Gadgets: The Great Escape

It wasn’t just the gadgets that were thankful for the storm easing and the sun coming out. Zack looked up from running over pedestrians in his best-selling video game, noticed the sky had turned blue again and decided he was off.

  He grabbed a catapult that was lying on the floor by his bed and shot out of his bedroom, running down the stairs as fast as he could. But he was pulled up to an abrupt halt at the bottom as he went bowling into his mother.

  ‘And just where do you think you’re going?’ she said.

  ‘Outside mum, outside….to get a bit of fresh air.’

  ‘But I told you to stay in your room Zack. Didn’t you understand what I said?’ Rebecca replied trying sarcasm.

  ‘Yeah mum, but the sun’s out and you are always telling us how good the fresh air is for us and that we should get out more. I’m only doing what you tell us to do.’

  Rebecca just looked at her eldest child and didn’t say a word. Throttling was too good for him, she thought, as he tried to push past her. She felt defeated. Then her other two children turned up and she had no alternative but to let them go out into the garden.

  ‘But remember to be careful,’ she said as they hurried out of the kitchen door. ‘And what’s that you’ve got in your hand Zack?’

  ‘It’s my gat. I made it myself.’ And off they all ran.

  The General was the first gadget to emerge from the rockery on to the patio looking anything but the immaculate cooking machine of old. He was still lean and mean but he was mud-splattered and dishevelled. But he dusted down his lid as best he could and shoulders back walked on to the patio. He was followed by Simon the sealer and then the hand electric mixer, both looking as if they too had been through the same war as The General.

  On the other side of the wide concrete steps Deep Fat and Jane, for once showing a certain solidarit led out their squad with Ricky, Sam and Jenny accompanied by the coffee machine. Behind them and trying with all her might to carry herself with the bearing that was part of her legend was Fiona the chocolate fondue fountain. Carl the Mighty and Eddie the electric wok were first out of the bushes on Blade and Lee-Mailer’s team. And as soon as Fiona saw Eddie she ran to him and cried out: ‘What’s happened. Oh what’s happened to you?’

  For years they had been locked up in cupboards next to each other only being able to communicate by knocking, and now they were finally free this had happened to Eddie.

  ‘Don’t worry Fiona,’ Eddie said as gently as he could. ‘I know you saw me for a while with my big wok bowl. But that bowl wasn’t the real me. This is the real me. This is the Eddie that used to knock on the cupboard partition to you. I haven’t changed.’

  And Fiona reached out and hugged the little wok mechanism for the first time in her life, as all the other gadgets came straggling out of the rockery.

  ‘Please, please, try to keep in the shadows of the bushes and not in full view on the patio,’ Lee-Mailer appealed to the appliances. ‘We don’t want any of us to be seen. We may have to wait here until dark, so try and hide and relax.’

  No sooner had Lee-Mailer issued his warning than there was a bang as the kitchen door was flung open. All the gadgets fled into hiding. And then down the central steps of the rockery came Zack shouting at the top of his voice, followed by his two siblings. Blade eased himself back into the shadows as the podgy boy approached. Then Zack stopped and stooped down to pick up some pebbles from the rockery. All the gadgets held their breath.

  After picking up the pebbles he pulled out a giant home-made catapult from his pocket and charged onto the lower patio, whooping and hollering.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ said Blade, his mouth wide open. ‘Look Lee-Mailer, look….look what the catapult is made from.’