This is a story inspired by an ‘object spontaneous storytelling game’ I played with a group of Year 5 pupils in a Coventry school many years ago. One of the girls picked up the red nose and told a short story about it being a washing scoop!
Once upon a time there was a cheeky woman whose name was Mrs Twinkle. Mrs T to her friends. She lived in a little cottage at the foot of the mountain. Everyone loved her not only because she did their laundry but also because she made them roar with laughter. She had the twinkliest green eyes you’ve ever seen.
Secretly Mrs T wished to be a storyteller and a comedian (shhh don’t tell anyone). Whenever the woodland folk brought her their dirty washing she made them laugh so much they didn’t want to leave. As she splashed and scrubbed and rinsed and squeezed, their clothes would be bright clean and smelling of fresh daisies and she would tell her tales!
Mrs Twinkle had many customers; spider on the sly, rat in the sack, fox in the box, fly in the pie, rabbit in the headlights and many more besides. They loved her twinkly green eyes and they loved her stories….
Mrs T was kind, helpful and incredibly forgetful. She lost the odd sock or three, tied her shoe laces together and turned jumpers inside out and backside front. She lost her spectacles more often than she found them and most annoyingly she lost her washing powder scoop. Whenever she’d used it and popped it down, in a twinkling of her green eyes, it disappeared! Mrs T was very pleased with herself when she painted one of her scoops yellow in an attempt to keep it safe. Can you imagine chaos and commotion when this too disappeared!
She had just squeezed a pair of Mrs Dragonfly’s wings, when she absentmindedly put down the scoop and couldn’t find it.
Mrs T threw in the towel. She lay down her apron and let out the plug. The water, unaware of the gravity of the situation, gurgled away. Mrs T’s friends gathered round; spider on the sly, rat in the sack, fox in the box, fly in the pie, rabbit in the headlights and many more besides. They quietly as they watched her green eyes close.
Mrs T no longer told stories or jokes, she no longer splashed and scrubbed and rinsed and squeezed, she sat on her bench and didn’t stir, for weeks and weeks. Cobwebs were so dirty they could no longer catch flies; flies wings so dusty that they could no longer flee; flee’s feet were so muddy she couldn’t even bite. Everything was out of order.
What a to-do! An enormous search party set off to find a new scoop but no one had bright enough eyes to find one.
One full moon later, when the socks were walking to the wash tub themselves, there was a rat-a-tat-tat at the door. Before Mrs T could move the door swung open and there stood Mrs T’s neighbour, Hazel Broom, her pockets stuffed full of treasures as always.
“What’s all this?” asked Hazel Broom in her no nonsense sort of a way. “You’re always loosing things, what difference does one little scoop make?”
“It was a scoop too far” said Mrs T quietly.
“I’ve brought you a present” said Hazel Broom after a moment. She bent down and pulled a white piece of elastic from her stripy sock, as it fell down. She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out a red ping pong ball with a dent in one side.
“Here” she said, “This’ll do the trick.”
Hazel Broom cut away a section of the ball and turned it into a scoop. With a pine needle from her pocket she made two tiny holes on either side before threading the elastic through, tying it off tightly.
“Now, you don’t ever have to take the scoop off from around you neck.”
Sure enough Mrs T could stretch the elastic towards the powder, use the scoop and let it ping back into place around her neck with no fuss and bother at all.
Mrs T jumped for joy. She splashed and scrubbed and rinsed and squeezed three piles of clothes before lunchtime, although she did loose her glasses, mix up socks, and hang pigeon’s beak on the line. All was perfect in her world.
Mrs T told more stories and jokes than ever before. A few days later as great crowds gathered to collect their washing, Mrs T spun round quickly to speak to them. As the scoop sprang back towards her neck, it landed instead on her nose. Everyone roared with laughter. Mrs T chuckled, leaving the scoop where it was.
Do you know, if I’m not very much mistaken, that from that day to this, if you go to the foot of that mountain you’ll find Mrs Twinkle making up stories and jokes surrounded by the woodland folk.
And, if you look very closely you might see that on her nose she wears her little red washing scoop.
So that’s where red noses came from! They didn’t start as red noses, but as washing powder scoops! (But shhhh don’t tell anyone!)
Maybe she become a storyteller and comedian after all.