The End Of The Rainbow

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

“I'm not going to tell you again, young man, there are no monsters in your wardrobe and none lurking behind your chest of drawers. There are no ghosties creeping ever so quietly up the stairs, no ghoulies hiding under your bed and not a single long-legged beastie scratching on your window - that's just the Silver birch outside waving around in the wind, remind me on Saturday morning and I'll get the ladder out of the garage and trim the branches.”

“But I could hear the monster growling, daddy, it wasn't the tree!”

“Listen to me, Tad, This is the third time your yelling has woken me tonight. You haven't woken your mother, mind – oh no, she's snoring her head off. She sounds like a Grizzly bear with sinusitis. No, it's much louder than that, she sounds like an Arctic lorry with a busted silencer. She can sleep through anything, that woman, bless her cotton socks. I could get up to all sorts of things at night without her suspecting a single thing..... No, forget I said that.

There are no monsters in or anywhere near this house, OK? Go to sleep this instant, it's nearly half two in the morning and your mother and I have to be up for work at the crack of flipping dawn. Well I have to be up at the crack of dawn, another three hours, that's all I've got, but your mum can stop in bed 'til eight thirty, the lucky swine. Forget I said that as well, Tad, please, or she'll bloody kill me.....”

“What's the crack of flipping dawn?”

“It's a special place at the end of the rainbow where small boys aren't allowed to go – it's an adults only joint, I'm afraid.”

“How do you get to the end of the rainbow?”

“I can't tell you that! If I tell you that the dreaded Fraddle-golloper will get me.”

“What's a Fraddle-golloper?”

“It's a great, pink hairy thing with stripy knees and ears the size of a house. It's three times as tall as a telegraph pole and fat, really, really fat, as fat as, ooh, I don't know - nearly as fat as your auntie Mary – it has a stomach almost as big as the universe and it never sleeps. Don't tell your aunt Mary I said that, by the way, it's our little secret. The Fraddle-golloper hangs around outside all night sniffing out stray monsters, and if he smells one he sucks it up with a gigantic invisible straw and swallows it whole, which is why there aren't many monsters in these parts nowadays. Shhh! Can you hear that? It's the Fraddle-golloper sucking up a long-legged beastie!”

“I can't hear anything..... Why would the Fraddle-golloper get you if you told me how you get to the end of the rainbow?”

“Because it's a secret, and secrets are special. They're things you're not supposed to tell anyone, things that are, well, secret. If I was to tell you that the only way to get to the end of the rainbow is to glue your ears to the soles of your feet, paint your elbows and bum cheeks with Daylo orange polka dots, wrap yourself in three and a half tons of silver foil, stick a £2.99 price sticker on your noggin, hop to Surbiton on one leg, float halfway back down the canal on a fallen leaf and then jump on a number 59 bus to Outer Mongolia via the End of the Rainbow I'd have betrayed the secret. Oh no, I've already done it, I've told you how to get to the end of the rainbow, haven't I? Now the dreaded Fraddle-golloper will get me for telling you his greatest secret.....”

“What else do Fiddle-faddlers do, dad?”

“It's 'Fraddle-golloper', Tad, not ' Fiddle-faddler'. Don't get his name wrong whatever you do. If you get his name wrong he won't be happy, and he'll more then likely do something very unpleasant in retaliation. He might fill your wellies with cat pooh and treacle, he might sneak bits of dead toad and used toilet paper under the crust of your Bakewell tart, the one I saw you hide at the back of the fridge yesterday evening after tea.....”

“Yucky!”

“He might shave one of your eyebrows off while you're asleep so that the kids at school all laugh at you, or maybe he'll lay you between a couple of gigantic slices of bread, cover you in lettuce, boiled egg and pickled walnuts, smother you in chilli sauce and eat you on a ginormous sandwich. Then what will you do?”

“I dunno, dad. I'd have to hold my breath until he poohed me out, I suppose, because it's probably very stinky in a Fraddle-golloper's belly..... What else does he do beside eat monsters and do nasty things if you get his name wrong?”

“Actually he's quite find of golloping Fraddles.”

“What does that mean?”

“Fraddles are tiny things that look a bit like bloated yellow hedgehogs. They fart non-stop, they smell like sweaty socks and they enjoy nibbling the toes of small boys while they sleep. They squeak in a really high-pitched voice which the Fraddle-golloper finds tremendously irritating, so he usually flattens them on sight and sucks them up in his straw – that's what golloping means.”

“I see,” Tad said, snuggling down in his bed. “I'm tired now, will you turn my light out?”

“OK, sonny, see you tomorrow. Night night, sleep tight and don't let the Fraddles bite....”