Mobile library

"Come on!" insisted the pushy mother on the bus on Friday morning. Her prep-school son looked up appealingly. "Read on!" she continued.

"So... Lily and her dog were confused..," the little boy read slowly.

"Not confused! Not confused!" said the mother, excitedly. "Confronted! Confronted!"

"So... Lily and her dog were confronted by... by..."

"Come on!" the mother insisted, "Come on! Read on!"

Now, at this point I began to wonder what exactly was going on here. At first I thought it was an average pushy mum, trying to get a bit of reading practice in with her son. But it dawned on me that this wasn't actually the case at all. This particular pushy mum just wanted to know the end of the story. She was absolutely enthralled by the plot (which had so far consisted of going to the shops to buy sausages). The mother just wanted to know what on earth was going to happen to Lily and her dog. She could barely wait to find out, and her impatience was expressed to her son, who was doing his five year-old best to assuage her fears.

Sadly I got off the bus before the final denouement, but I suspect it involved a happy ending.