The Kallerbay Stories

By Frances Fahy

Kallerbay was conceived as a short story project for 6 – 11 year olds, written in a first-person child-related style and the “storytellers” are a class of 25 children in this age bracket. In an uncomplicated environment, we follow the adventures of 25 schoolboys and girls in the fictional sea-side town of Kallerbay where life is adventurous and often exciting. Under the guidance of their teacher, Miss Emerson, each pupil tells a story about family, friends, neighbours, joys and fears. The country location is not mentioned. It’s an anglophile Fantasy Land. It’s where the child wants it to be!

This page contains the first three Kallerbay stories. New stories will be posted as time goes on and linked from the preceding stories. Depending when you read this, you may find those links already there or not.

When Lilly saved Miss Rostier by Yvonne Baker

Hello! My name’s Yvonne Baker and I’m 10.

When our teacher Miss Emerson said we were going to do an e-book with all the stories told by the kids who live in Kallerbay, that’s where I live, I asked her if I could tell the first one and she looked at me with a slightly cross face and asked “Why first Yvonne?” I got a bit embarrassed but I explained that I always have loads of stories in my head and if I don’t tell them straight away I forget the best parts.

She just nodded and said: “I’ve an idea Yvonne. Why don’t you record some of your stories?”

I’ve started loads of times and then I always get stuck. I told some of my stories to Dad and he laughed and said they were funny. I didn’t think they were all that funny. Some of them were even sad but they still made him laugh. My dad’s a bit strange. His name is Steve. He’s a taxi-driver.
Anyway I have a story now and I’m not going to change my mind. I wish I hadn’t said I wanted to be first. That was really silly. I’ll write it down and Dad will check it.

I’d like to tell a story about the dog that came into my mum’s salon. Her name is Monica, my mum’s name I mean, not the dog, and she’s a beautician. She does people’s make-up and nails and all that and she has a salon on the ground floor of our house. She said I could tell the story and use her real name.

She has some very nice clients and some weird ones too. Some of them even come in every day to do facials and stuff. Mum said she tells them they don’t need to get things done so often but they don’t listen to her and they keep making appointments and paying lots of money for treatments they don’t really need. She says she feels sorry for them but Dad says “if it makes them happy, why not?” Typical!

One day Monica was closing up the salon and she was just checking the last few things when she heard a scratching noise at the door. She opened it and saw a little brown and white dog. He was standing there trembling and wet and trying to bark. She remembered that he always came in with one of her regular clients, Margot Rostier. She’s from France or somewhere and I think Mum, I mean Monica, said she was one of her oldest clients. The dog kept yelping and she tried to get him to come in but he pulled at her skirt with his teeth. Monica always wears very long, pretty skirts. My brother Artie says they’re her circus gear.

She started to follow the dog down the street but first she rang our neighbour’s bell. Mr. Channing is a policeman and she thought it was better to tell someone like him. Luckily he had just come home for lunch. He rushed out and they caught up with the dog who had turned into Sea Road and was scratching at a garden gate.

“Miss Rostier lives here,” said policeman Channing.

Monica was very worried by now.

They opened the door and followed the dog through to the kitchen and found Miss Rostier unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood. Monica called Doctor Swift and told him what they’d found. He rushed round and looked at her. She wasn’t well. She had fainted and had hit her head and was losing a lot of blood. She was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. Then Monica remembered the little dog and went to look for him. He was upstairs in a basket right beside the bed and there were two cats on the bed.

The poor dog was so tired he could barely breath so she went downstairs to the kitchen. The cats followed her and she could see from their meowing that they were hungry too. She gave them some milk and then found a dish and a can of dog food and brought it upstairs.

Next day she and her friend Valery went to the hospital to see how Miss Rostier was and she was looking much better. They told her what had happened but all she wanted to talk about was her dog Lilly and her cats Fleur and Topsy. My mum said they were fine and that she had fed them.

“I wonder would your kids look after them until I get home?” Miss Rostier said in a very weak voice. “I’ll pay them of course.”

“I’m sure they will,” my mum said. “Don’t worry about payment.”

When she got home we talked about it and Artie and I agreed we would share the feeding and walking the dog. So Mum said “I’ll take you round this evening and we’ll see where everything is and where you can find the key.”

I called in to Hilda Prasnov’s and I asked her to come in with me and she was thrilled. She lives near Miss Rostier and she’s in my class at school. She’s a really good ballet dancer. She hasn’t many friends because she doesn’t speak much English. And when she came to the house, it was so funny. She spoke Russian or something to the dog and cats and they didn’t mind at all. I told her that maybe we could walk other dogs too and get paid for it but I’m not sure if she understood. I think we’ll have to use Google to understand each other!

Miss Rostier came home a few days later but she said she’d like us to walk Lilly every afternoon and that when she felt stronger she’d come along with us. The funny thing is she knows how to speak Russian like Hilda and now I’m the one who doesn’t understand what they’re saying. I’m starting to learn things like dobroye utro which means good morning.

That’s the end of my story. I hope Miss Emerson likes it. I could tell loads and loads of stories about my family and all my friends and the amazing things that happen in our town but Ms Emerson said that for now it’s one each.

The next story is by Billy Hunter. He’s only 7 and he has a sister Evanna who’s 10 like me. I’m sure Billy will tell a great story.

Bye everybody and thanks for reading my page.

Mr Bill by Billy Hunter

Hi! My name’s Billy Hunter and I’m seven.

It’s my turn to tell a story for Miss Emerson’s story-telling project. I’d like to tell a story about my granddad. His name’s Billy Hunter, too, like me. Everyone at school calls him Mr Bill because he’s the school janitor. He cleans and tidies up and puts the chairs back in place and he helps during recreation and when the bell rings. He’s a bit old now and he’s my dad’s father and also my aunt Emily’s father because she’s my dad’s sister and she lives in America and so does my cousin Sophie.

I love going to school because I always meet Mr Bill at the gate and I say hi to him. He winks at me and he says “you alright?” and I say “yes, and you?” and I give him a high-five. He says hi to Evanna and to her dog Lucky too. Evanna’s my sister and she’s blind. Lucky and granddad both look after Evanna really well.

It doesn’t matter if I don’t see him for the whole day after that as long as I get to see him in the morning. He lives alone, you see, since our Gran died. He misses her I think. I don’t remember her but he said she was very nice. Granddad is a great storyteller. He often talks about his father too. My great-granddad. When granddad was a boy his father went off to the war and he saw lots of strange places and when the bombs went off he’d hide under a tank or behind a wall. He ate frogs and black bread and he even rode on an elephant’s back once and he saw a man with a basket of dancing snakes. That must have been the best thing ever. Granddad didn’t go to war but he went down the coalmines when he was young. They were very dark, he said, but you couldn’t say you were afraid. That must be the worst thing ever.

I said Evanna could go down the mines because she’s not afraid of the dark. Bill smiled but he didn’t really smile properly. I wish I hadn’t said that and I wish she wasn’t blind because she can’t see the cartoons and I have to tell her what they’re like. I put a bandage on my eyes once to see what it was like but I fell over my roller blades and cut my lip.

My mum and dad have a supermarket and after school Evanna and Lucky and I go down the street and we cross at the traffic lights and there’s the supermarket. Lucky must think I’m blind too because he always brushes up beside me when we’re on the road. I sometimes pretend I’m blind and hold the leash too and Evanna and I laugh at the way the people make room for us and I tell her how they’re looking at us.

Anyway granddad sometimes comes down to the supermarket too and he helps stock the shelves or gather up the trolleys. Mum says that when we get to the supermarket we can only take one thing each and I take either a chocolate bar or an ice-cream. One day I saw a boy taking a bar and putting it into his pocket without paying and I didn’t tell my dad because I knew that boy. Then I told granddad and he said: “I’ll have a little chat with him at school.”

I said: “No, granddad, he’ll know it was me.”

“No, he won’t because I saw him too.”

“But you were in the warehouse when it happened.”

“Well, you and I know that but he doesn’t and you know how it is son,” he said. “We have to share our eyes as well as sharing other things. When we tell Evanna what we see it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t see it too. I trust your eyes Billy so you can trust my judgment.”

“OK” I said and crossed my fingers that he was right. I never heard anything about it after that and I didn’t ask.

Sometimes granddad doesn’t come to the supermarket. He goes down to the pier and he talks to the fishermen or he has a beer and a game of cards in the pub with his friends. The last time he had Sunday dinner with us was on his birthday and we gave him a card with Super Granddad! on it.

“That’s nice,” he said. Then he opened the card and there was money inside.

“That’s nicer,” he shouted and we all laughed and he had a giant hug for everybody.

The next story is by Flo Johnson. She’s 6 and really funny. Bye!

My Town by Flo Johnson

Hi! It’s story time at school and I have to prepare my story. I’m Flo Johnson and I’m six years and ten months old. I’ll soon be seven. I don’t write much yet so I’m recording my story for my teacher. Jack is helping me.

I live in Kallerbay with my Mum and my Dad and my brother Jack. He’s my big brother and he always plays football with his friends Danni and Pete. Sometimes we go to the matches when Jack plays. Dad says he’s the very best on the team. All the dads say that.

One day Jack and Danni Rossi put the ball through Mr Hanson’s window. That was scary because Mr Hanson is so old and a bit funny. He doesn’t like kids round his house. Uma Greenwood’s dad fixed up the window even though they didn’t break it because the window was open and the ball went straight in. Uma said that her dad said it didn’t matter. She’s my bestest, bestest friend in all the world and her Mummy has a baby in her tummy.

Miss Emerson told me to describe Kallerbay for some little girl like me who might be living far far away maybe near the North Pole. But I said I don’t know any little girl like me at the North Pole and she said neither do I but we’ll pretend we do. So I said OK.

So this is for the little girl far far away at the North Pole. We live near the sea and there’s a lovely wide sandy beach. Sometimes it’s cold and breezy but we don’t mind. My Mum said that when she was small the water came up on to the road once and everybody was afraid but then they built a barrier and it never came up again.

We have shops and a park and a castle and a cinema and a bank. The school is near the square and there’s a coffee shop and the big kids always hang out there. Or they go to the Workshop. That’s a place for people to do things like projects and shows.

Sometimes I play with Katy Hill. She’s a bit sad because her Mum got very sick and died and now Katy said she’s going to get a new mum. I hope my Mum doesn’t get sick like Katy’s because I don’t want to get a new one and Jack doesn’t either, I think. Katy has a brother called George and a sister called Zoe but they don’t play with us because they say we’re too small and silly.

Homework is boring and storytelling is boring too. The only story I know is the one about Little Red Riding Hood but I don’t like it because when the wolf ate the granny it’s kinda yukky. I love dancing and when I’m seven Mummy said I can go to the Sara Prasnov Dancing School. She’s Hilda’s mother. I saw Hilda dancing and it was fantastic. I want to be a dancer like Hilda. She’s the best dancer in the whole world. Daddy says that it’s very hard work and I’ll have to practice every day. I said, even on Saturday and Sunday, and he said maybe every day except Saturday and Sunday. I said I can’t practice on Wednesday because I want to go on my new skates and then I have to learn how to cycle without stabilizers. Daddy said that’s fine, you’re a very busy girl now so maybe we can do dancing next year. Or maybe we can wait until I’m 10 like Zoe.

Oh! I almost forgot. The next story is by Danni Rossi. He’ll probably tell a silly football story! Bye!

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To read the next set of Kallerbay stories, click here!

 

- Total nr. of readings: 1,012 Copyright © The author [2020] All Rights Reserved. This story may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the author except for personal use.