Reorganisation · Level 1

Jonathan was three years old and he had just arrived for his first day at his pre-school. The teacher met him and his parents at the door.

Smiling, the teacher asked him his name, how old he was and where he lived.

Jonathan gave her the answers but looked a bit unsure about the last question, so his mother said to him, "Tell her your address, Jonathan."

He looked up and said, "But I'm not a dress."

Outside, the night was very cold. Inside, five chairs were formed in a semi-circle around the fire as if they were waiting. When the men came in, they took off their heavy coats and threw them with their hats and gloves into the corner by the door.

They sat on the chairs and with much grunting and coughing, pulled their boots off. These they placed beneath the chairs. By morning they would be dry again. They pointed their feet, with steaming socks, at the fire, and bit by bit they became warm.

They had to write a story, and the teacher had told them very firmly "No dreams allowed thank you!"

Nelson knew that some kids just wrote all sorts of rubbish and got away with it because, as they said, dreams aren't real and crazy things happen in a dream. He understood why the teacher had said that. She had read too many of those stories. But the best thing he could think of to write about was a dream he'd had. He dreamed that he could fly. In fact, in his dream he couldn't put his feet on the ground no matter how hard he tried.

He would have loved to write about when he flew over the sea and he could look down at everything in it. He had landed on the back of a whale. It had dived and taken Nelson down into the depths. He didn't have to breathe and he knew he could write pages and pages on the things he'd seen and done under the sea.

The teacher was doing the rounds, checking on what everybody was doing. She stopped by Nelson. She looked down at his blank page. Nelson could see that she was frowning. He could tell by the clicking of her tongue that she thought he was daydreaming. It's tough having a great idea for a story and not being able to write about it.