After some decluttering of my desk, I found this old piece of creative writing from when I was 10.  Since I’m a sentimental old gal, I couldn’t bear to throw it away so I decided to keep it forever on the internet.  Enjoy!

Above is the original script – I’ve annotated the transcript below using [italics and square brackets] whenever I felt like I needed to add something to make it better 😉

Robot Throbbing

Chris was ready to give up and go home for the night when he heard the throbbing.  [Whilst he was waiting,] He had read all of the newspaper announcing that the wood had refused to hand the land over to the Kensington Gardeners.  He was watching a badgers’ sett for two fruitless hours, but there was no trace of them.  Chris was a 15-year-old naturalist, and he was studying badgers.

“Well, there’s no point in waiting beside an empty burrow,” he thought.  “Those dratted [isn’t that cute haha] badgers must’ve given me the slip, and by now, they’d be far away, munching their supper in a meadow under the moonlight.”

He was just walking to the bush where he had left his bike, when he heard the throbbing.

Just a plane droning by, he thought.  But [it] wasn’t coming from above, was it?  It was coming from beneath his feet.  He crouched down again, and pushed the thorns apart with his hands so he could see the hole.

Suddenly, a machine slipped out from the badger hole.  It looked just like a badger, but an ugly shade of silver, with wild pipes and nuts and bolts sticking out at odd angles.  Chris held his breath – but the machine spotted him with its huge round fly eyes.  It growled a mechanical growl.  Chris was frightened and puzzled.  Why was it growling?  Badgers don’t growl at you like that.  If it was defending its territory, it would attack now.  But, Chris stood his ground, showing no signs of fear.  Maybe, naturalists like him wanted to program it to act like a badger, to see if their robot would survive in the wild.  If they did, they didn’t program it correctly!

“Yuck!  What’s that coming out of the wrong end? [I think I meant rear end lol]” Chris thought, staring.  Capsule shapes came out of it.  As suddenly as it had come, it dived back into the hole and the throbbing started again, getting fainter and fainter…

Chris put on the gloves he always had with him [how convenient] and went over to study the capsules.  Badger droppings were sphere [spherical/spheres], not capsule-shaped!

As he held one in the palm of his hand, it broke open and green, evil-looking sticky goo oozed out.  He smelt it.  It was… plant killer!  But not the everyday stuff you put on your weeds in the front lawn.  It was 100 times stronger, enough to kill tall trees – like the ones in this wood!  But who would want to kill the trees?

Of course!  The Kensington Gardeners!  The newspaper said ‘The owner of Noakey Wood said “Never!  I shall never hand my land over to you!  Not until all my trees are dead!”‘  They could easily make the plant killer deadly enough.  Mr Oakley is very determined – that’s what got Kensington Gardens going!  [I think I meant ‘Mr Oakley is very determined to obtain Noakey Wood for Kensington Gardens’]

Chris went home, his head spinning with thoughts and plans.

The very next day, he went back to Noakey Wood with the police.  The throbbing started again, and again the mechanical badger came up from the burrow.  But this time, the police pounced on it, and used a radio transmitter to uncover where it was being directed by remote control.  They caught Mr Oakly red-handed!  They also detected all the capsules and quickly removed them.

For Chris, he didn’t accept the £500 the owner of Noakey Wood offered him.  He just wanted to know where the best spot for seeing badgers was.

Finally, Chris saw a family of badgers, and even got to film them!  [Note from future Jess: don’t end a story with an exclamation mark.  Very cliché.]

I like to think that future Jess has improved her writing skills.  What do you think of this story?