Books, Ball Throwers and the Great McDonald’s Sauce Discovery

How late does a ten-year-old have to sleep before a 5K dog walk officially becomes somebody else’s problem?

The answer, apparently, is 10.30 in the morning.

After the heroics of getting up at 5.25am the day before, Harriet had clearly decided that one early start during a visit to Marlborough was quite enough.

Dana, meanwhile, had already been up and out walking Poppy, Lola and Douglas.

Harriet missed the whole thing.

By the time she finally appeared at 10.30, the dogs had already completed their morning exercise and were looking as though the sensible thing to do now would be to sleep until Christmas.

“Morning,” Harriet said.

“Morning?” said Grandad Bryan. “It’s nearly lunchtime.”

Harriet was completely unconcerned.

She had missed the 5K dog walk.

Dana had not.

And neither had the dogs.

Unfortunately for Poppy, Lola and Douglas, Harriet was now awake.

And Harriet had discovered the paddock.

The Great Tennis Ball Experiment

We took the dogs down to the paddock, where Harriet was introduced to one of civilisation’s more important inventions.

The tennis-ball thrower.

At first, using it looks extremely simple.

Put ball in plastic stick.

Swing stick.

Release ball.

Dog chases ball.

Except nobody explains exactly when you’re supposed to release it.

Harriet loaded the tennis ball, took aim and gave the thrower an experimental swing.

The first few attempts were more about learning where the ball might go than actually deciding where it should go.

Poppy, Lola and Douglas didn’t care.

As far as they were concerned, any tennis ball travelling through the air was excellent news.

Soon Harriet had worked it out and was launching balls across the paddock while the dogs thundered after them through the trees.

There is something very satisfying about a tennis-ball thrower. With almost no effort, you can send a ball much further than any dog expects.

It also gives you the temporary feeling of having an extraordinarily powerful arm.

Harriet approved.

The paddock itself was full of little obstacles, logs and enormous tyres, with sunshine breaking through the trees and making patches of bright light across the ground.

Harriet wandered between them with the thrower in one hand while the dogs investigated everything else.

Eventually even the dogs began to look tired.

This was impressive.

Poppy, Lola and Douglas have considerable experience in sleeping, but even they occasionally need exercise to prepare properly for it.

Back home they collapsed.

Harriet had other problems.

She had finished her book.

A literary emergency

For Harriet, finishing a book isn’t the end of a story.

It’s an emergency requiring immediate action.

So we headed into Marlborough High Street to find the next one.

Our destination was The White Horse Bookshop.

Harriet stepped through the door.

Then stopped.

She closed her eyes.

And breathed in.

Grandad Bryan watched her.

“What are you doing?”

“Smelling the books.”

Of course she was.

There is a particular smell inside a proper bookshop. Paper, fresh print, shelves and that faint suggestion that somewhere in the building there is another book you absolutely need.

Harriet clearly understood this.

There was, however, one slight problem.

She couldn’t remember the name of the book she had just finished.

Nor, unfortunately, the name of the next one.

This resulted in one of the more unusual conversations the woman in the bookshop had probably had that morning.

“We’re looking for a book,” Grandad Bryan explained helpfully.

This is not especially useful information in a bookshop.

Harriet tried to remember.

“There’s a girl.”

The lady waited.

“She goes to a battle school.”

More waiting.

“And she’s called Twelve.”

This was beginning to sound less like a book request and more like a particularly difficult round of Only Connect.

“A girl called Twelve goes to a battle school…” Grandad Bryan repeated.

Harriet nodded.

“Yes.”

Somehow, using these clues, we solved it.

The author was Aisling Fowler and the series was Fireborn.

Even better, the next book was sitting there waiting for Harriet:

Fireborn: Phoenix and the Frost Palace.

Success.

Harriet emerged from the bookshop holding it as though we’d just completed a major archaeological discovery.

The most important question was what would happen next.

Would Harriet patiently wait until we got home before starting it?

Obviously not.

First, however, there was lunch.

Coffi Lab and another Labrador

We wandered along the High Street to Coffi Lab.

The café has clearly chosen the correct animal to represent coffee, because the walls feature pictures of Labradors.

This immediately made it feel familiar.

One poster showed a Labrador gazing at a coffee with the words:

Your Coffee Companion.

Grandad Bryan studied it.

A Labrador as a coffee companion is quite believable.

Although anyone who actually owns Labradors knows that the relationship would probably be slightly different.

You would have the coffee.

The Labrador would stare at the cake.

Harriet chose a non-meat sausage roll.

There was an initial moment of suspicion because anything containing the words non-meat can occasionally raise questions.

But Harriet took a bite.

Then another.

She liked it.

Lunch had passed the Harriet Test.

For pudding she had a shortbread salted caramel cake, which also disappeared without much difficulty.

The brand-new Fireborn book remained nearby throughout.

Soon Harriet was sitting there with a huge grin, proudly holding Phoenix and the Frost Palace.

Once we arrived home, something predictable happened.

Harriet disappeared.

Not missing-person disappeared.

Book disappeared.

She went into her room, opened the new Fireborn and promptly returned to whatever magical world Aisling Fowler had created.

The rest of Marlborough temporarily ceased to exist.

The Corned Beef Bake Incident

Later that afternoon, however, we managed to persuade Harriet away from her book for another expedition to Swindon.

There was more retail therapy planned.

Before leaving, Grandad Bryan decided everyone needed food.

He baked some Greggs corned beef bakes.

One for himself.

One for Harriet.

They came out hot, crisp and smelling exactly like something Grandad Bryan believed everyone should enjoy.

Harriet took a bite.

Then another smaller one.

Her face changed.

Grandad Bryan recognised that expression.

It was the same expression used by people who have just realised they’re eating something they’re going to have to politely stop eating.

“You don’t like it, do you?”

Harriet considered pretending.

“No.”

At least she was honest.

Grandad Bryan ate his.

The unsuccessful corned beef bake would shortly have consequences.

Retail therapy, but for different reasons

We drove to Greenbridge in Swindon.

Grandad Bryan went carpet shopping.

This may be the least exciting sentence ever written about retail therapy.

Dana and Harriet escaped to Homebase.

Then Dana made an announcement.

“Because Harriet didn’t like the bake, she can have McDonald’s for tea.”

Grandad Bryan stared at her.

This seemed outrageous.

He had personally heated a Greggs bake.

Harriet had rejected it.

And somehow she had been rewarded with McDonald’s.

Grandad Bryan needed time to process this.

Fortunately, Currys was nearby.

Retail therapy comes in different forms.

For Dana and Harriet, it tends to involve clothes, bargains and wandering around shops.

For Grandad Bryan, recovery from emotional trauma apparently requires standing in front of enormous televisions.

He wandered into Currys.

The TVs were magnificent.

Some were so large that watching the weather forecast on them would make you feel as though the rain was actually happening in your living room.

Then Grandad Bryan remembered he’d been thinking about buying a new printer.

He’d heard Epson printers were supposed to be good and economical to run.

This obviously required investigation.

Very detailed investigation.

Possibly involving opening every printer tray and reading every label.

Dana and Harriet probably regretted taking him shopping by this point.

Eventually, television and printer therapy completed, Grandad Bryan rejoined the others.

It was time for Harriet’s reward for not eating dinner.

McDonald’s.

Grandad Bryan was still struggling with the logic.

Harriet makes an important discovery

At McDonald’s, Harriet made what may have been the scientific discovery of the day.

Everyone knows the tiny paper pots provided for ketchup and sauces.

Grandad Bryan had always accepted that this was simply their size.

Harriet had other ideas.

She picked one up.

Then discovered that you could pull the folded sides outwards.

The tiny sauce pot became bigger.

Harriet stared at it.

Grandad Bryan stared at it.

More sauce.

This changed everything.

“Grandad!”

“What?”

“Look!”

She expanded another one.

Grandad Bryan had spent decades visiting McDonald’s without knowing this.

Harriet had discovered it at ten.

For someone who had failed to get out of bed for the 5K dog walk, she had recovered remarkably well.

By the end of Tuesday she’d trained as a professional tennis-ball launcher, solved a literary mystery using almost no useful information, inhaled the smell of an entire bookshop, found the second Fireborn book, approved a meat-free sausage roll, rejected Grandad Bryan’s corned beef bake, received McDonald’s as a reward for doing so and taught the adults how sauce pots worked.

And somewhere upstairs, Phoenix and the Frost Palace was waiting.

Which meant there was really only one question left.

Would Harriet make it through the whole book before Dana finished another 5K dog walk without her?

Based on the evidence so far, the book was favourite.