the Farm

Once upon a time there were four children. They all had red hair, except the littlest, Nathan, whose hair was coaly black. And they all loved adventures. In their backyard was the biggest willow tree in the world, and Andrew and Simon, the eldest of the four, climbed up it because they were big and brave and they could do things like that. When they got nearly to the top they could see lots of streets and trees and if they climbed right to the very, very top, they could see the police station and the Port Hills. The youngest two thought their elder brothers were very old and brave, and never climbed to the top of the tree but instead they swung on the rope swing that was tied to one of the branches of the tree.

Those four children loved their willow tree, but what they loved even more was going out to the country, and having wars and battles with their four friends who lived on a farm there. It was a long, long way to the farm, and the children were usually whiny at least some of the time when they were driving there with their parents. Their parents' were called Mum and Dad: Dad drove places in his car and was a teacher and Mum cooked nice food in the kitchen and taught the children how to read and do maths.
There were things that they could do to pass the time while Dad was driving. Everyone's favourite game was 'I Spy', and nobody was grumpy when they were playing that game. The most exciting part of the whole trip was five minutes before they arrived, when everyone tried to spot their friends' house-on-the-hill first.
Simon usually won, because he was smart.

As soon as the four children got to the farm, they unpacked the car and took all the big bags to the different rooms in their friends' house. That farmhouse was really big, and it had a huge, narrow hallway with a bookshelf of all sorts of books for old people, and the carpet was all different colours in diamond shapes. Lydia, one of those four children, would try to step only on the insides of the triangles, not on the edges, when she was walking on that carpet. It looked funny when she did it, but Lydia was like that.

As soon as they had unpacked all the things in the car, and had had a glass of juice and a piece of cake in the big kitchen, the eight children started to plan the wars that they would have. Their parents were talking about grown-up stuff in the lounge with the fire on, so the children went outside. First of all, they took the weapons that they would need from the box outside the house, then they walked all the way down the long, curvy driveway which had hedges all the way along it, and across the sheep paddock at the bottom of the road, and into the Wild Woods.

When they were in the Wild Woods, they could see all the pine needles and pine cones and hills and mushrooms, and it was musty and damp-smelling in those woods. Then they divided into sides. Andrew was always the captain of one army, and Matthew (the oldest boy of the four friends) was the captain of the other army. Andrew's army was always the bad army, and Matthew's army was always the good army. But it didn't matter who was bad and who was good, really, because the reason you have wars is so you can fight in them.
...
to be continued? Up to you.

- Lydie