The Day London Stopped Working

by Rosa Joliffe

Everything in London ran like clockwork. The buses, the boats, the school children, the Queen and the MPs were always right on time. And the reason for this was Big Ben. It's huge golden clock face shone over the people and never let them down.

Until, that is, the day when disaster struck. What started as a normal bit of rain and a light wind gathered pace and turned into a once-in-a-blue-moon hurricane. All the people in the street ran for cover. From the London Eye their tiny umbrellas looked like beetles and sweeties. And before long, the streets were empty.

The next day dawned bright and blue and everyone thought it would be a normal day. However, it wasn't normal at all. Everything went utterly wrong every second: the teachers were late for school; the children were there before dawn; the ice cream van came round while they were still in lessons, the morning newspapers arrived after lunch; the tubes kept almost crashing; the Prime Minister had her full English at 1pm; the Queen slept in until 10am; the milk float didn't turn up so that the children had to have dry cereal for breakfast; and the night buses were still running at 9am.

Meanwhile, far from the chaos, right in the bottom of Big Ben lived a family of mice. The youngest was called Graham. He wanted to be an Air Traffic Controller but his Mummy said he was too small and too mousey. She said, "Mice belong in the cellars not up in the sky". Graham was so cross and disappointed that he went out for a walk in the streets. He soon saw that everyone was in a muddle and wondered why this was. He saw everyone pointing up at Big Ben and when he looked up he saw that the hands were NOT MOVING!!

Thinking fast, he ran back inside and made his way up. And up and up and up. He'd never been higher than the canteen on the ground floor before. He soon realised that he MUST NOT look down. Finally, he made it up the 180 feet to the clock face. It was bigger than the moon itself. He crawled over it trying to work out the problem. Eventually, he saw that a pigeon feather had blown in and jammed the minute hand. He pulled with all his might but the feather was four times his size and stuck fast. He wanted to give up but he could see that the little people below needed his help. With one last tug the feather gave way but so did his grip on the clock. Next thing he knew the feather was floating him down gently, all the way back to the foot of the tower and the little hole to his home.

His Mummy asked where he'd been and he said he'd just been in his control tower saving London. Mummy laughed and gave him a thimble of milk and a Digestive crumb.