Pav the Plumber Saves the Day

By Carolyn Hazell

Pav is an ordinary bloke who goes on a quest to save the people and home he loves. He battles against evil with the help of some newly discovered and very odd friends (and a frying pan.)

Will he succeed? Will he survive? What's he doing with a frying pan?

Read on to find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456781491

Carolyn Hazell

I am a Primary School teacher who has written stories, plays and poems to entertain and encourage the pupils in my classes for years and years and years. Writing a story and hearing your audience laugh or gasp as you read is great fun for me and hopefully my audience too. (There have been pupils who have walked into the classroom in the morning and told me they dreamt about the characters in my stories the previous night!) I live in a little house with a big garden and a crazy sister in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, The World.

Book preview

An Ordinary Bloke

Pav was an ordinary sort of bloke. He lived in a small house with a cosy living room and a well stocked kitchen downstairs and a tidy bedroom and little bathroom upstairs. He was very house proud and kept everything very clean and very neat. The same went for his garden and his shed. There was a place for everything and everything in its place. His little house was in a village that sat at the foot of a hill. On top of the hill was a mighty castle. You could see for miles from the castle. If you were standing on the upper most battlements and you looked to the east you could see the Forests of Gnarl. If you turned to the south you would be looking at the snowy peaks of the Vaprowl Mountains. Over to the west was Desert of Borluck and there, in the north, was the Land ruled by the evil and untrustworthy Baron Stipple.

The castle on the hill belonged to the King. He was called King Poddle. He was a noble King and looked after all of his subjects with kind-heartedness, consideration and grace. In all the time that Pav had lived in the Kingdom, which was all his life, King Poddle had done a fabulous job as a leader and despite some occasional hostility from Baron Stipple, who was just a bit of a bully that went away if you ignored him, the Kingdom remained quiet and peaceful and a happy place to live. There were some stories from the older folk of the kingdom about dragon attacks from the nearby forests or bandits rampaging into Poddle from the mountains, but there hadn’t been anything like that for years and years and years which further added to the air of calm that filled the Kingdom.

Everyone loved life in the Kingdom of Poddle. The farmers produced delicious fruit and vegetables, the bakers baked the most scrumptious bread that filled the early morning air with an appetising smell that everyone adored, the furniture makers built solid and comfortable beds and chairs, the builders built the best houses and the doctor worked very hard to make sure that everyone was fit, healthy and in fine fettle.

Pav did his bit to make The Kingdom of Poddle a wonderful place to live too. Pav was a plumber and made sure no one had dripping taps and everyone had toilets that flushed without wasting too much water and drains and sewers that didn’t smell too awful. He kept his tools spick and span and was never late for an appointment or made too much mess. If he did make a mess then he made sure he tidied up properly. That’s just how things were done with Pav. He was an ordinary bloke who was happy with his lot… apart from one thing.

Pav was in love. Normally being in love is a wonderful thing… an amazing thing that makes your heart feel full of joy. But Pav had a problem. He was in love with someone who didn’t love him. In fact, she didn’t even know he existed. She had probably never seen even him. Pav was hopelessly and totally in love with King Poddle’s daughter, Princess Polly.

Pav thought Princess Polly was the most beautiful thing in the world: even more beautiful than the snowy peaks of the Vaprowl Mountains: even more gorgeous than the sun rising over the Forests of Gnarl, and more stunning than the shimmering mists that hovered in a haze over the Desert of Borluck. The trouble was, Pav was an ordinary bloke and ordinary blokes don’t have princesses fall in love with them. But Pav couldn’t help being in love. He’d loved her from the moment he saw her which was when he had been summoned to the castle to mend the Royal Toilet which wasn’t flushing too well a couple of winters ago. He was shown to the toilet by the Butler and was told to be as quick as possible in case the King needed to use the ‘Royal Facilities’.

Pav had done his usual clean and tidy job and was heading back home through the palace grounds to his little house in the village when he saw Princess Polly playing tennis with one of her servants. Pav tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help it. She was lovely. She was so graceful that she appeared to move in slow motion and had the most beautiful face that seemed to light up the whole world. He asked his friends why he’d never seen her before and found out that Polly had been at boarding school as a child then had been visiting other countries as a special representative for the King for the past three years where she met Royalty from all over the world.

Bet she’s never met a plumber sighed Pav, sure that Polly would never look at him twice. But Pav thought about Princess Polly every single day since then and saw her when her and the King came to the village square to speak to the people of the Kingdom on special occasions. He’d been up to the castle to do some plumbing a couple of times too but had only caught glimpses of her in the distance. Sometimes, during the evenings, Pav would sit in his living room and stare up at the castle wondering what Princess Polly was doing.

She’s probably having a banquet with important people, or reading fascinating tales to the King about the faraway lands that she’s visited or practicing her tennis. Pav said out loud to an empty room. Whatever she’s doing, she won’t be thinking about me!

It was hard work being in love with someone who didn’t know you existed, but Pav being an ordinary sort of bloke couldn’t do anything about it. She was a princess and he was a plumber. How could he possibly think she would ever love him? So Pav concentrated on being an excellent plumber and an ordinary bloke.

Baron Stipple and Viscount Skiddall

As I previously mentioned, The Kingdom of Poddle was a beautiful place to live. There were very few problems and any problems that did crop up were soon sorted out calmly and fairly. The biggest problems that happened in the Kingdom were generally to do with the meddling of Baron Stipple from the neighbouring country up in the north. He wasn’t the kind and gracious ruler than King Poddle was, oh no. He was a bully who loved nothing more than stirring up trouble either in his own land or in The Kingdom of Poddle. He was constantly trying to interfere or be a nuisance. At meetings between Stipple and