The Sleepover Club

on the Farm

by Sue Mongredien

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Have you been invited to all these sleepovers?

Sleepover kit List

Copyright

About the Publisher

Baa! It’s Lyndsey Lamb here. No, don’t worry, you haven’t picked up one of those books about talking animals by mistake. It’s me, Lyndz from the Sleepover Club, really. I’m normally plain old Lyndz Collins, but ever since us Sleepover girls hung out on Mr Mackintosh’s farm, the others have been calling me Lyndsey Lamb or Lambkin. And if Kenny’s being horrible, she’ll call me Lamb Chop!

Still, I’m not the only one to have got a silly new name. Uh-uh. Meet the rest of the club – that’s Kenny Cow, Rosie Ram, Frankie Frog and Flissy Foal! Us five are best mates and do everything together – well, most of the time anyway. More about THAT later …

I’ve just got a bit of time before my riding lesson to tell you all about our farm adventures. D’you know, until we went there, I’d always dreamed of being a famous jockey when I grow up, or running my own stables, or working in an animal rescue centre. But guess what I want to do now? Yep – live on a farm! I think it would be awesome being with so many animals all day, every day. Wouldn’t it be fantastic?

But that’s me. I absolutely LURVE animals. All of them – big, small, furry, woolly, wild, tame, claws, paws, hooves, whatever. Do you know what? I even think Kenny’s pet rat Merlin is cute, which is a bit unusual. Me and Kenny seem to be the only two people in the world who aren’t scared of him!

Not everyone’s like that, though. If you asked Fliss if she’d like to live on a farm, she’d shudder and say, “No way!” She has dreams of living in a house like Posh and Becks when she’s older – preferably when she’s married to Ryan Scott from school! In fact, I reckon Fliss would actually like to be the next Posh Spice so she could buy as many clothes as she wants to. Now that’s HER idea of heaven. Funny, isn’t it, how different people are?

Lucky for me that the rest of the Sleepover Club were mad keen on the idea of a farm sleepover too, or we might never have got there. Frankie and Kenny love doing anything that’s a bit out of the ordinary, and Rosie is always up for a bit of fun, so once I’d got those three on my side, that was that. No stopping us!

Anyway, let me begin at the beginning, as Mrs Weaver, our teacher, always says. It all started when we were having a sleepover at my house one Friday night. We were in my bedroom playing a game of Cat’s Got The Measles when Mum shouted up the stairs that it was tea.

“Result!” Kenny cheered, rushing for the door. “I am sooo Hank Marvin.”

“Who’s he?” Fliss wanted to know. She was looking very puzzled.

“Hank Marvin – starving, geddit?” Kenny replied. “It’s rhyming slang, isn’t it?”

Fliss didn’t look convinced. “Is it?” she asked.

“’Course it is,” Kenny answered. “Honestly, Fliss, don’t you ever watch EastEnders?”

“Yes, but …” Fliss was still frowning. “You’re weird, Kenny. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

Downstairs, Mum was dishing up bangers, mash and beans. Everyone was already sitting around the table except my big brother Stuart. He was late home from school again, and boy, did Mum look cross about it.

“Where’s that son of mine got to?” she grumbled, putting his plate in the oven to keep warm. “I told him to phone me if he was going to be late.”

“He’s probably stopped off at the farm, lucky thing,” I said, spearing a sausage and biting the end off. Yum!

“Lyndz, cut your food up properly,” Mum said at once. She’s got a biiiiig thing about table manners, my mum. She says it’s like feeding time at the zoo when our family sits down to eat. “Anyway, he still should have phoned me. He knows I only worry when he doesn’t.”

Stuart is still at school but works on Mr Mackintosh’s farm down the road in his spare time. He’s like me, he loves animals and wants to be a farmer when he’s older. Awesome! I hope he does. It’ll mean I’ll be visiting him – and his animals, of course – ALL the time!

I’d been nagging him for absolutely ages to let me visit the farm with him because lambing season was about to start and I was dying to see some baby lambs. Soooo cute! Aren’t baby animals simply THE most adorable things in the world? But even though I kept going on at him, Stu kept on putting me off, saying they were too busy at the farm to let little girls mess around. Little girls, indeed! Sometimes I hate boys.

Anyway, so we were just getting stuck into our tea when we heard a key turn in the front door. It was Stuart – at last.

“Nice of you to join us,” my dad muttered sarcastically as Stu came in, his face all pink from the cold.

“Why didn’t you phone?” Mum said, rushing to get his plate out of the oven. “Here – sit down. Your tea’s still warm.”

“Thanks, Mum,” he said, taking his coat off and sitting down. “I did try and phone you but the line was engaged for ages.”

I went bright red then. Oops! That had been me. I’d phoned up this horoscope line to get the Sleepover Club horoscopes for the week, only the call seemed to last forever and ever. All five of us have got different star signs, you see, so I had to listen to all of them, didn’t I?

“Sorry I’m late. I got chatting to Mrs Mack, up at the farm,” he went on. “I just dropped in to say hello but ended up helping her out for a bit. Bad news – one of the ewes is really ill and has had her lambs early. They’re tiny – and because the ewe is so ill, she can’t feed them.”

“Ahhhhh!” I said, biting my lip in concern. “Poor little lamby babies!”

“Poor poor lamby-wammies,” Kenny said, teasing me.

“The teeny tiny little wittle baby lambykins have a poorly mummy!” Frankie added, with a grin.

I was about to get all indignant, but Stuart spoke before I could think of a crushing reply. “Actually, Lyndz, Mrs Mack was asking about you,” he said. “Asking if you were very busy tomorrow.”

“No, not really,” I said in surprise. “Just a riding lesson. Why?”

“Well, she was wondering if you might like to help out with the – what was it? – the poor little wittle baby lambykins,” he said. “She’ll have to bottle-feed them until their mum gets better and she remembered how soppy you are about baby animals so …”

“Whoopeee!” I yelled, jumping up from the table and sending my fork flying. “Too right I’ll help out!” This great big enormous beam stretched over my face from ear to ear and I started jigging up and down in excitement. “Feeding baby lambs! Awesome!”

Stuart grinned at me. “Oh, that’s a shame, I told her you would probably be too busy,” he said. “I know you aren’t really that keen on baby animals …”

“WHAT?!” I yelled, stopping dead still. “Are you mad?”

“He’s winding you up,” Dad said, patting me on the arm reassuringly. “Don’t take any notice of him.”

“Oh! Phew! Oh!” I said, smiling again. “Stu – you pig!”

“Talking of pigs, do you think you can finish your tea without flinging any more cutlery around?” Mum sighed. “I bet those farm animals have better table manners than you, Lyndsey Collins. Come on – the sooner you finish it off, the sooner you can phone Mrs Mack and talk about tomorrow.”

Well, you’ve never seen anyone polish off three sausages, a pile of mash and a plate full of baked beans so quick before. No more talking – I just gobbled the lot down as if my life depended on it. But then I had to wait for everyone else to finish, and THEN I had to sit through pudding as well.

I was too excited to eat anything else but Mum wouldn’t let me leave the table until everyone had finished eating. Manners again, you see! And that meant waiting for my little brother Ben, aged four, who’s just the slowest eater in Cuddington. First, he made a well in his mashed potato. Then he scooped up all his beans and put them in the well. Then he said he didn’t want any more and so I had to watch while Dad did the old “Open wide, here comes the choo-choo train” game to feed him mouthfuls of sausage. TYPICAL!

At long last, Mum said we could all leave the table, and us Sleepover girls went in the living room. “Yay!” I shouted, dancing around. “Isn’t that cool about me going to bottle-feed those cute little lambs? Can you imagine?”

“Yeah, lucky thing,” Rosie said. “I bet they’re really cuddly and sweet.”

“That’s if they don’t have fleas, of course,” Fliss said, with a shudder. Like I told you, she’s not big on nature.

“D’you know, I’ve never seen a real lamb before,” Kenny said. “Well, apart from one with mint sauce and gravy on it, of course.”

“Oh, KENNY!” everyone groaned.

“I’ve never even been on a FARM before,” Frankie said, quickly changing the subject. “What’s Mr Mackintosh’s farm like?”

“Well, he’s got loads of cows and sheep,” I said, trying to remember. Then I had a brilliant idea. PING! Flashing lightbulb over the head! “Hey – why don’t you lot come with me? Why don’t we make it a Sleepover Club day at the farm?”

“Yeah!” “Coo-ell!” “Wicked!” Frankie, Rosie and Kenny shouted at once. But one person was silent.

“Fliss?” I said, turning to her. “Do you fancy it?”

“Well …” she began.

“I’m sure the lambs don’t have fleas,” Rosie said reassuringly. “Well, not too many anyway.”

“And we won’t let any cows try and eat you,” Kenny said. “JOKE, Fliss!” she added quickly, as Fliss’s mouth fell open in alarm.

“Go on, Fliss,” I urged her. “We can see the ducklings. Stuart said there are loads. And there might be some cute little chicks!”

“Well …” she said again.

“And if you DON’T come, we’ll tell everyone at school that you’re scared of a few titchy-witchy baby lambs,” Frankie said, raising her eyebrows threateningly.

“All right, all right,” Fliss said at once. “And don’t be so silly – of course I’m not scared of lambs.”

“What about big angry bulls?” Kenny said, making little horns on her head with her fingers. “Big angry bulls that come CHARGING towards you!”

Fliss squealed and darted to the side as Kenny lowered her head and ran straight at her. “Kenny!” she squeaked. “What are you doing?”

Kenny lowered her head again and chased Fliss around the table. “Getting you ready for our day at the farm,” she said, with a mischievous glint in her eye. “You can’t let a bull see that you’re scared of it, Fliss. They’re like dogs – they can SMELL the fear, you know. MOOOOO!”

“Don’t take any notice of her, Fliss,” I said, pushing Kenny out of the way. “The bull won’t hurt you.”

“Just don’t wear red,” Frankie said wamingly. “They hate red.”

“What about navy blue?” Fliss asked at once, looking worried. “Do they hate navy blue? Because I was going to wear my blue jacket tomorrow and …”

“Navy blue, did you say?” Rosie said. She shook her head anxiously. “Ooh, no. Bulls HATE navy blue. It sends them crazy.”

“No, it doesn’t, Fliss, she’s teasing,” I said, as Fliss was starting to look terrified. The last thing I wanted was for her to back out of the whole thing. “Honestly, trust me, we don’t even have to go NEAR the bull. We don’t even have to look at it! Now, don’t anyone say anything else horrible to Fliss while I phone Mrs Mack. I mean it! And anyway, she might not say you lot can come at all.”

They all went quiet at that. Ha! The power of Lyndz! I didn’t mean to be bossy but I knew that if Fliss got too flustered and scared, she’d put her foot down and wouldn’t come with us. And Fliss gets very stubborn when she wants to. I quickly dialled the farm number before anyone said anything in return.

“Mrs Mackintosh, hello, it’s Lyndsey Collins here,” I said when she answered. “Stuart told me about the lambs – how are they?”

“Not so bad, just missing their mummy,” she replied. “They were born a bit early so they’re quite small, and they need lots of looking after, which is why I was wondering if you’d like to help me feed them. What do you think? Could you spare a bit of time tomorrow to come over?”

“Yes, PLEASE!” I said at once. Mrs Mack was asking me like she thought I’d be doing her a favour, when really it was going to be the best treat I’d had in ages. “But the only thing is, I’m having a sleepover with some friends tonight. Would they… er… would you mind… could they …?” I didn’t quite know how to ask without sounding dead cheeky.

“Oh, bring them along with you if they want to come,” Mrs Mack said at once. “The more the merrier!”

I grinned at the others and made the thumbs-up sign. “Are you sure? Oh, that’s brilliant. Thank you!”

“Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow then,” she said cheerily. “But bring some wellies, won’t you? The farm’s quite muddy at the moment.”

“Will do,” I said. I could hardly get the words out, I was feeling so excited. “See you tomorrow.”

I put the phone down and twirled about happily. “Hooray!” I cheered.

“Let me guess, she said no, you can’t bring your smelly sleepover friends along,” Kenny joked.

“No, I bet she said you could bring all your NICE sleepover friends along, apart from that smelly Kenny McKenzie girl,” Frankie said, sticking her tongue out at Kenny. “She didn’t want the animals to be too, like, frightened.”

“Nope, you’re both wrong,” I said. “We are sooo invited! We’re all going to the farm. And we’re going tomorrow. How about that?”

Coo-ell! Everyone started getting really excited about going to the farm, even Fliss. What a miracle! “I’m going to send my mum a text message to tell her,” she announced importantly. Fliss got this wicked mobile in the summer, and uses it at every single opportunity. Her biggest complaint at the moment is that none of the rest of us have got mobiles yet, so she can’t message any of us – but as she sees us nearly every day, I don’t really know why she wants to.

“GOING 2 C LAMS TOM” she typed in laboriously, sticking her tongue out in concentration. If you hadn’t guessed, Fliss isn’t the best speller in the world. “Get it? Going to see lambs tomorrow. Clever, eh? There!” she said, pressing the Send button.

“Fliss, in the time it’s taken you to send that, you could have actually phoned her and told her,” Frankie pointed out. “In fact, you could have phoned six different people and told them.”

“And ‘lambs’ has a ‘b’ at the end of it anyway,” I told her.

Fliss looked scornful. “No, it doesn’t!” she said. “Lambs? Where’s the ‘b’ in that? I can’t hear any ‘b’!”

“That’s ’cos it’s silent, you big nana,” said Rosie.

“The ‘b’ comes at the end, stoopid,” Kenny said, writing it down. “Look!”

Fliss took one look and tossed the piece of paper aside. “You lot are always trying to wind me up,” she declared, putting her nose in the air. “Well, not this time! Lam-b. As if! Lamb rhymes with ham, doesn’t it? And I know how to spell ham. H, A, M. Right?”

I was just about to get the dictionary out to prove it to her when Fliss’s phone beeped. Her mum had messaged her back already.

“WHO IS TOM?” the message said. “AND DON’T EAT CLAMS – U R ALLERGIC.”

“What is she on about?” Fliss wondered aloud. “Tom? Who IS Tom?”

“Tom’s my brother,” I said, giggling. “You meant ‘tomorrow’ but she thought you were talking about my brother!”

“And you told her you were going to ‘C LAMS TOM’,” Rosie laughed. “And she thought you meant CLAMS.”

“Oh, honestly,” Fliss grumbled. “She doesn’t know how to spell lambs either.”

Just then, Mum came in the room. “Fliss, dear, your mum’s on the phone,” she said, looking a bit bemused. “She said something about you being allergic to shellfish and not to eat any clams. I tried to tell her that we don’t have any clams in the house but she insisted on speaking to you.”

Fliss went off to reassure her mum that no, she wasn’t going to eat any shellfish, she was just going to see some lambs – with a ‘b’ – and the rest of us all cracked up.

“Ahh, the wonders of text messaging,” Frankie sniggered. “So quick and soooo confusing!”

Once Fliss was back, having cleared up the clams confusion, we decided to play some animal games to get us in a farm-visiting kind of mood for Saturday. First, we had a few rounds of Squeak, Piggy, Squeak. Have you ever played that? One person is blindfolded and they blunder about the room until they bump into someone else. The blindfolded person then says, “Squeak, Piggy, Squeak!” When the person they’ve caught does squeak, they have to guess who it is. It’s really funny, especially all the pig impressions.

It was even funnier than usual this night when my dad walked into the room in the middle of a game. He saw what we were up to and knelt down so that he was the same height as us. Then when blindfolded Frankie bumped into him and told him, “Squeak, Piggy, squeak”, he went, “SQUEAK! SQUEAK!” in such a loud, un-squeaky voice, Frankie nearly fell over in surprise. We all burst out laughing and Frankie pulled off her blindfold to see who’d made such a noise. When she saw that it was my dad, she laughed too. “Naughty piggy!” she giggled, wagging a finger at him. “Big daddy piggy made Frankie piggy jump!”

Next we played Farmer In The Den, which got so loud, my mum came in my bedroom to see what all the noise was about. “I thought you’d invited twenty real farmers round,” she said. “Is there really only you five in here making all that din?”

“Sorry, Mum,” I said, but she was twinkling at me, so I knew she didn’t really mind.

Then we decided to play Piggy In The Middle which turned out to be even noisier. Instead of there being one piggy in the middle of two people, the poor person who was the piggy in this game had to work twice as hard to try and catch the teddy bear the other four of us were throwing to each other. Super-fit Kenny was the first piggy and even she was struggling to catch hold of it. She went running back and forth as the teddy was tossed, jumped up high to try and catch it, and even dived to the floor a couple of times.

“Come on, lazy piggy, you can do it,” Fliss taunted her, waving the teddy above her head.

Kenny charged towards her, but just at the last minute – whoosh! Fliss threw the teddy over her head to Rosie, who caught it neatly.

“Oh, pigg-eeee, where are you?” Rosie sang. “Come and get the tedd-eee!”

Whoosh! Away went the teddy again, this time to me.

“Too slow!” Rosie crowed.

Kenny was starting to get frustrated. And nobody, but nobody calls her “too slow” if they want to live to see next Christmas!

“You are soooo dead, Cartwright,” she warned Rosie with one of her evil grins. Then she waited until Rosie had the teddy again, and steamed across, rugby-tackled her and wrestled her to the floor to try and get it.

“You cheat!” Frankie screamed and promptly dived in to help Rosie.

“Now who’s too slow?” Kenny yelled, brandishing the teddy above her head. “Ha! Gotcha!”

We ended up getting so wild that going to sleep later that night was really difficult. Frankie and Rosie kept putting on silly voices and asking Fliss to pass them the clams, and then we’d all giggle helplessly. Then once we’d all recovered and were lying quietly in the dark, someone else would explode with giggles – and we’d all be off again. Plus, I was far too excited about going to the farm to even THINK about sleeping.

Somehow, I managed it though. Just as I was thinking, there was no way I could possibly get to sleep, the next thing I knew it was morning and the sun was shining again. Hooray!

After breakfast, I told Mum what Mrs Mack had said about the farm being muddy and between us, we hunted out five pairs of wellies. I had my new blue ones, Rosie squashed her little tootsies into my old pair that were too small for me now, Kenny Big-Foot borrowed a pair of Tom’s and Frankie wore a pair of my mum’s. There was also an old pair of Stuart’s boots that we offered Fliss, but she wasn’t having any of it.

“No, thanks, I’m going to wear my new trainers,” she said, waving a foot proudly to show us. “Nice, aren’t they?”

“They are nice, Fliss, but they won’t be for much longer if you wear them on the farm,” my mum told her. “Honestly, love, you’ll get them covered in mud.”

“Well, I won’t go in any mud,” Fliss said promptly. “Thanks, Mrs Collins, and I don’t want to be rude but I really don’t want to wear those wellies.”

“It’s up to you,” my mum said, putting them back in the cupboard. “But I don’t want your mum phoning me up tonight, all upset because your new trainers are ruined.”

“Oh, she won’t,” Fliss said confidently. “Because there is no way I’m going to set foot in any yucky mud, and that’s that!”

Confident words from Fliss, all right, but as soon as Dad dropped us off at the farm, she realised she was going to have to EAT those words. Mrs Mackintosh hadn’t been exaggerating about the mud – it was everywhere, even all the way up from the garages to the farmhouse door!

Squelch! Squelch! Squelch! Me, Rosie, Kenny and Frankie happily splodged through the mud up to the house. We turned round to see Fliss slithering about behind us, trying to stay on her tiptoes as thick brown mud splurged around her gleaming white trainers.

Mrs Mack pulled open the front door. “Hello, Lyndsey, hello, girls,” she said with a warm smile. Mrs Mack is ALWAYS smiling. She’s one of the jolliest people I’ve ever met. Mind you, she looked almost serious for a moment when she caught sight of Fliss, still halfway up to the door, trying desperately to tread on the grassy bits. “Oh dear,” she said thoughtfully. “I think I’m going to have to find a spare pair of welly boots for someone, aren’t I?”

“Look at her,” Kenny giggled. “Hey, Poo-Foot! Get a move on!”

Fliss glared at her. “This is sooo gross,” she moaned. “I feel sick!”

Once Fliss had made it into the farmhouse and Mrs Mack had persuaded her to swap her trainers – which already looked as if Fliss had been stuck in a bog – for a pair of boots, she took us all into the big, warm farm kitchen. “Now come and see the two new members of the Mackintosh family, a boy and a girl,” she said, bringing us over to a cardboard box. “Oh, they’re having a sleep right now. Can you see?”

The five of us knelt on the stone floor to peer into the box. And there, fast asleep and all curled up, were two darling little lambs. They were both pure, pure white apart from their black noses, and they looked all small and helpless. Without thinking, my hand just went straight in and stroked one of them very gently. Soooo cuddly and soft!

“Oh!” I said. “He’s so… woolly!”

“Derr… really?” Kenny said sarcastically, but even she was reaching a hand in to stroke a soft little coat. “Ahhh… look at this one’s tiny little ears.”

“What are they called?” Rosie asked Mrs Mack.

“Well, do you know, I haven’t given them names yet,” she replied. “Maybe you girls would like to think of something to call them?”

“Snowy,” said Frankie at once.

Fliss pulled a face. “That’s sooo boring,” she said. “Our neighbour’s cat is called Snowy.”

“We used to have a rabbit called Snowy, too,” I added.

“How about… Poo-Foot?” Kenny giggled. “Oh, no – we already know someone called that, don’t we, Fliss?”

“Stop calling me that, Kenny,” Fliss said crossly. “No one thinks it’s funny”

Fliss was starting to look a bit upset. You can always tell because her bottom lip starts turning down, and her cheeks get a bit pink.

“Hmmm… what about Snowdrop, then?” Rosie suggested quickly, looking at a pot of snowdrops that Mrs Mack had on one of the windowsills.

“Snowdrop is a cute name,” I agreed, twitching one of the lambs’ ears. “You can be Snowdrop, little one! What do you think, Fliss?”

Fliss shrugged, still in a narky mood. “Whatever,” she sniffed.

“What about this one, then?” Frankie said, stroking Snowdrop’s little sister. “Look, she’s got a tiny bit of black on her face. How about… er …”

“Snowflake,” I said.

“Cornflake,” Kenny joked. “Or chocolate Flake! Hey, Flake-brain, what do you think of your new name?”

“Don’t be so stoooopid, Kenny,” Fliss said, rolling her eyes.

“How about naming her after another flower to go with Snowdrop?” Frankie suggested. “How about Crocus?”

“Sounds like a frog’s name!” I said. “Croak-us – get it?”

“How about Jasmine?” Rosie said.

“That’s pretty,” Fliss said. “Snowdrop and Jasmine – don’t they sound sweet?”

Ooh! Just as she said that, the two tiny lambs started waking up. “Oh, look, they know their names already,” I said in delight. “Hello, Snowdrop. Hello, Jasmine!”

Snowdrop stood up on his wobbly little legs and pushed his nose into Mrs Mack’s hand. Then he bleated plaintively. Ma-a-a-a! he went.

“Someone’s hungry, by the sound of it,” Mrs Mack said, giving him a friendly stroke. “I’ll just warm up your bottle, Snowdrop.”

Then Jasmine started bleating too. Maaaa-aaa-aa! Maa-aa-aa! I couldn’t resist any more and picked her up to cuddle her. “Oh, hungry baby, it won’t be long,” I crooned into her little ear. Honestly, my heart was just MELTING as I held her warm little body. Then she snuggled her head into my neck and I thought I would burst with happiness!