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Slack Jack
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This is a tale about Slack Jack.
Who exactly was Slack Jack? Well, as you can guess he was pretty slack and his name was Jack.
He was slack in that when his back was to the wall he would just crumble into a heap and hope everything would go away.
Everyone knew Jack was slack (hence the nick-name) and mostly people left him alone as it was embarrassing to see him crumbling all over the place because he couldn't cope.
However, and this is a big HOWEVER, there was a newcomer in town who suffered from a total lack of concern for others. This newcomer's name was Crack Mack (he was only called this because he rather liked the sound, thought he was rather good at cracking jokes and, finally, no-one dared argue).
Crack Mack was tracking through the backstreets one bright and sunny Monday morning, when he came upon Slack Jack cleaning the Tack Store windows (if you don't know what a Tack Store is you had better ask!).
Now Crack Mack was in a black mood and when he saw Jack he just wanted to give him a smack. He raised his arm into smacking position, Jack looked up, fell back into his usual crumbling heap and landed on a stack of packages hitting his back so hard he came up with a huge hacking cough.
The cough was so loud and full of all the little crumbs from Jack's lunchtime snack (green pickles and fatty back bacon if you really must know), that the force of it sent Crack Mack flying back into the tracks of a runaway bull which just happened to be passing!
The bull took one look at the green pickle and fatty back bacon pebble-dashed Crack, jumped as high as it possibly could in the air and landed smack on top of Crack.
Crack exploded with an awful "thwack", bits and bobs went flying in all directions. The poor bull got the worst of it. Where as the green pickle and fatty back bacon which emerged from Jack was bad enough, the remains of a hot vindaloo curry mixed with banana and toffee icecream and some very old Stilton cheese flying back in your eyes would be enough to send you scurrying straight back from whence you came.
And that is just what the bull did. He can be seen to this day sitting desperately, sobbing quietly to himself, in the corner of a very big field trying hard to sniff great big sniffs of wild-flowers in an wild attempt to rid himself of Crack's thwacking great stench.
1. Why was Jack called Slack?
2. Why was Mack called Crack?
3. Have you found out what a Tack Store is? If not, ask now and then type the answer in!
4. Who just happened to be passing by?
5. The mixture of vindaloo, banana and toffee icream and old Stilton is bad enough but can you think of another mixture which could have been even worse?
