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Another Way of Relaxing

I'd had a very busy week at work and arrived home Friday evening after a long car journey thinking that I deserved a drink and an evening in front of the television.

It was story time for our son and I had forgotten that my wife had planned to meet up with some friends that evening. Reluctantly I agreed to be the story reader so I asked Mark to pick out a book for me to read. He chose "The Enormous Crocodile" by Roald Dahl which delighted me as it was one of the stories I enjoyed reading to him.

The enormous crocodile boasts that he is going to eat a child for lunch and sets out to trick all the children. But his plots and disguises are foiled by the animals in the jungle.

The temptation would have been to have a quick read through so I could get downstairs to my drink and television. But l reflected a minute and understood that that wasn't right. In fact I decided to put an extra special effort into animating the story: "The enormous crocodile grinned, showing hundreds of sharp white teeth: for my lunch today I would like a nice juicy little child”. After all his efforts to disguise himself as a coconut palm, a seesaw, a fairground attraction and then a picnic bench he is finally launched into out of space by Trunky the elephant, where he lands headfirst into the hot, hot sun and is sizzled up like a sausage.

After all the joy and laughter of the story I was very relaxed and the tiredness had gone so there was no need for the drink and the TV.

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