by Luke Bamforth

Created on: June 07, 2010   Last Updated: December 07, 2010

Adventures with my Uncle.

I often hear my parents discussing my uncle.

“He should get a job.” They say.

And sometimes it’s, “When we will he get a flat and get out of our hair?”

The thing is though I’d miss him if he left. He's done a lot for me. I mean, he taught me to tie my shoelaces when I was little and helped me with my sums even though he hates maths.

Most of all I would miss our adventures together. To my dad the garden is just a garden, a place to grow vegetables, but with my uncle the garden can be anything. One day we might be fighting off man eating tigers in the darkest Indian jungle and the next we’d be desperately searching for water in the Sahara Desert.

We never come back empty handed from our travels, sometimes we find buried chocolate coins or a new species of beetle never before seen by the eyes of men. I always make sure I write a letter the curator of the Natural History Museum in London just to let him know that he should add it to his list of unusual beetles. Though I have to admit that I keep the discovery of the chocolate coins to myself, I mean there has to be something in it for me.

Sometimes it rains and we can’t go and explore outside, but that doesn’t stop us. We pack provisions in the form of corned beef sandwiches and set off to conquer mountains. For some reason when we climb the mountain between the hall and the landing, my uncle insists on being called Hillary, which is silly because it is a girl’s name.

We always eat our provisions on the top of the mountain so that we have enough strength to survive the avalanche that forces us to slide all the way back to the bottom, on special sledges that look remarkably like my mum’s favourite tea trays.

Sometimes if I am ill and can't climb mountains, fight off tigers or even search for buried treasure, he will just sit by my bed and tell me stories of the adventures he had before I came along. Tales of ostriches and giant squirrels, of snow capped mountains and ancient temples and best of all tales of mum and dad before all they thought about was getting a job and growing vegetables.

So I hope he never leaves, because if he does the garden will be just a garden and the stairs will just be stairs, I won’t meet any tigers or find any chocolate coins and believe me that won’t be any fun.

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