The Mayor Who Banned Bedtime

Mayor Croak of Puddleton was a frog, and like all frogs he believed that the evening was the best part of the day and it was a scandal that children were made to miss it.

So one morning he stood on the steps of the town hall, unrolled a scroll, cleared his throat, and announced:

"By order of the Mayor, bedtime is banned. Nobody in Puddleton has to go to bed. Ever again."

The children of Puddleton cheered so loudly that the ducks left.

That first evening was wonderful. The children played in the square until the sun went down, and then they played in the square after the sun went down, which they had never done, and discovered that hide-and-seek in the dark is a completely different and much better game.

The grown-ups sat on their front steps and said, "Well, it's the law," and had another biscuit.

Mayor Croak hopped about being congratulated.

The second evening was quite good. There was a bit of yawning in the square. Two children fell asleep in a hedge during hide-and-seek and were not found until the morning, which they said was the best hiding they had ever done, but their mothers said something different.

The third evening, things began to go wrong.

The baker, who had stayed up to join in, fell asleep standing up and baked a loaf the shape of his own face. The postman delivered everybody's letters to the pond. The school bell rang at four in the morning because the teacher could no longer tell the difference, and all the children arrived in their pyjamas and sat at their desks and put their heads down and that, at last, is where most of Puddleton got some sleep.

By the fourth evening the town was very quiet, not because anyone was in bed, which was banned, but because nobody could remember what they were doing. The children sat on the swings not swinging. The ducks came back and nobody noticed. A small girl called Mina was seen trying to put her shoes on her hands, and when asked why, said, "Why not?" in a way that worried everyone.

Mayor Croak surveyed his town from the steps of the town hall. He had been awake for four days too, being the Mayor, and the scroll in his hand had become a pillow at some point without his permission.

"Mr Mayor," said Mina, with a shoe on each hand. "I think I would like to go to bed."

"Banned," said Mayor Croak, but it came out as a yawn.

"Could you un-ban it?"

The Mayor looked at the scroll. He looked at the town. He looked at his own eyelids, which had been trying to tell him something since Tuesday.

"By order of the Mayor," he said, and his voice wobbled, "bedtime is... un-banned. In fact, bedtime is now compulsory. Starting immediately. Starting with me."

And he lay down on the town hall steps, in his sash, with the scroll under his head, and was asleep before the cheer had properly started.

It was not much of a cheer. The children were too tired. They went home in a slow line, holding hands, and their parents, who were also in a slow line, put them to bed and then got into their own beds with their shoes on, and the whole of Puddleton went dark, street by street, with the ducks on the pond and the loaf shaped like the baker cooling on the windowsill.

The law was never changed back. To this day, in Puddleton, bedtime is compulsory.

Nobody has ever complained.