Alfred crafts a grand design and a great story!

Alfred Atkin, in Year 8, has put his creative skills to great use over the Easter holidays. A keen craftsman, Alfred has designed and made a chair from left-over tanalised fencing pine that was laying around in his workshop. This is great evidence of wider learning and demonstrates how Alfred is applying the school values of creativity, excellence, independence and resilience. Well done Alfred, you have created a chair that unities an ergonomic design with a modern yet timeless style.

Alfred went on to use his chair as the inspiration for a piece of work that was set for English, where he was asked to take inspiration from a fairy tale. Alfred said: “My inspiration came from my Easter project. I made a chair for my cousin’s birthday. I have almost completed it; all I need to do is sand it down and add some oil on to slow it from going rotten as quickly. The chair is made out of pine that I had laying around in my workshop. Also my inspiration came from Goldilocks as there was a baby chair, mummy chair and daddy chair, the one I built was an extra-large daddy chair for Michael who is 6 foot 3!”

You can enjoy Alfred’s story below.

ALFRED’S CHAIR

In a deep and dark mystical wood, there was a chair, made out of pine planks. It was a normal chair for a normal person, Michael. He had received this chair that his cousin had spent a lot of time building for his birthday present. But also a gang of three people who had some special powers lurked somewhere in the same forest as Michael and his chair. On a Wednesday morning, the postman came to deliver Michael his weekly newspaper and on the front cover it read; ‘Beware chairs have been stolen from a nearby village. Hide all that all chairs that you own. There is someone out there who wants chairs. BEWARE!’ Michael, just like everyone else, had never heard of chair thieves but he did not want to take risks by leaving the chair on his patio, so that Monday night, he put it in his garage and padlocked the door. It was very secure so it should have been able to hold off any thieves, but it didn’t.

Now these thieves were something different. They would collect screws from objects to get into locked places then the screws from the chair. And they would take all but one bit of wood from the chair so the owner knew that it had been stolen. All of that they do for everyone, even Michael if they take his chair tonight, which they most likely will do. They want every single chair so they can a build a chair for a giant that they were told would come from the beanstalk a week later.

That night at around 11pm, Michael was fast asleep in his bed dreaming about the chair and how it would be safe in the garage. Except it wasn’t as the thieves had arrived. They had come with just themselves and no other objects that could help them get into the garage. Now two of the gang members started to walk around and study the building, trying to find screw holes for their leader to undo. And soon enough they found a few that would open a side panel of the garage that would lead inside. The boss stood up and walked over to them and like a coiled viper staring at his prey, he stared at the screws and just like that, they started to come undone. No noise could be heard, meaning Michael would stay asleep, not suspecting a thing. One down, three to go. It only took him 10 seconds to undo each screw, and with each screw, the other members would pick them up and put them in their pockets. Once the boss was done, the side panel fell over and revealed the chair that Michael’s cousin put a lot of time and effort into, but of course, they didn’t care, they just grabbed it and ran off with it, leaving Michael’s house in the distance.

The next morning, Michael woke up feeling fine, hoping that the garage lock had done its job, and when he got outside that’s what it looked like. He opened the door full of pride and success because he had succeeded, but then the misery came as the door got higher and revealed what was in there. Nothing! The chair had gone. There was no trace of the break-in until he looked behind a sheet of metal that covered the panel where the thieves had taken it down.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” Michael shouted.

THE END