Bottle Village - the story

Bottle Village - the Story

By Chris Lawrence

Once upon a time, in a sunny land of blue, blue sea and where a river ran down to the shore, there was a little hillside village. The houses and shops stood on the slopes and were white and shaped like bottles, so the village was called, “Bottle Village”.

And the village was full of bottles! Babies drank from baby bottles, housewives cleaned their bottle shaped houses with liquid soap from bottles and boys and girls had fun chasing each other, squirting water from bottles. No-one ever threw a bottle away in Bottle Village. They always thought of a way to use every single bottle they had.

The electrician, in his bottle shaped electrical shop, made table lamps from bottles. The florist, in her bottle shaped flower shop, cut the tops off plastic bottles and used the bottoms as vases for her beautiful flowers. The builder, building the next bottle shaped building, would squirt water onto his drying cement with a squirty bottle. The sign writer, cut tops off each bottle, turned each top round and pushed it back into the bottle's bottom to make paint pots that did not drip paint. The baker cut sides out of plastic bottles to make scoops for his flour bin. The musicians filled bottles with different amounts of water and played tunes on them, or filled them with dried beans to make shakers. And the gardener, in his bottle shaped potting shed, cut plastic bottles sideways to make seed trays.

“No bottle is ever wasted here”, said all the Bottle Village people proudly.

Then, one day, whilst the children were playing bottle cricket on the sand along the seashore with bottles for wickets, one of them noticed a large, round, glass shape bobbing out at sea.

As they carried on with their game, the waves were pushing the shape nearer to the shore. The fishermen noticed it too. Soon the glassy shape was near enough for everyone to wade into the sea and carefully pull it onto the beach.

“What is it?” asked everyone at once, as they peered forward to have a closer look.

“Why it’s the biggest glass bottle we have ever seen! But what can we do with it? No bottle is ever wasted here, but this one is so unlike any other!”

“Too big for the babies to drink from!” laughed the mothers.

“Too big to make into a table lamp!” smiled the electrician.

“Too big for a flower vase!” giggled the florist, who was on her way to post a letter.

“Too big for wetting down my cement!” exclaimed the builder.

“Too big for a paint pot!” announced the sign writer.

“Not very musical!” sang the musician, tapping the side of the big glass bottle.

"No good for making a flour scoop!" sighed the baker, holding up the one he had already.

“And much too big for my seeds!” nodded the gardener.

“But no bottle is ever wasted here in Bottle Village!” said everyone.
“I have an idea! We can use this lovely big bottle to welcome people to our village!” suggested the gardener.

He told them his idea and everyone set to work.

They carried the big glass bottle to the village square and thoroughly cleaned it until it sparkled brightly in the sunlight. Then the gardener carefully poured good dry earth into the bottom of the bottle and, with a big dinner fork that he had tied onto the end of a stick, he planted special plants in the soil inside the bottle. Then he watered them gently. Later that day, when the plants were settled, everyone helped lift the big bottle onto a cart and pulled it to the shady centre of the village. The builder was already waiting there with a wheelbarrow load of wet cement and the sign maker was there with a freshly painted sign, which said,

Welcome to Bottle Village, a tidy and friendly place to be.

They set the signpost into the cement and stood the bottle beside it.

After they had finished work, they had a beautiful way of welcoming visitors to Bottle Village.

“How kind!” nodded some of the visitors, “What a friendly village!”

“How lovely!” agreed the other visitors, “What a tidy village!”

“No bottle is ever wasted here!” smiled the people of Bottle Village proudly.

"They carried the big, glass bottle to the village square and cleaned it

until it sparkled brightly in the sunshine."

Show me WOW!

inspirational teaching using limited resources.