Sodor & The Man In The Hat

The people of Sodor lived on the side of an ancient volcano and were very poor but very happy. They would spend their days fishing, hunting and the children would sit under the large oak tree in the morning and learn how to read from the one book they had and then spend the afternoon playing in the sun.
One day there was a loud, cracking sound and out of the volcano came a strange, yellow liquid. The people of Sodor did not know what this funny looking liquid was but they soon found that they could mould it into any shape and when it got wet it set into a hard substance which they could make their buildings from.
Soon the news got around that Sodor had this miracle new liquid that they could make waterproof houses from and people would turn up in Sodor begging to buy the great new liquid so they could build their houses.
It wasn't long until Sodor was running out of this liquid so the leaders rounded up a group of young men to dig into the side of the volcano and take out more so they could sell it for lots of gold coins and each man was given 3 gold coins every week for all the digging.
With the all gold coins the leaders received they built a new school so the children didn't get wet when it rained and lots of books so the children could have one book each. They also built a hospital so when anyone got sick they could get well again.
One day a man with a bowler hat came to Sodor and said to the leader 'we have more strong men than you so we can dig a lot more of the yellow liquid from the volcano and you can sell even more and we will both make lots of gold coins but as we are digging, we want more of the gold coins we make but we will still both be very rich indeed.'
So the leaders told the men to stop digging and the men who came with the man with the bowler hat picked up the shovels and they started digging out the yellow liquid and the man with the bowler hat took away the yellow liquid to sell and come back on Sunday in a big boat and gave the leader 20 gold coins.
'But we made 100 gold coins from the liquid you took, why have you only given me 20 coins?' said the leader to the man with the bowler hat.
'We are digging' said the man with the bowler hat 'and I am selling it so it is fair that i get more than you'.
That night a big hurricane ripped through Sodor and the roof blew off the school but the leader did not have enough coins left to fix the roof so he told the children to go home until they could fix the roof. The next day another big gust of wind blew down a wall of the hospital and the leader asked the man with the bowler hat when he came if he could fix their school and hospital with the yellow liquid and the man with the bowler hat said they would if the leader paid them 100 gold coins for the liquid they would need to use.
'But we have very few gold coins left' said the leader and the bowler hatted man said he would lend them the 100 coins if they would pay him back 125 gold coins but they could pay a little bit every Sunday.
The leader said the school and hospital had to be fixed and as he did not have enough gold coins, he would have to borrow the coins from the man with the bowler hat so the hospital and school were fixed and every Sunday the leader would meet the man with the bowler hat and pay him 10 gold coins.
One day the teachers came to the leader and said that they needed new books for the children as the books were old and worn and they had run out of chalk and the rainy season was coming and the roof was leaking again and the school was now too small to fit in all the children of Sodor.
The leader counted his coins and told the teachers that they could not pay for all the things that they wanted and the teachers would have to make the children share the good books they had left, would have to use charcoal instead of chalk and move the desks and chairs to a dry part of the school building and some children would have to go to school in the morning and the other children in the afternoon.
'But we have all this yellow liquid that everybody is buying' protested the teachers 'why can we not buy more chalk or build a new school with all the gold coins the people who buy the yellow liquid give us?'                  
'Because the men who came with the man with the bowler hat dig it up and he sells it and takes 80 of the 100 gold coins we make' said the leader.
'So why don't our men dig it out and you sell it and keep the coins to build a new school' said the teachers and that is what they did.
The man with the bowler hat was not very happy and he took his men away on his big boat and the men of Sodor were glad to get the 3 gold coins again for digging out the yellow liquid and the leader sold the liquid to all the people who came to Sodor to buy it.
Soon the leaders had enough gold coins to not only fix the school but to build another school so all the children in Sodor could now go to school.
They even had enough coins left after selling the yellow liquid that they built a library and filled it with new books and built a factory where the men and women of Sodor went to work and the leaders gave them coins each week which they spent in the new shop.
In no time they had built three more schools and another hospital and more houses for the people of Sodor to live in and bought lots and lots of chalk for the teachers.
The man with the bowler hat returned three months later and told the leader that they could dig out more yellow liquid and sell more than them and they would both be very rich but the leaders told him that it was not fair that he got all the gold coins and bought a big boat and they got so few coins for their yellow liquid so they could not buy chalk or fix their school and he should go and never come back again.
The people of Sodor are now very happy and the children love their new school and anybody who eats too much birthday cake and feels sick has a nice hospital to get better in. 
Most importantly, the man with the bowler hat was never seen again and everybody in Sodor lived happily ever after.

The End