The River Gurgleglug runs right through the middle of Horsmarlonerpool.
By the time it reaches the town, it’s so wide that you can sail boats on it, and swim in summer, and ice-skate in winter. It’s so wide, that the town has two bridges to cross it - the Bridge of Spires, and further along to the West, the Twisty Bridge
But the river Gurgleglug doesn’t start out big and wide, because no rivers do. Even mighty rivers start off as little streams, streams as small as your finger, and if you follow the river Gurgleglug out of town, under the Bridge of Spires and under the Twisty Bridge (where my friend Lionel the friendly troll lives) you’ll see the river get smaller and smaller as it gets closer to Lomberstack Mountain.
At the bottom of the mountain, the river is small enough to jump over in one leap, and as you go up the mountain to the forest, you’ll see it gurgle out of the ground beneath some rocks. And that is where the River Gurgleglug begins.
And it’s by those rocks that Nolan was playing. He liked climbing up the mountain to the woods to look for treasure. He normally just found pine cones that had fallen from trees, but after he washed them in White Star Lake, he thought that the best ones looked good enough to be treasure, and took them home to his collection.
Anything can be treasure, can’t it? It doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as it looks good to you. And it doesn’t matter what it’s worth, as long as you value it.
Today, though, when Nolan was poking around with his stick in the blanket of leaves that covered the ground, he uncovered something shiny.
Kneeling down, he saw that sticking out of the ground - was a metal hand! He carefully dug around it and saw that it was an old, quite rusty toy robot! About the size of a shoe. And near to it, covered in earth, was a toy train engine, and next to that, buried in the muck, was an orange plastic dinosaur.
Nolan washed the robot, the train and the dinosaur in the lake, and dried them with some big, furry leaves from the sponge trees. Then he put them in his bag, and ran back down Lomberstack Mountain and all the way home.
In his bedroom, he set all three toys out on the table. But then he had a thought! “Toys don’t just go and live in the forest! They must have belonged to someone at some point. And that means that someone has lost them!”
Nolan gathered the toys back into the bag and ran down the stairs.
“Where are you going?” called Mummy, but Nolan just called back “To see an expert!”.
“An expert?” thought Mummy.
An expert is someone who knows lots and lots and lots about one particular thing. And nobody in Horsmarlonerpool knew more about toys than Mrs Western. She collected toys, and she cleaned them, and she even found new homes for them. When Nolan parked his bike outside her shop, Mrs Western immediately knew he was there and opened the door - she was a bit magic like that.
On her desk in the cluttered study she used a perfume sprayer to blow a special dust over all the toys, and soon they were shiny, working, and as good as new.
“I think I know who these belong to,” said Mrs Western. “The Merino twins. They live all the way out by the Albion Sea.”
“Well,” thought Nolan. “That will take quite a long time for me to cycle to!”
“Nonsense!” Said Mrs Western. “We have a train, don’t we?”
And with one more puff of her perfume sprayer, the robot grew and the train grew and the dinosaur grew, until they poked through the ceiling of Mrs Western’s shop!
Down the main street in Horsmarlonerpool came a steaming train, a big beeping robot, and a roaring dinosaur. They were so big, that they got to the little cottage out by the Albion Sea in no time.
Mrs Western and Nolan climbed out of the train and and with one more puff of the perfume, all three toys went back to their original size. Nolan picked them up.
Coming out of the cottage to greet them were Melanie and Susan. They soon saw what Nolan had in his outstretched hands. “Our robot!” said Melanie. “Our train!” said Susan.
“Billie!” said Melanie and Susan together, pointing at the orange dinosaur.
But now the twins had some explaining to do. How did they leave their toys all covered in dirt so far up Lomberstack Mountain?
“We were playing with them in the garden,” said Melanie, “and some of Daddy’s aftershave perfume came out of the bathroom window and landed on them.
"And they grew,” said Susan, "and they steamed off towards the mountain before we could stop them!”
Well Mrs Western nodded. She understood how toys work. “Well I suggest you keep them away from perfume from now on,” she said. “And just play with them normally.”
“But you put perfume on them, Mrs Western!” said Nolan.
“Well, yes, but if I hadn’t - you wouldn’t have new friends to play with now, would you?” said Mrs Western, and strayed her perfume cloud into the air, stood under it, and pooof! Disappeared!
Melanie, Susan and Nolan all looked at each other. Mrs Western was a strange woman, wasn’t she, they all seemed to be thinking.
“She’s magic,’ said Nolan. “She can make almost anything come alive but she never boasts about it.”
Nolan, Melanie and Susan looked at the three shiny today laying still on the grass. “I think maybe she’s right.” said Susan. “Toys are fun enough as they are.”
But Melanie had an idea. “Remember at Christmas, Auntie Mavis gave me that perfume? The stuff that smelt of bear breath?”
“Ooh, yes, yuk!” Said Susan. “Well it’s perfume all the same, isn’t it. I bet if we formed a club where we found old lost toys and sprinkled some on them we could be as magic as Mrs Western AND we’d be doing people a service.”
Moments later, Melanie reappeared into the front garden holding her Christmas present from Aunt Mavis - a crooked looking green glass bottle.
“What shall we spray first? The robot, the train, or Billie?” said Melanie.
“Well which one would be least like to really stink?” said Susan.
“And which one is the least dangerous if the perfume’s bad?” said Nolan.
Very carefully, they sprayed a small amount of the revolting perfume onto the robot - and immediately it began to creek and bend and grow until it was standing right in front of them.
“Welcome to the first meeting of the Lost Toys Association. I shall be making notes. Where shall we go and explore first?”
Melanie, Susan and Nolan looked at each other and laughed. Not only had they got a brand new club, ‘The Lost Toys Association’, it looked like they had a brand new club mascot, too.
