Max and His Empty Stomach

Max was tired all afternoon. He didn’t smile much. He whined a lot. He wasn’t interested in people, animals, or toys. He was a bit out of sorts, as adults say when something isn’t quite right with people.

His mum watched him roll around on the sofa and reckoned she might know what was wrong. Max hadn’t had time to eat his lunch today. He had eaten one piece of potato, but all his meat and vegetables and most of his potatoes were still waiting for him on the table. Well, tell me, if there was a toy train waiting at your toy station, would you be interested in a plate of meat and two veg? Or in potatoes? Max isn’t the first to have had better things to do than eat lunch, nor will he be the last. He just wanted to play so much that everything else had to wait.

He needed to switch the points on the train track, not switch his knife and fork around; he needed to lift the barriers at the level crossing, not lift his fork to his mouth, and the only thing he felt like cutting was the corners of the track, with his fastest train. He had quickly stuffed in a few mouthfuls, and then run back to his trains. And now he was hungry.

Max was lying upside down like a bat, his feet sticking up towards the ceiling, running his socks along the wall. When he turned his head to see where his mum was and whether she might help him find something he wanted to do, he was taken aback. He almost got a fright! His mother was upside down. And it wasn’t just her – so was the cupboard, the television, all…