The Digglers

In a street in the middle of a town is a huge block of flats and in one of them, lived Darren with his mum. Darren was eight years old and he didn't have any brothers or sisters. Most of the other flats were empty and he didn't have anyone to play with. Darren spent most of his time watching television. As soon as he got home from school, he turned the telly on. His mum complained that he watched too much television but this didn't seem to bother Darren.
Darren liked watching most things but his favourite programmes contained stunts. He liked watching car chases that ended in a spectacular crash and stuntmen doing tricks on motorbikes. Darren had a bicycle and he tried copying some of these stunts.

He found two pieces of wood and made them into ramps and how he loved riding fast and flying over the ramps. One day at school, his teacher was throwing out a large coloured hoop. Darren asked if he could have it and he put it at the end of one of the ramps and as he went riding through it, he pretended it was a hoop of fire!

The trouble started when Darren watched a film where stuntmen were jumping from high buildings.
'What fun to copy that!' though Darren and he went to look for something high to jump off. At first he used the stairs that led to his flat. They were made of stone but Darren didn't think of the danger. All he wanted to do was to copy the stuntmen. Two steps were quite easy to jump so he tried three and then four. Next he tried five then six. That looked a long way down. Stuntmen would think that was easy so he decided to have a go. One, two, three, jump! Darren leapt high in the air but he unfortunately fell as he landed. He hurt his leg, but Darren didn't care, he had jumped six steps! He was determined to be a stuntman when he grew up. He now looked for higher things to climb and jump off.

One day, his mum asked Darren to get something from the local shop. On his way there, he saw a ladder leaning against the side of a house. What fun it would be to climb right to the top! No-one was looking and he started to climb. He went higher and higher until he reached the top.
'Whoopee!' he shouted as he reached the top. Carefully, he turned round. What a lot of things he could see. He could see the town, his school, the Town Hall, the markets and the floodlights of the football club. How tiny the people and the cars seemed. A stuntman wouldn't stop at the top of the ladder, he would climb onto the roof. Darren looked at the roof. It was covered in slates and had a steep slope. In the middle was a chimney.

'I'll just climb to the chimney and back,' decided Darren. He very carefully lifted himself off the ladder and began to crawl along the slates until he reached the chimney. Holding onto the chimney he managed to stand up.
It was whilst he was doing that that a terrible thing happened. The man, who had been repairing the roof, came back and removed his ladder! Darren didn't yet know that he was stuck on the roof!

After a while, Darren became bored with looking at the view and he decided to come down. He looked at the steep slope and was frightened. Going up was a lot easier than going down. He decided that stuntmen were brave and they would do it so he looked for the top of the ladder but he couldn't see it. Then he saw it, he saw the man lifting the ladder onto the top of his van. Darren now knew that he was stuck! What was he going to do? He was so frightened that he could not shout for help. He felt so miserable that he began to cry.

It now seemed a long time since she had sent Darren to the shop and his mum was getting worried. Putting on her coat, she left the flat and went to look for him. When the shopkeeper told her that Darren had not been in the shop she decided to call the police. There was a phone box on the corner of the street. Just as she was about to go inside she heard a shout. Surely, that was Darren's voice.
'Darren!' she shouted.
'I'm up here, mum.' He answered.
Looking up, she saw Darren stuck on the roof. How relived she was at seeing him, but how cross she was at seeing him up there. She decided not to shout at him because he looked so frightened that could wait until he got down. She rushed into the phone box and called the fire brigade.

Ten minutes later, a fire engine came rushing down the street with its siren screaming and lights flashing. Darren had watched it come all the way from the Fire Station. The firemen soon had a platform soaring up towards the roof. A fireman stood at the end of the platform and as soon as it reached the chimney, he grabbed hold of Darren and lifted him on. The platform came back to the ground and Darren was lifted off. He ran straight to his mum who hugged him. People who had been watching, clapped and cheered and a man from the local newspaper had arrived and taking photographs.

When they got home, he told his mum what had happened and she was very cross.
'I knew watching too much television would get you into trouble! She said and she made Darren promise never to copy stunts again.
Darren had learnt his lesson because he had been so frightened and his stunts stopped. He kept the ramp and the hoop, but if he felt like climbing and jumping off high places, he just went to his bedroom and there pinned on the wall is the photograph from the local newspaper that would remind him of how silly he had been!

The End