Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Bombassa was doing his favourite thing... sleeping. And he was dreaming about doing
his second favourite thing... dunking biscuits in his tea.
He dreamed that he was drinking and dunking in a beautiful garden, where it was nice and
warm, the sun was shining and someone was ringing a bell...
Someone was ringing a bell? That wasn't supposed to happen in his dream. The Bell was very
loud. It ran on and on...
Then something tickled Bombassa's is ears. Suddenly, his lovely dream wasn't very lovely
any more.
"Wake up!" said a small voice. Bombassa groaned.
"I don't want to wake up."
"Wake up!' said the little voice again. "It's your Auntie Daz on the phone."
Bombassa slowly opened one. His best friend Millie was flapping her wings and hopping
about on the end of his nose.
"Come on!" said Millie. "Auntie Daz wants to speak to you."
Just then Auntie Daz's impatient voice screeched out of the earpiece.
"Hello!Hello! Is anybody there?"
Bombassa fell out of bed and stumbled into the sitting-room. He sat down on his wobbly
chair and picked up the phone.
"Hello, Auntie Daz," he yawned.
"Bombassa!' Squawked Auntie Daz. "I suppose you've just woken up, have you?"
Auntie thought Bombassa was the laziest person in the world.
Bombassa looked at the time. It was nearly eleven o'clock!
He wriggled about on the chair while he tried to think of an excuse. The chair creaked and
groaned and wobbled and suddenly an idea popped into his head.
"No, no, I've been awake for hours, Auntie," he lied! "I've been doing a bit of DIY...
fixing my wobbly chair."
"Oh!' said a surprised Auntie Daz. "Well I'll look forward to seeing that. I'm coming to
town today, so I'll pop in and see you for tea at four o'clock. That should give you
plenty of time to buy a cake. Bye!"
She hung up before Bombassa had the chance to reply.
Bombassa was wide awake now. He looked around him. His house was very untidy... as usual.
"What are we going to do?' He asked Millie. "Auntie Daz is coming for tea and I told her
that I've fixed my wobbly chair!'
"Action stations!" said Millie. "We'll have a cup of tea and then we can think about the
chair."
Millie knew that Bombassa would be no use at all until he had a cup of tea.
While the kettle boiled, Bombassa started sorting through a pile of books.
"Oh look!' Said Bombassa. "Here's that book I got about the Japanese Tea Ceremony. They
take tea very seriously in Japan, you know."
"No one takes tea more seriously than you!" Laughed Millie.
When the tea was made Bombassa sat down on the wobbly chair he dunked two huge biscuits
in his huge cup of tea and looked at the book.
The book showed people sitting down at very low tables drinking tea from bowls.
In the middle of the book there was a big picture of a Japanese Tea Garden.
Bombassa sighed. "It looks just like the garden in my lovely dream."
"Come along!" Chirped Milly. "There's no time for daydreaming. You've got to get that chair
fixed before Auntie Daz arrives."
Bombassa fetched his toolkit. He measured the chair legs and wrote down how long each
one was.
"You see," he explained to Millie. "This leg is longer than the others. I need to cut off
one centimetre, then they'll all be the same."
"Are you sure it was that leg?" asked Millie. "Remember, the secret of DIY is to measure
twice and cut once."
Bombassa measured the legs again to be sure.
"Yes, definitley," said Bombassa. "I just need to cut a bit off of this one."
He carefully sawed one centimetre of the leg, and turned the chair the right way up.
Then he sat on the chair to test it.
It still wobbled. In fact it wobbled even worse than before!
Bombassa measured the legs again.
"I don't understand it!" He exclaimed. "I must have cut the wrong leg. Now I'll have
to cut bits of the other legs to make them all the same!"
"You can't have measured them properly," Millie twittered.
"But I did," said Bombassa gruffly. "You watched me."
He cut some more off the legs, but the chair still wobbled.
"You won't have anything left to sit on soon!" Said Millie. "Give me the tape measure."
Bombassa folded his arms and watched Millie carefully measure each leg.
"If you cut where I've marked," she explained, "all the legs will be equal."
Bombassa sawed the legs again, he turned the chair over, he sat on it and smiled. "Hooray!
It doesn't wobble any more!"
"Hey!" he said, as he reached for his cup of tea. "What happened to the table? "It's
too high!"
Millie looked down at Bombassa. "The table is not too high," she muttered. "Your chair
is to low!"
Bombassa rolled his eyes. "That means I'll have to lower the table!" He measured the
table legs and cut them shorter, but now the table was wobbly!
Millie tapped her foot, impatiently. "Shall I do the measuring?" She asked.
Soon she had measured the legs properly and Bombassa had sawn them so that they were all
equal but now the chair was too high!
Once again, Millie carefully measured the chair and Bombassa cut some more off the legs.
"At last!" Said Bombassa. "No more wobbling and the table is just the right height."
"But you can't ask Auntie Daz to sit on that!" Said Millie, pointing at the chair. "You might
as well ask her to sit on the floor." Millie was right. The chair and the table no longer
had legs... they had stumps!
Bombassa looked worried. "Oh, what are we going to do? What will Auntie Daz say? Look
at the time. Auntie Daz will be here in half an hour. I'm supposed to have brought the
cake! All we've got is broken biscuits. Auntie Daz will be so cross with me. She'll think
I've been in bed all day."
Bombassa slumped down on the little chair and he felt like crying. He picked up the
Japanese Tea Ceremony book and gazed at the picture of the tea garden.
"Oh, if only I hadn't woken up this morning," he thought out loud. "If only I could have
stayed in my lovely dream."
"Wait a minute," said Millie. "Look! Your table looks just like a Japanese tea table
now. You could treat Auntie Daz to a Japanese Tea Ceremony. I'm sure they don't have cake
in a Japanese Tea Ceremony!"
Bombassa picked Milly up and squeezed her tight. "You're a genius!" he said "put the
kettle on, there's no time to lose."
They set to work, trying to make the room look like the pictures in the book.
They covered the table with a cloth and put a cushion on the chair and some more cushions
on the floor.
With a few flowerpots and twiggy stick, Bombassa made a little indoor garden.
Millie picked a flower and placed it in a vase on the table.
Next, Bombassa covered the clothes airer with a blanket and hung up a paper lantern that
he found in the back of the cupboard.
Finally, they folded some paper into origami dishes and put them on the table.
When Auntie Daz rang the doorbell, everything was ready. Bombassa answered the door wearing
his silk dressing gown. He held his hands together and bowed. "Welcome, honourable Auntie."
Auntie Daz took one look at Bombassa's dressing gown and tut-tutted loudly.
"That's just typical," she snorted. "You've been in bed all day, haven't you?"
Bombassa smiled again and he bowed even lower. "Follow me, Auntie," he said.
Bombassa pulled out the chair to let Auntie Daz sit down.
"What is going on?" She asked.
Milly and Bombassa smiled at each other. "Welcome to our Japanese Tea Room," they said, together.
Auntie Daz sank very slowly onto the chair. She looked most uncomfortable.
Bombassa carefully tore open three teabags and emptied them into the teapot.
Then he filled the pot with hot water and put on the lid. He turned the teapot round
three times, tapped it twice, and poured a cup of tea for Auntie Daz.
"What are you doing?" Auntie Daz asked impatiently. "The tea will be swimming with tea leaves!"
"Just so!" Said Bombassa, mysteriously.
Bombassa bowed and smiled. He held the biscuit tin as if it were a treasure chest. He made
strange, signs over the tin before he opened it.
He took out some biscuits and arranged them in the paper dishes.
"What?!" Boomed Auntie Daz. "No cake?"
"Shhh!" Nearly whispered. "Bombassa is preparing the Japanese Biscuit Dunking Ceremony. It's
very serious."
Millie and Bombassa dunked the biscuits in their tea and munched them in silence. Auntie
Daz didn't want to be left out, so she did the same.
When they were finished, Bombassa stood up, bowed deeply and walked to the front door.
Auntie Daz turned Milly. "What's happening now?" She asked.
"The ceremony is over," Millie whispered.
"Oh!" Said Auntie Daz. She looked at her watch. "I'd better be going then."
She struggled to get up from the little chair.
"Well," she puffed. "That was very interesting. What a thoughtful boy you are, doing the Japanese
Biscuit Dunking Ceremony, just for me."
Bombassa stood by the door, smiling and bowing. "We must do it again, honourable Auntie."
Auntie Daz rubbed her aching back and winced as she kissed her nephew goodbye. "Maybe you
could dream up something different next time ... something that uses proper chairs and
tables?"
Bombassa waved goodbye as Auntie Daz limped down the path.
Then he closed the door and marched off to his bedroom.
"Where are you going?" Asked Millie.
"Bed!" he boomed. "Auntie Daz made me promise that I'd dream up something different for
the next time she comes to tea. I'm going to start right now!"
As he pulled the duvet over his head, he added, "...and switch off the phone ... I don't want
to be disturbed!"
I'm afraid you can't get the book anymore, but you can get the iPad edition which has
other videos and all the pictures and the stories and the words and everything in it
that you can just flick through.
So follow the link below and you'll be able to buy yourself a copy to read on your iPad.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time with another Millie and Bombassa Story.