To Grandad, 

I am just writing this letter to say a big thank you to you for everything you do each and every day. Every morning you get up early, most of the time before the sun comes up and you go to work at Hollands pies where you are a machine minder. This means that you are not only responsible for making sure the correct number of pies are made but you are responsible for the safety of the people on your line; that the correct weight of the filling is going into the pies; that the machines are running properly and don’t breakdown; that the machines are properly cleaned after every pie run, and that the mountain of paperwork is completed before and after your shift starts and ends and the million other things you do. 

Every day you come home at teatime absolutely cream crackered as you say, dead on your feet and ready for your bed. But I know when you walk through the door no matter how tired you are, if I need your help no matter if it’s with my homework or if I just need to talk to you, you are there, willing to help me and willing to listen to me and to give me your pearls of wisdom (also another of your sayings), or just to tell me another of your funny jokes.  

You listen to me when I’m sad and try and cheer me up, you calm me down when I’m angry, you explain things to me when I don’t understand them, you laugh at my jokes and add bits on to make them even funnier. You show me how to fix things around the house, you show me how to make things and explain everything as we go along. When we watch the news, we always have little debates on things that are happening. At the weekend you show me how to cook things, like your spicy curry, you always make me cut the onions just so you can laugh when my eyes start watering. You put up with my loud music coming from my bedroom, and when I’m being really noisy when talking to my friends on my games. We have a sing along in the car to your rock cds, you always let me turn the music up, even though mum and Grandma complain that it’s too loud.  

You are not just a keyworker feeding the nation pies, your are my Grandad, my role model and the man I look up to (even though I am taller than you), so thank you Grandad for everything you do, no matter how big or small it is 

Love Levi 

Write a short story of 500 words that imagines a world without music, either because it’s never been invented or because it’s banned by the government.  Will your hero invent music?  Are they the only one who can hear some?  Do they smuggle in sounds or find it on an old piece of technology?  How does this affect your hero and their world?

A World without Music

I live in a time where there is no music, no instruments, no songs, no shows or concerts! My Great Grandma remembers music, as do some of her friends, they talk about it from time to time and it sounds awesome! It all started with one man back in 1940, who hated music so much that he banned it and for some reason it’s just stayed that way!

One fine Saturday, I woke up with a smile on my face glimpsing at the morning sun as I knew I was going to see my Great Grandma that day and you guessed it I wanted to know more about music!  I clambered down the stairs into the kitchen, ate my breakfast in what felt like one big gulp just to get to Great Grandma’s faster, dressed in a whirlwind and shot out the door, through the town and down the road to her house.

I flung open the door and shouted ‘Hey Grandma its meeeeeeee! You want a cup o tea?’ Laughing to myself as I rhymed the sentence. She sang ‘Yes please my dear, tea for me’.  Just hearing her sing those few words made me feel overwhelmed with joy, music evokes such feelings, I wondered how the world copes without this? I suppose what you don’t know, you don’t miss? Right? But I wanted to change this, now all I needed was to know how?

Me and Great Grandma sat down and talked about music until late afternoon, we talked about what music was like, why people listened to music, what was it about music that made people want to dance and we imagined a world with music once again. We started to joke about making a plan to bring music back, but the more we talked the less the plan sounded silly, we decided it was now or never,  we had come up with a plan!

I set off home to put this plan into action. I created an email with an attachment of a video I had made on my phone of Great Grandma singing to her favourite song playing softly in the background, she sounded like an angel, this was going to be epic. I sent the email to everyone I knew, with one instruction SEND TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW then open the attachment.

Within less than 48 hours my email had reached all over the world, music had been heard for the very first time in 80 years and it had got the internet talking, governments issued statements, leaders sought to bring back music to the world.  People started making their own music, using everyday household items, people searched the attics for long lost instruments to play once again, people sang, people hummed, people danced and the mood of the world rose, everyone seemed happier!  I had started a chain reaction that would change the world for the better, forever and my dear great grandma had been the voice of this extraordinary change.

The world ban was lifted as governments couldn’t stop the spread of music, it was infectious, in a great way!

I now live in a time with music, instruments, tunes, jingles, singers and my great grandma and her friends meet up once a week to dance and reminisce about the good old days or good new days as they can say!