Daisy and the Trouble with Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

are in the shed. Apparently they are still drying out after my last school trip.
    The trouble with school trips is they should tell you to take a change of clothes. Especially if there are going to be ducks there.

    There were loads of ducks at Lime Tree Farm.
    The trouble with the ducks at Lime Tree Farm is the ones with green heads are far too greedy.

    Which means the other ducks hardly get a chance to eat any of the bread that you throw at them.
    Gabby and I had saved every last bit of our packed lunch especially for the ducks. Apart from our chocolate biscuit and our tangerines. Gabby said the ones with green heads were daddy ducks. She said if you wanted to feed the mummy ducks and the baby ducks, you had to throw your bread really close to their beaks so the daddy ducks couldn’t get to it first.
    The trouble with throwing bread at ducks is it’s really hard to get it in the right place.

    Especially if your bread has got strawberry jam on with no pips.
    Every time I threw a piece of my sandwiches to a mummy or a baby duck, it went in the wrong place and a daddy duck ate it.
    One of the baby ducklings was really cute. He was yellow and fluffy instead of brown and fluffy like all the other ones, and I really wanted him to have a piece of my sandwich without crust on. But even when I pointed to where I was going to throw it, he couldn’t get there in time.
    If I threw to the left, a daddy duck got it. If I threw to the right, a daddy duck got it. If I did a long throw, a daddy duck got it, and if I just dropped it down the edge, a daddy duck got it.
    In the end I got really cross. After about twenty throws, Gabby’s sandwiches had completely run out and I only had one piece of my sandwich left.
    It was a really nice piece too, with no crust on and oodles of strawberry jam inside.
    And I REALLY wanted the yellow fluffy duckling to have it.
    And then I fell in. I was kind of hoping it was Jack Beechwhistle‘s fault, but it wasn‘t.
    I was kind of leaning over the pond trying to get the yellow baby duck to come to me when a load of daddy ducks all came over to me at the same time.
    I tried to shoo them away but when I waved them away with my arm, I kind of lost my balance and fell into the pond.
    It wasn’t very deep, but it was really wet, and the mud at the bottom was really yucky. And my school uniform got soaked.
    Gabby screamed, the ducks swam away really fast and Mr Cheetham jumped in to save me.

    When everyone realized the water wasn’t very deep, they all started laughing. Gabby said they weren’t laughing at me, they were laughing at Mr Cheetham. The water only came up to his knees and he could have reached me from the side if he’d wanted.
    Mr Cheetham lifted me out of the pond and carried me back to the school bus. Mrs Donovan made me dry myself on a picnic blanket and then I had to empty my wellies onto the grass beside the school bus.
    The worst thing was, I wasn’t allowed to sit next to Gabby on the way home. Mrs Donovan made me sit at the front of the bus next to the coach driver all the way back to school.
    I never did figure out which duck got my last bit of sandwich. I hope it was the baby yellow one. Don’t s’pose it was though.
    Apart from greedy ducks, Lime Tree Farm is a really good place to go for a school trip. You should ask your teacher to take you. They have loads of animals to look at, including real pigs that are going to turn into actual bacon.
    Fiona Tucker says that making pigs into bacon is cruel, but Gabby said that different animals on farms have different jobs to do. A farm dog’s job is to bark at the sheep, a horse’s job is to pull wagons, a chicken’s job is lay eggs for breakfast, a cow’s job is to make milk for cups of tea and a pig’s job is to turn into bacon.
    We never did work out what a duck’s job is though.
    I’ll go and ask my mum.

Chapter 20
    Mum says a duck’s job is to stay in the