Louis and Lola's Scwuplious Ceweal Expewamint

Louis and Lola were a little brother and a big sister whose Mummy went away for a weekend. Their Daddy was looking after them, which meant one thing. Sweeties. Mummy hid the sweetie jar, but Daddy knew where it was, AND he was tall enough to reach it. Daddy was the tallest man in the world. "As tall as a giwaffe!" said Lola. "A sweetie giwaffe!" said Louis.

On Saturday morning, Louis and Lola ran into Mummy and Daddy's room to jump on the bed. Mummy wasn't there, so there was much more jumping space. Louis jumped on Daddy's shins, even so. "BWEAKFAST TIME! BWEAKFAST TIME!" screeched Lola. "SWEETIE TIME! SWEETIE TIME!" squealed Louis. Daddy got up and put on his dressing gown and slippers, and followed the children downstairs. "There'll be no sweeties until you've eaten your cereal!" he bellowed after them. 

But when they opened the cupboard, they saw that ALL THE CEREAL WAS FINISHED! No Rice Krispies, no Cheerios, and CERTAINLY no Cocopops. Even Daddy's yucky muesli was aallllll gone. "SWEETIES!" cried Louis.

 "No!" said Daddy. 

"But what else can we eat for bweeeeckfist?" asked Lola. 

"Yeah! What can we eat instead of ceeweal, Daddy?" asked Louis. 

"Well," replied Daddy, "I suppose we'll have to experiment."

"Expewamint?"

"Experiment."

Lola nodded solemnly, though she had no idea what an experiment was.

"What's an expewamint Daddy?" asked Louis.

"Well, it's kind of like a test. We'll have to try lots of different things, you see, and see if we can eat them instead of cereal."

"So, we put different things in the milk and taste it?"

"Well, yes," said Daddy, slightly hesitantly, "I guess we could do it like that. In an experiment, you keep some things the same, and change the thing you're testing."

The two children looked at each other and nodded. 

"Ok" said Lola. "Let's do an expewamint."

"Let's do it properly," said Daddy, taking a few sheets of scrap paper from the recycling bin, and grabbing Lola's pencil case. "Lets write down everything we try, and then write down the results. Then we can decide what the best pretend cereal is. We should try and do a fair test though. We all have to taste everything and decide on a verdict. The best experiment is always a scrupulous one."

Lola scrambled up onto a chair and grabbed some felt-tips. At the top of the page, she made a series of unintelligible scribbles, in her neatest purple handwriting. 

"What does that say, Lola?" asked Louis.

"It says, 'Louis and Lola's Scwuplious Ceweal Expewamint'" she announced proudly.

"Wonderful," said Daddy. "Let's begin, shall we?"

First Daddy laid out a series of bowls on the table. Then he took the milk out of the fridge. 

"Okay, you two! What shall we try first?"

The two children scampered to the kitchen cupboard and began to point at things on high shelves, well above their reach.

"Custawd Cweeams! Kinder Eggs! Jaffa Cakes! Penguins!" yelled Lola excitedly.

"Pombears!" shouted Louis. Daddy began to object, but decided not to, in the name of science.

"Maltesers! Smarties! Buttons! Wervers Owiginals!" continued Lola, who knew the inventory of the sweetie tin off by heart.

"Cheestwings!" added Louis.

"Ummmmm. Skittles! Jelly Babies!" Lola was slowly losing momentum. Louis on the other hand, was quickly catching on. Or so he thought.

"Twiglets! Doweetos! LUNCHABLES!"

"Okay kids," interjected Daddy. "I think that's enough for now."

"HAPPY HIPPOS!" added Louis, and as this suggestion wasn't as stomach-churning as his previous ones had been, Daddy took his late entry into account.

So they put all of their different pretend cereals into different bowls, and the experiment began. They tasted meticulously and scwupliously, and made sure to taste everything twice, even if it wasn't quite the taste they were after. Then they made a table of results (written by Daddy, fortunately) which looked something like this:

Custard Creams - Quite crunchy. Nice and sweet. 7/10

Kinder Egg - Nice but not very crunchy. The toy got all wet. 5/10

Jaffa Cake - The base got soggy. Orange and milk don't go too well but the chocolate was nice. 5/10

Penguins - Louis left the wrapper on. We couldn't read the joke. 0/10

Pombears - They made the milk salty. They look friendly but Louis got sad because they were drowning. 2/10

Maltesers -  Very nice. They were crunchy and they floated (like when Louis did a poo in the bath.) 9/10

Smarties - Crunchy, made the milk go different colours but the orange is made of ladybirds' wee. 7/10

Chocolate Buttons - Nice and chocolaty but not crunchy enough. 6/10

Werther's Originals - Made Lola lose a tooth. Very happy because the tooth fairy's coming. 9/10

Cheestring - Looked like weird spaghetti. Made Daddy feel sick. 2/10

Skittles -  Made the milk like a rainbow but tasted too sour. Louis only likes the red ones. 4/10

Fizzy Vitamin C tablets - Yucky nasty vomit. 0/10

Jelly Babies - We liked the swimming babies and they were squishy but not crunchy. 5/10

Twiglets - Daddy likes Marmite but even he didn't like this. 1/10

Doritos - Made the milk go all orange but not in a good way. Smelt like Aaron Schmitt from class 3P. 0/10

Lunchables - The biscuits were okay but the ham and cheese were really not very good really. 1/10.

Happy Hippos - The hippos looked really happy in their milk, and tasted really happy too. 10/10

"What's the conclusion then, kids?" asked Daddy.

"Whats a concwushun?"

"Its when we say what we've decided from the experiment."

"Oh. I think Happy Hippos." said Lola.

"HAPPY HIPPOS!" agreed Louis.

"Well, that's settled!" said Daddy. "Happy Hippos for breakfast!"

But when they looked in the sweetie tin, the Happy Hippos were ALL GONE. So were all the Maltesers, the Kinder eggs, the Jaffa Cakes, the Custard Creams... they had eaten ALL THE SWEETIES IN THE HOUSE. 

"What shall we do, Daddy?" asked Lola.

Daddy thought for a moment. "Well," he said. "I suppose we could always have toast..."