all that.

And every day. Dad goes away in his Council truck and works on the city pipes. He says there's enough roots stuck in the city's pipes to keep him going for another twenty years! That's good news. And what about Mum, well Mum works in a factory that makes pipes, during the day. She's lost a lot of weight at that job too. She says she likes being slim and trim, but Tootsies is still as fat as a barrel.

And what am I doing? I mean when I'm not at school or playing with my mates? It's kind of a secret actually. Promise you won't tell? OK. What I do is look after some little bits of the bean-stalk which I stuck in my pocket when nobody was looking. I keep them in a box under my bed. Every day I feed them a few drops of water, just to keep them alive, but not enough to make them grow too big. I'm thinking that, one day, when Dad's finished his job of clearing all the city pipes, I might just drop a few bits of beanstalk down the drain.

I'd do anything not to have to eat beans again!