Baa! Itâs Lyndsey Lamb here. No, donât worry, you havenât picked up one of those books about talking animals by mistake. Itâs me, Lyndz from the Sleepover Club, really. Iâm normally plain old Lyndz Collins, but ever since us Sleepover girls hung out on Mr Mackintoshâs farm, the others have been calling me Lyndsey Lamb or Lambkin. And if Kennyâs being horrible, sheâll call me Lamb Chop!
Still, Iâm not the only one to have got a silly new name. Uh-uh. Meet the rest of the club â thatâs Kenny Cow, Rosie Ram, Frankie Frog and Flissy Foal! Us five are best mates and do everything together â well, most of the time anyway. More about THAT later â¦
Iâve just got a bit of time before my riding lesson to tell you all about our farm adventures. Dâyou know, until we went there, Iâd always dreamed of being a famous jockey when I grow up, or running my own stables, or working in an animal rescue centre. But guess what I want to do now? Yep â live on a farm! I think it would be awesome being with so many animals all day, every day. Wouldnât it be fantastic?
But thatâs me. I absolutely LURVE animals. All of them â big, small, furry, woolly, wild, tame, claws, paws, hooves, whatever. Do you know what? I even think Kennyâs pet rat Merlin is cute, which is a bit unusual. Me and Kenny seem to be the only two people in the world who arenât scared of him!
Not everyoneâs like that, though. If you asked Fliss if sheâd like to live on a farm, sheâd shudder and say, âNo way!â She has dreams of living in a house like Posh and Becks when sheâs older â preferably when sheâs married to Ryan Scott from school! In fact, I reckon Fliss would actually like to be the next Posh Spice so she could buy as many clothes as she wants to. Now thatâs HER idea of heaven. Funny, isnât it, how different people are?
Lucky for me that the rest of the Sleepover Club were mad keen on the idea of a farm sleepover too, or we might never have got there. Frankie and Kenny love doing anything thatâs a bit out of the ordinary, and Rosie is always up for a bit of fun, so once Iâd got those three on my side, that was that. No stopping us!
Anyway, let me begin at the beginning, as Mrs Weaver, our teacher, always says. It all started when we were having a sleepover at my house one Friday night. We were in my bedroom playing a game of Catâs Got The Measles when Mum shouted up the stairs that it was tea.
âResult!â Kenny cheered, rushing for the door. âI am sooo Hank Marvin.â
âWhoâs he?â Fliss wanted to know. She was looking very puzzled.
âHank Marvin â starving, geddit?â Kenny replied. âItâs rhyming slang, isnât it?â
Fliss didnât look convinced. âIs it?â she asked.
ââCourse it is,â Kenny answered. âHonestly, Fliss, donât you ever watch EastEnders?â
âYes, but â¦â Fliss was still frowning. âYouâre weird, Kenny. Didnât anyone ever tell you that?â
Downstairs, Mum was dishing up bangers, mash and beans. Everyone was already sitting around the table except my big brother Stuart. He was late home from school again, and boy, did Mum look cross about it.
âWhereâs that son of mine got to?â she grumbled, putting his plate in the oven to keep warm. âI told him to phone me if he was going to be late.â
âHeâs probably stopped off at the farm, lucky thing,â I said, spearing a sausage and biting the end off. Yum!
âLyndz, cut your food up properly,â Mum said at once. Sheâs got a biiiiig thing about table manners, my mum. She says itâs like feeding time at the zoo when our family sits down to eat. âAnyway, he still should have phoned me. He knows I only worry when he doesnât.â
Stuart is still at school but works on Mr Mackintoshâs farm down the road in his spare time. Heâs like me, he loves animals and wants to be a farmer when heâs older. Awesome! I hope he does. Itâll mean Iâll be visiting him â and his animals, of course â ALL the time!
Iâd been nagging him for absolutely ages to let me visit the farm with him because lambing season was about to start and I was dying to see some baby lambs. Soooo cute! Arenât baby animals simply THE most adorable things in the world? But even though I kept going on at him, Stu kept on putting me off, saying they were too busy at the farm to let little girls mess around. Little girls, indeed! Sometimes I hate boys.
Anyway, so we were just getting stuck into our tea when we heard a key turn in the front door. It was Stuart â at last.
âNice of you to join us,â my dad muttered sarcastically as Stu came in, his face all pink from the cold.