Dear Grandad,

I’m afraid I have some sad news to tell you but also some amazing news – Old Shuffler has died and it turns out that he used to live in the Spooky house! Can you believe that? I didn’t see it happen fortunately (him dying I mean) but I heard Mum and Dad talking about it. I think they were talking to the man who runs the newspaper shop and then later on Dad was reading something in the local paper about it and it said about his life.

The newspaper said that Old Shuffler (obviously they didn’t call him Old Shuffler but that’s what I call him) was born at house number 2 on our road 80 years ago – so he was 80 – that’s OLD! It said that he had kept a shop called an ironmongers on The Plain until he had got ill and had to close it. I had to ask Mum and Dad what an ironmonger shop was and they said it was one where you could buy bits and pieces for around the house and for mending things like tools and nails and batteries and things like that. I thought it would be a shop that sold irons and mongers, whatever they are. It said that everybody knew him from his shop and he was almost like the ‘King of The Plain’ at that time. Anyway, he got ill and had to close the shop and then after a few more years he couldn’t even look after himself in his house anymore.

It’s sad to think that when he was younger and fit and healthy everyone must have gone in his shop to get things and talked to him about the weather and the football score and how to do the job they needed to do in their house but then once he was old and not well he just slipped out of everyone’s lives like he was a bit invisible. It’s like as soon as he lost his shop he started to disappear and people forgot all about him. I don’t know what happened with his house. I suppose that someone bought it and then they sold it to someone else and then for some reason it gradually started to fall apart and get broken. Just like him really. He was all shakey and had a bad leg and had to shuffle about, and the house had cracks and mould and broken windows. He was asking about the birds like he had lost them (perhaps the birds were in his mind and he lost them when he lost that) but at least he didn’t have to put up with having pigeons going in like his old house had to.

It’s sad that Old Shuffler never found his birds before he died – that might have made him happy.

Although he scared us a bit, I really hope that wherever he is now, Old Shuffler is peaceful and doesn’t have to shuffle and lurch around and mutter all the time. Perhaps he has gone somewhere where he has found his birds. Even better, perhaps he can BE a bird and fly along with the others. That would be so cool to swoop around in the sky looking down on all the people below, visiting the places and the people you know, singing away. If you were a bird you could even play tricks on people and they would never know it was you all the time.

I’ve got to go now. Hopefully I will have some happy news for you next time.

Love from your bestest granddaughter.

Kate xx

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