The trouble with summer holidays is they can get really summery. Especially when the sun is super hot.
The trouble with the sun being super hot is it makes children need a ninety nine. Well, it makes me need a ninety nine, about ninety nine ninety nines actually. Ninety nines are the best ice creams you can get.
I used to like lollies best but that was because I’d never had a ninety nine, until yesterday.
The reason I like ninety nines best is, the ice cream man doesn’t just squirt ice cream in your cone, he puts a chocolate flake in it too! Without the chocolate flake I reckon ice cream men would only be allowed to call it about a forty four.
When I grow up I’m going to be an ice cream man for a living, except instead of making children buy my ninety nines, I’m going to give them all away.
That’s the trouble with ice cream men, they always want children to pay, even if they’ve got no money. I’ve never got any money. Neither has my mum.
The trouble with not having any money is it makes ice creams like ninety nines really hard to afford. Or sixty sixes. Or even three threes. Which is soooo unfair, because children like me are definitely the type of children who need ice creams most.
My best friend Gabby has had loads of ninety nines, because her dad has got a really good job. Once she even afforded a ninety nine with two flakes in it! Which was brilliant because she gave one of her chocolate flakes to me. And she let me dip it in her ice cream. I’m not sure what a ninety nine with two flakes is called. At least an a hundred and fifty I reckon.
Gabby always eats the chocolate flake on her ninety nine first. But I don’t. When I got my ninety nine I pushed my chocolate flake right down into the bottom of my ice cream cone handle, where I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was still there!
Knowing you’ve got a chocolate flake hidden inside your ice cream cone handle is one of the best feelings you can get, because normally ice cream cone handles are full of air.
The trouble with air is it doesn’t taste of anything.
The trouble with cone is it doesn’t taste of very much either.
When you push a flake down into your cone handle everything changes! Because not only does the cone bit of the handle taste of chocolate when you bite into it, you will also find a little bit of ice cream has been pushed down inside the cone handle too! So your last bite of your ninety nine tastes of cone, chocolate and ice cream altogether. How good is that?!
If I do become an ice cream man for a living when I leave school I might use a helicopter instead of a van. That way I can land in children’s back gardens instead of parking on the road.
The trouble with parking an ice cream van on a road is, parents who are in a back garden can pretend they don’t know the ice cream van is there. My Mum goes completely deaf when the ice cream van comes down my street, even when I jump up and down in front of her and promise her that an actual ice cream van is actually parked right outside our actual house!
My mum says I need to realise that ice creams don’t grow on trees. Which is a really obvious thing to say because if they did, I’d dig up our apple tree and plant a ninety nine tree instead.
My mum says that if I want to buy ninety nines every day of the summer holidays then I should start saving up my pocket money.
Trouble is, I need my pocket money to buy sweets. Plus my pocket money is too little. You could barely afford to buy an ant with the pocket money I get.
I reckon that the best way to get your mum to buy you things over the summer holiday is to pretend to be really nice and helpful.
If you’re really desperate you could try doing chores. But be careful, because chores can be really really boring. And they can flood the kitchen.
The very worst thing you can do is pester.
Hold on, I can hear an ice cream van.
“MUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Kes Gray is the author of the bestselling Daisy books, including the award-winning Eat Your Peas. The latest Daisy book is Daisy and the Trouble with Piggy Banks in which Daisy’s getting into more trouble than ever before!
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