Naughty Nora’s Dad didn’t like gardening very much. Instead of cutting the grass every week, he would wait till it had grown too long and then would huff and puff crossly as the lawn mower wheezed and struggled to bring it back under control.
The flower beds were worse.
Most of the flowers had been overtaken by weeds. And those that did remain looked rather pathetic. Sometimes in a fit of enthusiasm Nora would help her Dad hack back some of the undergrowth, but this was short-lived, and soon the jungle returned.
In the corner of the garden was a compost heap where grass cuttings, and other garden waste, and sometimes potato peelings and carrot tops were heaped together. The idea was to spread the compost onto the flower beds to enrich the soil. But this never quite happened.
At the end of one summer the compost heap was covered with weeds. They had started growing in the spring and all through the summer they had carried on getting bigger and bigger till you couldn’t really call it a compost heap at all. Naughty Nora’s Mum was really cross about it.
‘When are you going to tidy up the garden? she would complain. ‘Especially that compost heap: it’s an eye-sore.’
At this point Dad would look up from underneath his newspaper where he had either been snoozing or reading about the cricket, you could never quite tell.
‘Oh, later on,’ he would say.
But ‘later on’ never seemed to come.
So after a day when she had been particularly naughty and got into quite a lot of trouble, Naughty Nora decided that she would tidy up the compost heap herself. It couldn’t be too difficult, she thought to herself: just a lot of weeds that need digging up and clearing away.
She stuck the garden fork into the ground. The earth was quite hard but it gave way beneath her.
She put her foot on the top of the fork like she had seen her Dad do and pushed it in deeper. Then she lifted up the earth, hoping to dislodge the roots of the weeds.
But she was in for a surprise.
As she lifted the fork into the air three or four great big potatoes came into view.
She stared at them with astonishment.
Where did they come from?
She stuck the fork in again, and again she uncovered more potatoes. In fact wherever she dug, and underneath all the weeds, were potatoes – tons of them.
She ran excitedly into the house.
‘Mum! Dad!’ she cried, ‘Come and see! Look what’s growing on the compost heap!’
Mum and Dad came outside. They were as amazed as Nora. Together, all three of them dug and scrabbled across the compost heap. They filled three buckets with the potatoes they dug up. And the potatoes were all different types and varieties and colours.
When they sat back in the kitchen admiring their amazing crop Mum explained what had happened: ‘It was the potatoes peelings,’ she said. ‘All those peelings we put there in the spring – they were covered with grass and other compost and they’ve grown.’
Mum got an old potato from the fridge and showed Nora the little eyes in them and where the shoots came from and how, even from a peeling, a potato plant could grow.
‘So, they weren’t weeds,’ said Nora, ‘They were potatoes.’
‘Yes’, said Dad, in his serious voice, ‘Of course they were… Err, that’s why I never dug them up till now. I thought you would both like a surprise.’
Mum and Nora looked at Dad with their eyes wide open.
‘Dad, you fibber,’ said Nora. ‘You were as surprised as we were!’
‘Yes, but for once it was a good thing you are so lazy about the gardening,’ said Mum. ‘Now then, Nora, what would you like for tea – potatoes!’
Now all that happened at the end of last summer, but the following Easter Nora had reason to remember it all.
The school was getting ready for an Easter assembly.
Mrs Watkins told everyone to bring something into school that reminded them of the true meaning of Easter. It was to be a surprise and each person was going to come out the front and show the rest of the class what they had brought.
‘Can I bring my snake in?’ asked Gary Wild. ‘He could represent the devil tempting Jesus.’
‘Well that’s an interesting idea Gary,’ said Mrs Watkins, ‘but we want it to be a surprise, any anyway I rather think you’re imagining you have a snake. Please don’t tell fibs, there’s a dear.’
Everyone went home and thought about what they could bring. Naughty Nora wanted to bring something different; something that no one else would think of. Something that would really make everyone think.
She thought of all the obvious things, like an Easter egg or an Easter bunny or an Easter chick. All these spoke about the new life of Easter, but they all seemed a bit boring to Nora.
Then she thought of slightly more unusual things like some nails to remember Jesus dying on the cross, or some thorns twisted into a crown. This was a better idea, but she felt sure that some goody-goody like Amanda Goodchild would think of this. No, she wanted something completely original.
Remembering that the soldiers who put Jesus on the cross had given him vinegar to drink, she decided that this was the answer – a bottle of vinegar. No one else would think of that. She went into the kitchen to get one and her Dad was busy making tea – a nice Shepherds Pie. As she watched him get the food ready an idea came to her in a flash. A brilliant idea. The best idea she had had in a long time. Something that no one else would ever think of.
With a big smile on her face Nora collected up what she needed to take into school and carefully put it in her bag ready for the next day.
As the school assembly began all the children in Naughty Nora’s class were standing out the front. After everyone had sung a song they began to show what they had brought in. Sure enough there were lots of eggs, bunnies, chicks and other assorted fluffy creatures. One person had brought a wooden cross and, yes, someone had bought some nails. Amanda Goodchild had brought a torch. She was looking particularly pleased with herself because no on else had thought of this, ‘Easter is like a new light dawning on the world,’ she said as she swung the beam of her torch around the room. Everyone was very impressed. Amanda Goodchild was beaming almost as much as the torch. So was Mrs Watkins. Naughty Nora scowled, and Mrs Watkins gave her a hard stare.
Gary Wild had made a whip out of some pieces of rope He also looked pleased with himself, though this time Mrs Watkins was looking rather nervous. He cracked it menacingly, but was less convincing when it came to explaining how it fitted into the Easter story, but Nora remembered that Jesus had been whipped before they hung him on the cross.
Naught Nora was last in the line. As it got nearer to her turn she began to wonder whether her idea was quite as good as she had first thought. In fact, she began to wish that she had brought the bottle of vinegar, because no one else had thought of this.
The person next to her was showing yet another fluffy pink monstrosity – a bunny probably. Nora couldn’t see because she was slinking behind her trying to get out of view in the hope that she would be forgotten. But Mrs Watkins saw her.
‘Come now, Nora, what have you got to show us? Don’t be shy.’
“‘Oh nothing, Mrs Watkins,’ said Nora. ‘I left mine at home.’
‘Don’t be so silly girl; we can all see you’ve got something behind your back. Come on let’s see it. Another chick is it? Or an Easter bunny?’
Naughty Nora held out a slightly soggy looking brown paper bag.
‘Oh, it’s not as good as everyone else’s, Miss. Not worth looking at, really.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Mrs Watkins, taking the paper bag from Naughty Nora’s hand.
‘Now what have we here,’ she cried.
Mrs Watkins opened the bag and out tumbled a great pile of potato peelings. They fell down her front and onto the floor.
Everyone laughed.
Everyone, that is, except Mrs Watkins.
‘What on earth!!!’ she exclaimed, unable to finish her sentence. ‘Whatever were you thinking….’ she began. ‘S-S-See me afterwards,’ she stuttered, marching Naughty Nora to the door of the hall and standing her outside.
The assembly finished. Everyone said a prayer and the Head teacher spoke about Easter, making reference to all the things that had been brought in. That is all the things except for Naughty Nora’s potato peelings.
When all the children were back in their classes Naughty Nora and Mrs Watkins and the Head Teacher gathered in the Head Teacher’s study. Naughty Nora was staring at her shoes, feeling particularly miserable. How could she have been so stupid as to bring potato peelings into school? Now she was really for it.
But the Head Teacher, although she was cross, spoke kindly to Nora. ‘I think we need an explanation,’ she said.
For a little while Nora didn’t say anything, but then she remembered how telling fibs just gets you into even bigger trouble, so she told the truth: she explained why she had brought the potato peelings into school. She explained about what had happened the previous summer, all about the weeds growing on the compost heap in the corner of the garden and how she had gone out one evening to dig them up and to her amazement discovered the potatoes growing in the ground, and how she and her Mum and Dad had dug them all up. And then she explained how she had thought of this when Mrs Watkins had asked them to bring in something about the Easter story: because the potato peelings were like Jesus. People had thrown Jesus away. They wanted to get rid of him, so they killed him and buried him and they wanted to forget all about him. But they couldn’t get rid of him, and they couldn’t make him go away. He rose again, and it was a fantastic surprise, just like when she had discovered the potatoes growing in the garden.
And as she made this little speech she felt so passionate about what had happened that she couldn’t help crying a little bit. And at the end of her story she said she was sorry, and that she didn’t mean to be stupid.
But now it was the Head Teacher and Mrs Watkins’s turn to be quiet. They looked at each other bashfully.
‘Oh dear,’ said the Head Teacher, ‘I rather think it is us who have been a little stupid.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Watkins, ‘and a little hasty.’
‘We should have given you time to explain,’ said the Head Teacher.
‘We are very sorry’, they both said.
And so the next day, the last day of term, when all the school were gathered together before the Easter holidays, instead of the Head teacher talking to all the children Naughty Nora herself, the naughtiest girl in all the school, the naughtiest girl the school had ever had, was invited to come out the front and address everyone. And she had with her a great big bag of potato peelings and she told the story of how things in nature have to die before they can live, and how Jesus died on the cross and then rose again.
And everyone cheered.
And because Mum and Dad had to peel a mountain of potatoes so that Nora had enough peelings to take into school, they sat down to a humongous Shepherds Pie for the second time that week.
Extract from The Adventures of Naughty Nora: 14 Fun Stories of Everyday Life for Collective Worship, Assemblies and Storytelling in the Classroom
