Learning About Grownups Volume 1

Mister Godley’s gnomes

Mister Godley is very proud of his garden. He is especially proud of all his gnomes, he collects them and can’t understand why all the other gardens in his street are not full of gnomes.

Mister Godley has got gnomes with fishing rods, gnomes with wheel barrows and gnomes doing almost anything you can think of. He even has a gnome with its trousers down and showing its bottom to the people who walk past the garden. There used to be a gnome with its trousers down that wasn’t showing its bottom, but Mrs. Godley accidentally broke it with a hammer.

Mister Godley is very friendly and likes to talk to his neighbours. Whenever one of Mister Godley’s neighbours is walking past the garden, Mister Godley always seems to be standing at his gate. Sometimes Mister Godley’s neighbours walk home a different way and don’t have the chance to chat with Mister Godley.

Mister Godley likes to talk about lots of things, but his favourite thing to talk about is his gnomes. Mister Godley’s neighbours know all about all of his gnomes and where they all came from. There is only one neighbour who doesn’t know all about Mister Godley’s gnomes and that is the lady who lives next door to him. She is always too busy to talk to Mister Godley, even when she isn’t busy.

The lady who lives next door is a little bit like one of Mister Godley’s gnomes because sometimes when it is sunny she goes into her back garden and uncovers her bottom, but she doesn’t show it to the neighbours. Sometimes Mister Godley accidently sees her botom when he is rearranging the gnomes next to the bit of fence that has a hole in it. Mister Godley usually rearranges his gnomes when Mrs. Godley is out shopping.

Mister Godley’s other next door neighbour is called Mister Flowers. Mister Flowers also likes gnomes but he thinks one gnome is enough. His gnome is holding a spade and looks like it is digging a hole. Mister Flowers only ever talks about his gnome if somebody asks him about it, and nobody has ever asked him about it.

On the other side of the road from Mister Godley’s garden there is a garden with no gnomes in it at all. That garden belongs to Mister Sharpe. The only thing in Mister Sharpe’s garden is a big plant pot with a pretend tree in it that looks more like a brown stick with a big green ball on top than a tree. Mister Sharpe and Mister Godley don’t chat to each other very often. When they do chat they both stay in their own garden and they have to talk very loudly so that they can hear one another. When Mister Sharpe and Mister Godley are chatting the other neighbours like to come out to listen to them. Once, even a policeman came to listen to them. That was on the same day that Mister Godley went out into his garden and found that someone had put all his gnomes in his fish pond.


Did you like the story about Mister Godley and his neighbours? They all live on Connecticut Street, which is named after a place in America. All the streets in Mister Godley’s neighbourhood are named after places in America. There are lots more stories about the people who live in Mister Godley’s neighbourhood.