the Farm

“And ‘lambs’ has a ‘b’ at the end of it anyway,” I told her.

Fliss looked scornful. “No, it doesn’t!” she said. “Lambs? Where’s the ‘b’ in that? I can’t hear any ‘b’!”

“That’s ’cos it’s silent, you big nana,” said Rosie.

“The ‘b’ comes at the end, stoopid,” Kenny said, writing it down. “Look!”

Fliss took one look and tossed the piece of paper aside. “You lot are always trying to wind me up,” she declared, putting her nose in the air. “Well, not this time! Lam-b. As if! Lamb rhymes with ham, doesn’t it? And I know how to spell ham. H, A, M. Right?”

I was just about to get the dictionary out to prove it to her when Fliss’s phone beeped. Her mum had messaged her back already.

“WHO IS TOM?” the message said. “AND DON’T EAT CLAMS – U R ALLERGIC.”

“What is she on about?” Fliss wondered aloud. “Tom? Who IS Tom?”

“Tom’s my brother,” I said, giggling. “You meant ‘tomorrow’ but she thought you were talking about my brother!”

“And you told her you were going to ‘C LAMS TOM’,” Rosie laughed. “And she thought you meant CLAMS.”

“Oh, honestly,” Fliss grumbled. “She doesn’t know how to spell lambs either.”

Just then, Mum came in the room. “Fliss, dear, your mum’s on the phone,” she said, looking a bit bemused. “She said something about you being allergic to shellfish and not to eat any clams. I tried to tell her that we don’t have any clams in the house but she insisted on speaking to you.”

Fliss went off to reassure her mum that no, she wasn’t going to eat any shellfish, she was just going to see some lambs – with a ‘b’ – and the rest of us all cracked up.

“Ahh, the wonders of text messaging,” Frankie sniggered. “So quick and soooo confusing!”

Once Fliss was back, having cleared up the clams confusion, we decided to play some animal games to get us in a farm-visiting kind of mood for Saturday. First, we had a few rounds of Squeak, Piggy, Squeak. Have you ever played that? One person is blindfolded and they blunder about the room until they bump into someone else. The blindfolded person then says, “Squeak, Piggy, Squeak!” When the person they’ve caught does squeak, they have to guess who it is. It’s really funny, especially all the pig impressions.

It was even funnier than usual this night when my dad walked into the room in the middle of a game. He saw what we were up to and knelt down so that he was the same height as us. Then when blindfolded Frankie bumped into him and told him, “Squeak, Piggy, squeak”, he went, “SQUEAK! SQUEAK!” in such a loud, un-squeaky voice, Frankie nearly fell over in surprise. We all burst out laughing and Frankie pulled off her blindfold to see who’d made such a noise. When she saw that it was my dad, she laughed too. “Naughty piggy!” she giggled, wagging a finger at him. “Big daddy piggy made Frankie piggy jump!”

Next we played Farmer In The Den, which got so loud, my mum came in my bedroom to see what all the noise was about. “I thought you’d invited twenty real farmers round,” she said. “Is there really only you five in here making all that din?”

“Sorry, Mum,” I said, but she was twinkling at me, so I knew she didn’t really mind.

Then we decided to play Piggy In The Middle which turned out to be even noisier. Instead of there being one piggy in the middle of two people, the poor person who was the piggy in this game had to work twice as hard to try and catch the teddy bear the other four of us were throwing to each other. Super-fit Kenny was the first piggy and even she was struggling to catch hold of it. She went running back and forth as the teddy was tossed, jumped up high to try and catch it, and even dived to the floor a couple of times.

“Come on, lazy piggy, you can do it,” Fliss taunted her, waving the teddy above her head.

Kenny charged towards her, but just at the last minute – whoosh! Fliss threw the teddy over her head to Rosie, who caught it neatly.

“Oh, pigg-eeee, where are you?” Rosie sang. “Come and get the tedd-eee!”

Whoosh! Away went the teddy again, this time to me.

“Too slow!” Rosie crowed.

Kenny was starting to get frustrated. And nobody, but nobody calls her “too slow” if they want to live to see next Christmas!

“You are soooo dead, Cartwright,” she warned Rosie with one of her evil grins. Then she waited until Rosie had the teddy again, and steamed across, rugby-tackled her and wrestled her to the floor to try and get it.

“You cheat!” Frankie screamed and promptly dived in to help Rosie.

“Now who’s too slow?” Kenny yelled, brandishing the teddy above her head. “Ha! Gotcha!”

We ended up getting so wild that going to sleep later that night was really difficult. Frankie and Rosie kept putting on silly voices and asking Fliss to pass them the clams, and then we’d all giggle helplessly. Then once we’d all recovered and were lying quietly in the dark, someone else would explode with giggles – and we’d all be off again. Plus, I was far too excited about going to the farm to even THINK about sleeping.

Somehow, I managed it though. Just as I was thinking, there was no way I could possibly get to sleep, the next thing I knew it was morning and the sun was shining again. Hooray!

After breakfast, I told Mum what Mrs Mack had said about the farm being muddy and between us, we hunted out five pairs of wellies. I had my new blue ones, Rosie squashed her little tootsies into my old pair that were too small for me now, Kenny Big-Foot borrowed a pair of Tom’s and Frankie wore a pair of my mum’s. There was also an old pair of Stuart’s boots that we offered Fliss, but she wasn’t having any of it.

“No, thanks, I’m going to wear my new trainers,” she said, waving a foot proudly to show us. “Nice, aren’t they?”

“They are nice, Fliss, but they won’t be for much longer if you wear them on the farm,” my mum told her. “Honestly, love, you’ll get them covered in mud.”

“Well, I won’t go in any mud,” Fliss said promptly. “Thanks, Mrs Collins, and I don’t want to be rude but I really don’t want to wear those wellies.”

“It’s up to you,” my mum said, putting them back in the cupboard. “But I don’t want your mum phoning me up tonight, all upset because your new trainers are ruined.”

“Oh, she won’t,” Fliss said confidently. “Because there is no way I’m going to set foot in any yucky mud, and that’s that!”

Confident words from Fliss, all right, but as soon as Dad dropped us off at the farm, she realised she was going to have to EAT those words. Mrs Mackintosh hadn’t been exaggerating about the mud – it was everywhere, even all the way up from the garages to the farmhouse door!

Squelch! Squelch! Squelch! Me, Rosie, Kenny and Frankie happily splodged through the mud up to the house. We turned round to see Fliss slithering about behind us, trying to stay on her tiptoes as thick brown mud splurged around her gleaming white trainers.

Mrs Mack pulled open the front door. “Hello, Lyndsey, hello, girls,” she said with a warm smile. Mrs Mack is ALWAYS smiling. She’s one of the jolliest people I’ve ever met. Mind you, she looked almost serious for a moment when she caught sight of Fliss, still halfway up to the door, trying desperately to tread on the grassy bits. “Oh dear,” she said thoughtfully. “I think I’m going to have to find a spare pair of welly boots for someone, aren’t I?”