It was a windy blowy sort of a day and Mary the Lamb was standing under her favourite apple tree wondering just what might happen to her. It seemed that lots of things always happened to Mary and for a very small lamb she had many adventures.

  Whilst she stood there looking and thinking she saw a large object in the sky. It was shaped like a square that had been squashed at two of its corners and from the bottom a long tail shaped thing was connected. Underneath a piece of string was tied and dangled down to the ground. It bobbed and dived in the sky as the wind blew it across Mary’s field. She looked up at it as it came closer and saw it was a big kite.
 “Someone must have let the string go.” she thought, “I wonder if I can catch it?”

  She ran as fast as she could and although the wind seemed to blow harder, she managed to grab hold of the string. She dug her heels into the grass and jerked back on the string. The kite flew higher and higher into the sky and twisted and turned in the wind.

   Mary was really enjoying herself now and watched the kite go higher and higher into the blue sky. Suddenly there was an extra big gust of wind, it pulled on the kite and started to pull Mary across the field. She hung on tightly, not wanting to lose the kite and in the next moment she was off the ground and in the air. Up, up, up she went with the kite as it got higher and higher.

She held on as tight as she could, because now she was so high in the air, she was getting frightened that she may hurt herself if she let go.

She flew over the apple tree and over the fence around her field. Soon her field was far, far below her and quickly disappearing behind her. She went over the big lake, flying right up in the clouds with the birds down below her. Over the town and village, field and woods she flew. Houses past beneath her and people moving around looked like little ants, 

“I wonder where I am?“ She thought, “I will never be able to find my way home now.”

Soon the wind began to ease, and the kite gradually came lower and lower to the ground. A big house was getting closer to Mary, and it looked as if she would land in the garden. By now she was only just above the ground, she just cleared the fence in its garden, and bump, down she came in the middle of the big lawn in the house’s back garden. 

She picked herself up and rubbed her sore bottom. 

She looked all around her, then she walked over to the house and knocked on the door. 

After a while she heard footsteps inside and the door suddenly swung open. Before her stood a man with white overalls on. He had a round red face with a mop of white hair and perched on the end of his nose was a pair of small spectacles.

“Hello.” He boomed, “Who are you?”

“Hello, my name is Mary.” She said nervously, “I’m lost because I was blown here on a fly away kite.”

“Come in.” Said the man. “My names Ivor Brainwave and I’m an inventor. Why don’t you come in and tell me your story? I might be able to help.”

Mary went in and told Ivor her story. She talked and talked, and he listened and listened. When Mary had finished, the inventor thought quietly for a while. After a few minutes he smiled and said to Mary, “I think I can help you. I may have just the thing outside in my shed, but as it’s getting dark now, we will have to wait until the morning to get things ready.”

The inventor went over to the sink, filled his kettle, put it on the gas stove and then proceeded to get some tea and cakes for the two of them.

The next morning, after they had both had a good night’s sleep and a big breakfast, they went out into the garden to the inventors shed. He went inside and rummaged around all the bits and pieces. He came out of the shed with a big net and lengths of rope. Then after much puffing and pulling and panting he struggled out of the shed door with a very big wicker basket. This he placed on the ground, scratched his mop of white hair and then off he went back into his shed. By this time Mary was beginning to wonder what Ivor was up to. She looked at the pieces of equipment that were piled all around and couldn’t make head nor tail of any of it. Then Ivor came out of the shed with a big cylinder and a box. He opened the box, and it was full of brightly coloured balloons. Mary began to get an idea of what he was doing. 

He took the balloons and by turning the valve on the cylinder he began to inflate them, one by one. When they were blown up, he would put them in the big net. When the net was half full, he tied four pieces of rope, one to each corner of it. The other end of the rope he tied to each corner of the wicker basket. By this time Mary knew exactly what Ivor was doing and joined in helping him put the balloons into the net until it was full up. The basket was soon floating above the ground.