The Model village

Father rang the doorbell of the landlord's flat.
"Hello," said the landlord.
"We've come to rent the Wendy house," he said.
"Great.  It's big enough for a family, isn't it?"  The landlord led father, mother and the
3 children inside.  "£600 cash in hand."  Father handed him the money.
"Where did you get £600?" asked Mother.
"The credit card."
"What credit card?"
"On the internet."
"We don't have internet."
"I went to the library."
"You're unemployed.  They wouldn't give you one."
"It's a high risk credit card."
"At what interest rate?"
"50%.  It works out at £75 a month.  It's a bargain.  We can apply for housing benefit."
"No we can't.  What's our address?  We live in a Wendy house.  We live in a Pretend
Corner in a spare bedroom that's been made into a model village.  We can't tell them that."
The landlord pointed to a small room that used to be the toilet.
"The miniaturisation machine is in there."  
The family miniaturised themselves and walked into the bedroom.
"Yasmin, you've miniaturised your brother to the wrong size," said Father.
"He looks really tiny, doesn't he?" said Mother.  "What has she done?"
"She must have set the scale wrong."
"I thought I saw her fiddling around with that big dial thing.  Yasmin, that's very naughty."
"We'll go back there straight away and make him the right size," said Father.

Mother was joined by a girl in her late teens.
"Are you the new family moving into the Wendy house?"
"Yes," said Mother.
"It's great that you've got the whole house to yourselves.  I pay £300 a year to live in
a shoebox."
"A shoebox?"
"It's a very nice shoebox.  Fully furnished.  The walls are made out of sticky backed plastic.
It looks like something from Blue Peter.  It's a lot better than the accommodation I had when
I was unemployed."
"Is it?"
"I used to live in a margarine tub.  £150 unfurnished, £200 when I had it furnished."
"How do you furnish a margarine tub?"
"A piece of carpet, a toilet and a bed."
"What kind of toilets do they have here?"
"Chemical toilets.  Actually the top off a bottle of mouthwash with dilute bleach in it."
Father returned with the other children.
"Hello.  I'm Zola," said the teenage girl.
"Hello," said Father.  "Is there anywhere we can go for something to eat?"
"We all go to the Hole in the Wall cafe," said Zola.

The cafe was a hole in the skirting board with miniaturised chairs and tables.
There was a microwave oven in there.  The microwave itself had been miniaturised.
The cable and the plug had not been and disappeared somewhere into the wall.
"What do you want?" asked the female assistant behind the counter.
"A baked bean please," said Zola.
"Just one?" asked Mother.
"Baked beans are huge here.  They're like baked potatoes."
"I'll have a super sausage," said Father, seeing the sign on the wall.
"I'll have one too," said Mother.  "Do you do children's portions?"
"Why don't the children have a baked bean each?" asked Zola.
When the super sausages arrived they were just one slice of sausage and they
filled the whole plate.
"£25 please," said the counter assistant.
"That's a lot to pay for 3 tiny beans and 2 pieces of sausage," said Mother.
"Look Honey, they're not so tiny here, are they?" said Father.
"£25 isn't just for this one meal, it's for the whole week," said the assistant.
"How many meals is that?" Mother muttered to herself for half a minute.  "I'd still end up
paying 35p for one baked bean.  Tesco's is cheaper."
"Look Honey, Tesco's don't use a machine to make the bean a hundred times bigger,
heat it up and put it on a plate and then give you a room with a table where you sit and eat.
If they did, baked beans would cost a lot more than 35p."  Father took £30 from his pocket.
"Keep the change."  As they sat down Mother was still unhappy.
"We'll buy our own beans from Tescos and keep them in a corner of the garden," she said.
"Wouldn't they go bad?" asked Father.
"There must be a way."
"What do you want for dessert?" asked the female counter assistant.  "We have chocolates
in different flavours and crisps."
"I'll have crisps," said little Timothy.
"What flavour?"
"Cheese and onion."  The woman gave him a huge crisp.  It was coffee table sized.
The child held it eagerly in both hands and bit into it.
"Chocolates," said little Yasmin.
"What flavour?"
"Caramel."  The woman gave her a plate filled by a slice of one caramel chocolate.
Yasmin picked it up with her fingers.
"Use a spoon," said the counter assistant.  Yasmin picked one up from the cutlery tray.

"Will you kids stop stroking those nits?" asked Father.  "They're starting to follow us.  They
don't look very nice."
"If one of those bites you, you'll be really ill," said Mother.
"This one's looking up at me and purring," said little Timothy.  "They're like cats."
"Why are there so many nits?" asked Father.  "Where do they all come from?"
A huge mouse came walking across the floor.  It was the size of an elephant.
The floorboards shook.  It passed them and carried on down to the cafe.
The cafe owner picked up a rifle and pointed it at the mouse.
"He's going to kill it!" shouted an old lady.
"That thing can devour all the food in my cafe in one meal.  If I don't shoot it, it'll come
back.  It'll bring its friends.  We'll all starve."  He fired the rifle.  The mouse made a
strange sucking noise as the bullet pierced its chest and it fell to the floor where it died.
Some men appeared who were carrying a dust pan between them.  They scooped up
the body of the mouse and carried it into the garden.

"I've had a brilliant idea," said Father.  "I'm going to get some fresh vegetables,
push them around in a wheelbarrow and sell them.  I'll make a fortune.  Brussel sprouts,
pickled onions, peas."  Father went to the supermarket.  He bought a big bag of sprouts,
two jars of pickled onions and four tins of peas.  He left them in a corner of the garden.
He took his wheelbarrow into the toilet room and miniaturised it while he stood outside the
door.  At his full size, he opened the bag of brussel sprouts in the garden and put
some of them in the wheelbarrow.  He left the wheelbarrow outside the toilet door while
he miniaturised himself.  Now he pushed the wheelbarrow into the bedroom.
"Fresh brussel sprouts, two for a pound.  Come on, you're fed up with living on sausages,
beans and chocolates.  Come and have a nice juicy brussel sprout."  Little Timothy came
up to his dad.
"Daddy, can I have one brussel sprout for 50p?"
"Yes Son."  Timothy gave Father the money, took the brussel sprout and kicked it.
"Thanks Dad, this'll make a fantastic football."  By the end of the afternoon all the children
in the village had bought a brussel sprout to use as a football.  An old man told Father,
"These kids are a nuisance.  Their footballs are bouncing off people's heads.
They could damage our houses."
"It wasn't my intention to arm the children with footballs.  Why does no one want to eat
the sprouts?"  He pushed his wheelbarrow down to the cafe.
"Nobody likes brussel sprouts," said the cafe owner.
"I might be able to make them into soup," said the female counter assistant.
"Have you got other vegetables as well?"
"I've got four tins of peas, two jars of pickled onions and a kilogram of sprouts."
"Great.  I'll give you £50 for the whole lot."  Father was devastated to see his hopes of
making a fortune now in ruins.
"It's worth more than that."
"I could go to the shop and buy it all myself," said the counter assistant.  "Bear in mind
I'd have to get the bus there it would cost me £8 for the trip and all the goods.  It would
take six hours to complete the journey and bring a dozen wheelbarrows of vegetables.
So I'm paying you £7 an hour."
"All right.  You can have them all for £50."

Father  had another idea with which to make his fortune.  He got three good food containers.
They were airtight tins with lids.  He put them in the garden.  He bought a bag of sugar
and 100 sandwich bags.He now came into the model village with his wheelbarrow full of
sugar.  Each grain of sugar was the size of a gobstopper.  A young boy came and looked
interested.
"Do you want some sugar?" asked Father.  He took a handful of sugar and put it into a
sandwich bag.  The boy took hold of the bag with a delighted look on his face.
"Twenty pence please."  There was soon a huge queue of children and a few adults.
There were three big containers in the garden and Father brought several wheelbarrows full
of sugar and made a lot of money that day.  The next day Father thought of something even
better.  Why not fill the wheelbarrow with Smarties, M & Ms or Skittles?  In the model
village these were the size of pizzas.  Everybody was delighted.
"They're good for you," Father said.  "M & Ms contain peanuts for protein and iron.
Skittles contain fruit and they're full of vitamin C."  He sold the sweets for 50P each.
Then one day Father brought his wheelbarrow in and nobody bought any sweets.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"We're sick of sweets," said a young mother.  "Our kids aren't but we are."
"Mammy, Mammy," her little son said between sobs, "I want an M & M, I want an M & M."
"Your teeth are all sticky and you're putting on weight."  Father pushed his wheelbarrow
down to the cafe.
"Will you buy these sweets?" he asked.
"We're not even selling as many sliced chocolates," said the cafe owner.  "Demand for
strawberry cream is at an all time low.  Everybody likes chocolates but not chocolates
the size of pizzas three times a day."
"It's like the song 'I Wish It Could be Christmas Every Day,' said the female counter
assistant.  "If that song came true you'd be sick of it.  I'll give you £50 for the whole lot."

The landlord arrived with a vacuum cleaner.
"Keep out of the way everyone, I'm vacuuming."
"That looks dangerous," said Mother.
"We all go into the shoe box and stand there," said an old man.  "Follow me."
Everybody went and stood in the shoe box.  Everybody except little Yasmin.
"Yasmin," screamed Mother, "come here, now!"
"No Mammy, I'm watching the vacuum cleaner.  It's funny the way it sucks up huge pieces
of dirt."
"It'll suck up you if you don't watch out."  Suddenly Yasmin was no longer there.
The landlord looked horrified.  He stopped the vacuum cleaner and took it to pieces.
All the dust fell out, making a complete mess on the floor.  There was Yasmin, very dirty.
"Don't you ever, ever do that again!"  shouted Mother.  "Young lady, you are coming
straight home with me for a bath in a cup of lemonade."