You have all heard of the tale of Pinocchio - well this is about Peter, a little boy who was very similar to Pinocchio in that he was brilliant at telling lies. The story has to fit in with Elle's brilliant theme at Art Journal Journey, which is centred around fairytales and with the snarky comment from Tim Holtz that was chosen for this week - "I've got a good heart, but this mouth ..." and so I thought of Pinocchio the little wooden puppet who eventually became a real little boy. Pinocchio was a Walt Disney film based on an Italian novel of 1883 which did not do well when it first came out in the cinema but that was mainly due to the outbreak of WWII. When it was relaunched in 1945 it was hugely successful and became one of the best animated films ever made. I always loved the Walt Disney film. So ...
'Peter always wanted to be the most popular boy at school and especially with the girls in the playground, and so he 'romanced' a little about his life before he came to live in the little village in Sconbury.
"One night, when I lived in Italy with my grandfather, I fell asleep and when I woke up I found I had been kidnapped and was now living in a travelling circus" he told his friends. "I was a lion tamer, but not just an ordinary lion tamer, no, I did it with my lions on a tightrope. We were thirty feet in the air and I did lots of different tricks with them. One time I even had them swinging from a trapeze high above the ground in the Big Top."
The girls were suitably impressed and followed Peter around fluttering their eyelashes at him in wonder. "But, how come you ended up living here?" enquired Camilla.
"Ah well, you see" said Peter. "I missed my grandpa so much that I decided I wanted to go back to live with him, he would be fretting and wondering where I was. And so I decided to run away, but the ringmaster caught me and locked me up in a cage like one of my lions."
"What happened next?" asked Camilla.
"Oh I got one of my lions to chew through the bars and I broke through and ran away to an island just along the coast. But it was a terrible island, full of bad men ... and it was cursed! They actually turned me into a donkey at one time."
"Oh no, what did you do?" asked Meghan.
At that point the bell rang and the children all had to return to the classroom. Peter's story remained untold, a secret as to how he got back home and eventually to the little village of Sconbury.
Later that night Peter's mother got a telephone call from Camilla's mother who was most perturbed. It seemed Camilla had gone home and refused to go to bed on her own. She kept muttering something about lions and a cursed island. It was all something Peter had said to her in the playground and she was frightened she might be kidnapped and taken away.
Peter's mother was unable to say anything, he had never been to Italy in his life and she could not believe he had told these stories to the other children, So angrily she stormed up to Peter's room and woke him.
"What have you been saying at school?" she demanded of him. "It sounds just like the story of Pinocchio and you know what happened to him - his nose just grew and grew and there is no such thing as fairies so nobody is going to come and save you from having a nose that grows and grows with your silly stories. You are a naughty boy and I want an explanation before your father comes home. Right now!"
"I'm sorry mummy," he said, "I just wanted to impress the others. I've got a good heart, but this mouth ... I really am sorry and I promise I won't tell any more porkies, honestly." And with that a little tear fell from his eyes and he snuggled down to sleep to dream of .......'
