Sue Mongredien - The Sleepover Club on the Farm

The Sleepover Club

on the Farm

by Sue Mongredien

Cover

Title Page The Sleepover Club on the Farm by Sue Mongredien

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Have you been invited to all these sleepovers?

Sleepover kit List

Copyright

About the Publisher

Baa! It’s Lyndsey Lamb here. No, don’t worry, you haven’t picked up one of those books about talking animals by mistake. It’s me, Lyndz from the Sleepover Club, really. I’m normally plain old Lyndz Collins, but ever since us Sleepover girls hung out on Mr Mackintosh’s farm, the others have been calling me Lyndsey Lamb or Lambkin. And if Kenny’s being horrible, she’ll call me Lamb Chop!

Still, I’m not the only one to have got a silly new name. Uh-uh. Meet the rest of the club – that’s Kenny Cow, Rosie Ram, Frankie Frog and Flissy Foal! Us five are best mates and do everything together – well, most of the time anyway. More about THAT later …

I’ve just got a bit of time before my riding lesson to tell you all about our farm adventures. D’you know, until we went there, I’d always dreamed of being a famous jockey when I grow up, or running my own stables, or working in an animal rescue centre. But guess what I want to do now? Yep – live on a farm! I think it would be awesome being with so many animals all day, every day. Wouldn’t it be fantastic?

But that’s me. I absolutely LURVE animals. All of them – big, small, furry, woolly, wild, tame, claws, paws, hooves, whatever. Do you know what? I even think Kenny’s pet rat Merlin is cute, which is a bit unusual. Me and Kenny seem to be the only two people in the world who aren’t scared of him!

Not everyone’s like that, though. If you asked Fliss if she’d like to live on a farm, she’d shudder and say, “No way!” She has dreams of living in a house like Posh and Becks when she’s older – preferably when she’s married to Ryan Scott from school! In fact, I reckon Fliss would actually like to be the next Posh Spice so she could buy as many clothes as she wants to. Now that’s HER idea of heaven. Funny, isn’t it, how different people are?

Lucky for me that the rest of the Sleepover Club were mad keen on the idea of a farm sleepover too, or we might never have got there. Frankie and Kenny love doing anything that’s a bit out of the ordinary, and Rosie is always up for a bit of fun, so once I’d got those three on my side, that was that. No stopping us!

Anyway, let me begin at the beginning, as Mrs Weaver, our teacher, always says. It all started when we were having a sleepover at my house one Friday night. We were in my bedroom playing a game of Cat’s Got The Measles when Mum shouted up the stairs that it was tea.

“Result!” Kenny cheered, rushing for the door. “I am sooo Hank Marvin.”

“Who’s he?” Fliss wanted to know. She was looking very puzzled.

“Hank Marvin – starving, geddit?” Kenny replied. “It’s rhyming slang, isn’t it?”

Fliss didn’t look convinced. “Is it?” she asked.

“’Course it is,” Kenny answered. “Honestly, Fliss, don’t you ever watch EastEnders?”

“Yes, but …” Fliss was still frowning. “You’re weird, Kenny. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

Downstairs, Mum was dishing up bangers, mash and beans. Everyone was already sitting around the table except my big brother Stuart. He was late home from school again, and boy, did Mum look cross about it.

“Where’s that son of mine got to?” she grumbled, putting his plate in the oven to keep warm. “I told him to phone me if he was going to be late.”

“He’s probably stopped off at the farm, lucky thing,” I said, spearing a sausage and biting the end off. Yum!

“Lyndz, cut your food up properly,” Mum said at once. She’s got a biiiiig thing about table manners, my mum. She says it’s like feeding time at the zoo when our family sits down to eat. “Anyway, he still should have phoned me. He knows I only worry when he doesn’t.”

Stuart is still at school but works on Mr Mackintosh’s farm down the road in his spare time. He’s like me, he loves animals and wants to be a farmer when he’s older. Awesome! I hope he does. It’ll mean I’ll be visiting him – and his animals, of course – ALL the time!

I’d been nagging him for absolutely ages to let me visit the farm with him because lambing season was about to start and I was dying to see some baby lambs. Soooo cute! Aren’t baby animals simply THE most adorable things in the world? But even though I kept going on at him, Stu kept on putting me off, saying they were too busy at the farm to let little girls mess around. Little girls, indeed! Sometimes I hate boys.

Anyway, so we were just getting stuck into our tea when we heard a key turn in the front door. It was Stuart – at last.

“Nice of you to join us,” my dad muttered sarcastically as Stu came in, his face all pink from the cold.

“Why didn’t you phone?” Mum said, rushing to get his plate out of the oven. “Here – sit down. Your tea’s still warm.”

“Thanks, Mum,” he said, taking his coat off and sitting down. “I did try and phone you but the line was engaged for ages.”

I went bright red then. Oops! That had been me. I’d phoned up this horoscope line to get the Sleepover Club horoscopes for the week, only the call seemed to last forever and ever. All five of us have got different star signs, you see, so I had to listen to all of them, didn’t I?

“Sorry I’m late. I got chatting to Mrs Mack, up at the farm,” he went on. “I just dropped in to say hello but ended up helping her out for a bit. Bad news – one of the ewes is really ill and has had her lambs early. They’re tiny – and because the ewe is so ill, she can’t feed them.”

“Ahhhhh!” I said, biting my lip in concern. “Poor little lamby babies!”

“Poor poor lamby-wammies,” Kenny said, teasing me.

“The teeny tiny little wittle baby lambykins have a poorly mummy!” Frankie added, with a grin.

I was about to get all indignant, but Stuart spoke before I could think of a crushing reply. “Actually, Lyndz, Mrs Mack was asking about you,” he said. “Asking if you were very busy tomorrow.”

“No, not really,” I said in surprise. “Just a riding lesson. Why?”

“Well, she was wondering if you might like to help out with the – what was it? – the poor little wittle baby lambykins,” he said. “She’ll have to bottle-feed them until their mum gets better and she remembered how soppy you are about baby animals so …”

“Whoopeee!” I yelled, jumping up from the table and sending my fork flying. “Too right I’ll help out!” This great big enormous beam stretched over my face from ear to ear and I started jigging up and down in excitement. “Feeding baby lambs! Awesome!”

Stuart grinned at me. “Oh, that’s a shame, I told her you would probably be too busy,” he said. “I know you aren’t really that keen on baby animals …”

“WHAT?!” I yelled, stopping dead still. “Are you mad?”

“He’s winding you up,” Dad said, patting me on the arm reassuringly. “Don’t take any notice of him.”

“Oh! Phew! Oh!” I said, smiling again. “Stu – you pig!”