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Loaded with a bundle of clean white paper, Benet goes off to see TomBaker to order some time machines.
Sitting in the back yard with TomBaker and his son Rory the paper is cut into small strips and rolled up tightly to make lollipop sticks. Treated with a light smear of flour paste, the sticks are put into an oven for a short time, then left out to harden. Meanwhile, TomBaker and Rory go looking for whatever flavourings are abundant this week, stuff left over from earlier batches of pastries or cakes or whatever. A big bucket of pulped residue from fresh oranges, or lemons, is a common ingredient. And sugar. Time machines need a lot of sugar!
To make a time machine, they boil the sugar and the flavouring until it becomes an unwieldy mass of sticky, messy goo. Using metal sweet moulds which look like ice cube trays, the gloop is spread out evenly! A lollipop stick is pushed into the centre of each blob, and several trays are put into the oven. When the goo is baked rock hard the lollipops end up looking like a weird sort of Tardis!
Time machines are exactly what the kids want. They can only be found in “Jackanory Square”, and the Market Square is renamed “Jackanory Square” only on days when Benet is in town.
Kids bring two pennies with them on a Friday and they can have one. And just one per person mind! They mustn’t spoil their appetites, and nobody wants angry parents scolding story tellers for giving their children bad teeth!
As soon as they’re old enough to do simple sums, the kids learn the routine, they save their pocket money, or badger their parents for more. They want to be sure to get a time machine on Friday!
It’s an ingenious plan!
“Get them while they’re young,” says Benet, “keep them coming back time and time again, make it a tradition!”
Benet sells the time machines just as story time is about to start. If he gets it right, he makes an enormous amount of money. There are usually hordes of small people literally
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