The Exercise Book Alliance

Jack was a schoolboy, just like any other. He worked hard at school even when the lessons were not very interesting. But as soon as he got home, he would start playing with his trains and he wouldn’t spare so much as a thought for school after that. And so it often happened that he ended up leaving one of his school books at home.

Jack’s mum despaired at her son being so disorganised with his books. Then one day she thought of a remedy. She found some glue and stuck all of Jack’s exercise books together to make them into one big book. Now there was no way Jack could leave one behind! When his teacher noticed what his mum had done, she said with a friendly smile: “Your big exercise book is like an alliance of all the different subjects, isn’t it?”

Neither Jack nor his teacher realised how far that was from the truth. Each evening when Jack left the big book on his desk and went to sleep, the alliance transformed into a battleground.

“Could you please explain to me why you’ve got two more pages filled in than I have?!” grumbled English.

“That’ll be coz I’m more important,” snorted Maths.

“Because, not coz,” English corrected. “What use are sums if you can’t write a proper sentence?”

“Excusez-moi,” came another voice. “There’s no need to brag like that, English. People use me to talk to each other too, you know, all over the world. Even diplomats,” French added.

“Computer languages are more powerful, mind you,” said IT, joining the conversation.

“You’re here too? Where were you hiding all this time?” asked Science.

“Did someone say riding?” butted in PE. “I was just parking my bike over…