“Yes,” admitted Grandad, pulling at his collar a little as he was feeling so hot.

“But it’s for a very particular reason…”

And then, he went on to tell them everything. About the pumpkin and the plan and Paris and the whole lot. Marty couldn’t actually believe that he’d just dive in and tell them like that. There was something so risky about it. So bold that it felt like madness.

“We’ll have four days of fresh pumpkin. I mean, if you’ve ever seen those left over after Halloween hanging about on walls, you know they last ages,” Grandad continued.

Then he proceeded to pull an antenna that he’d taken off an old radio out to its full length and started pointing at the map.

“If we could get the pumpkin to Southampton, it’s a hundred and twenty-seven nautical miles to Le Havre.”

They followed his pointer across the map over the expanse of emptiness between England and France.

“I reckon, full tilt we could get that engine going at around twenty-five knots. With a good tail wind behind us, that’s…” Grandad screwed his face up in calculation.

“Four hours…,” Colin offered.

“Exactly. Four hours.” He was getting excited now, Marty could feel it. He watched as Grandad jotted down the numbers on the map with a half-chewed pencil from behind his ear. “That’s a trifling, piffling little distance—we could do that easily! Stop over at Le Havre for the night here … and boom! The next morning, we’re off up the Seine…”

Sadiq scratched his head. Marty listened as the assembled company tried to get their heads around Grandad’s plan.

“You’ll go up the Seine?”

Grandad looked at Sadiq as if he was mad.

“Of course!” he said. Making it sound so simple. “We’ll sail up it. It’s around ninety-six miles. Start first thing. The Seine is tidal. If we work it out, we’d be there easily midmorning.”

“In Paris?”

Colin looked up.

“Yes. Paris.”

Marty laughed.

“Let me get this straight, my lovelies,” said Colin carefully. “You are going to grow this pumpkin until it’s massive, carve it out. Stick an old engine on it, and then you’re just going to casually sail into the city of Paris in a pumpkin?”

Grandad sat back and rubbed his belly in excitement.

“Absolutely! The only problem we have is that the pumpkin has stalled. We’re going to need it to be the size of a family car by the end of the summer, and at the moment, that is looking increasingly unlikely.”

Colin looked on in bewilderment. Marty could feel the group catching Grandad’s excitement. He could feel their hearts and heads start to fill up with the idea. The lady from allotment 7 started giggling, and everyone started smiling at one another. Marty’s stomach was in knots as he waited for one of them to react.