I guess you are wondering what happened to the hole and to Johan? I couldn’t tell Dad and Angie but I reckon I can tell you. I doubt anyone would believe you anyway.When I gave the wool to Sugar he continued across the field to a new hole, almost identical to the one we found Johan in. Except it was bigger and it had a lock and slippery mud around the edges.

I have no idea how Tim and Priya’s friends built that thing so quick but I saw it and it was perfect down to the last splinter in the trapdoor.

Once Johan fell in, Sugar shut and locked the door and then sent a text message to me so I knew he was trapped. My job was to distract Dad and Angie from looking up. I did this by insisting we have chips with gravy. I knew they’d be examining the chip shop menus. So they didn’t see a streak of light shoot up into the sky like a firework. Except it wasn’t a firework it was a spaceship with one passenger, heading for a large, deserted, asteroid just past Saturn.

Sugar trapped Johan under the false trapdoor

All I had to do then was keep Dad and Angie away from the house until “the friends” had got rid of the hole and the animals. I’ve found out that Tim and Priya refer to the aliens as “the friends”. For the life of me I cannot figure out how they did all this but, as I said, when we got back the garden was as good as new.

After things settled down we built the shed. Dad tried to make it more complicated than it had to be but I managed to calm him down and between us we got it done. Even Angie helped a bit. Dad has started brewing his beer although to be honest he’s spent so long testing the equipment he’s not actually brewed any beer yet.

My workshop at the back is pretty good actually. It’s spacious, has plenty of work–surfaces and is even insulated and has electricity. I spend a lot more time down there than I thought I would but I am not usually alone. Tim, Priya and Sugar also come round. We have become really good friends and they have even let me join the Roboteers. So now there are four of us.

The Roboteers has changed now. It used to be a club for people who wanted to build or talk about robots. Now we are a detective agency. That sounds very official but what it really means is that we enjoyed trying to sort of my issues with Johan and we figured there might be others around who need similar help.

Tim set up a web–page for us and we got a few enquiries, mostly for people who had lost their cat. We’ve gotten pretty good at finding lost dogs and cats.

The Roboteers

Best of all, as a part of the Roboteers I am now allowed to meet “the friends”. They’re tiny. They must be about five centimetres tall, which is a lot shorter than I imagined. They live under the ground in an amazing town with streets and buildings and lighting. It’s under the field where I met Sugar and apparently it was originally made from the spaceship they arrived in.

They’ve added to it since then and I’ve been able to learn a lot from them in terms of building. I’ve let them have some of my Meccano bits and even built them a couple of towers. Their plans were easy to understand but I haven’t a clue what they wanted the towers for. There’s still so much about them that none of us understand.

So all in all, it turned out that moving house did makes things better. In fact it was about the best thing that could have happened to me.

The End

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