It was Sunday, we all knew Granny Grunter went to Mass every Sunday at 11 o clock so Stephen kept watch for him to leave and then gave the signal from the wall that it was safe to go in. It was the BEST time to go into granny grunters because we didn’t have to be quiet.
That Sunday there was Stephen, Natasha, Pamela, Lorraine, Sasha and Tonia.
Stephen was always coming up with crazy mad ideas and inventions. This time he decided to change the stick on the end of the rope for a tyre. Mum would never miss her spare tyre from her car boot he said. It took Stephen and Sasha all their strength to get the tyre up over the wall onto the rope. But they did it…..
We all took it in turns to get into the tyre and swing as high as we could. You had to try go SO HIGH that you would grab a leaf from one of the branches off the tree. Then Stephen had ANOTHER one of his bright and crazy ideas, he was going to climb the tree and get into the tyre from the tree branch and swing down from there. It was SO high and it was dangerous, but he didn’t care.
He sat on the branch and pulled the tyre all the way up to him. Balancing on the branch he climbed into the tyre and when he was ready with the biggest YEEHA he swung off the branch….. BUT it was too much for the rope to take and with a big SNAP the rope broke, Stephen went flying in the air and because he was sitting in the tyre bounced and bounced off the ground, then he started to roll in the tyre across the field, screaming, then laughing then screaming then laughing SOMEBODY STOP ME ROLLING he yelped….. But none of us could move because we were laughing so much and so hard. Pamela and Natasha had tears rolling down their faces from laughing so much. We were laughing so much none of us heard Granny Grunter’s car coming back from Mass.
There was so many scary rumours and stories about Granny Grunter that we were terrified of him. Did you know that some people said he had A GUN? He had a MASSIVE scary black dog too that was able to eat children it was so big. ANYWAY…..
Eventually Stephen stopped rolling in his tyre and stood up only to fall straight back over again because he was so dizzy from all the rolling. This only made all of us to start laughing again. When Stephen eventually got his balance back we all realised that he was actually stuck in the tyre. We couldn’t pull him out of it. He were laughing so much we had pains in our bellies. ALL of us were heaving and pulling trying to get him out of the tyre because we knew he would never be able to get over the wall with the tyre around him. We didn’t realise either that we had been spotted by Granny Grunter himself.
Suddenly we all heard a dog growling and we all froze…….. Slowly we turned around to see the meanest old man you ever saw in the distance holding onto a humongous black dog. The dog’s teeth were showing and looked so sharp as he growled over at us, saliva dripping him from mouth.
Then Granny Grunter shouted over at us in his husky deep scary voice.…. GET OUT OF MY FIELD OR I WILL LET MY DOG EAT YOU…… Pamela who is afraid of dogs screamed SO LOUD it made everyone start screaming. We screamed and starting running for the wall. We ran as fast as we could go, faster than we ever ran in any race EVER.
I don’t know if it’s because we ran so fast but the tyre thank god starting to slip down and off Stephen and just in the nick of time because Granny Grunter released his dog and the dog was running towards us fast.
We all climbed up onto the wall and jumped down the other side just has the dog reached us. When we climbed down off the wall the other side we all had to just sit there in shock at what had happened. We nearly got eaten by Granny Grunters Dog. The dog was REAL. Granter Grunter was REAL. We saw him…….. WE SURVIVED…..
Poor Stephen had a black bruised bum after that day from all the rolling and bouncing and he couldn’t sit down for days….. Mum never found out what happened to her tyre and luckily she never needed it.
That night on the landing we all planned our next trip to Granny Grunters, but we didn’t realise Adam and Sharon could hear us…… they were only very young. They didn’t understand. They just wanted to play on this magic swing they heard us talk about…… But that’s a whole new other story…….