Billy and The Blue Whale NEW Version with Awesome sound effects!!! By E3D (Martyn Kenneth - a podcast by Storyteller Martyn Kenneth

From the book:
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who was very, very shy. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters so he lived all alone with his mommy and daddy.

But his mommy and daddy were always working. His daddy worked in a factory miles and miles and miles away from home, meaning that Billy only saw him on the weekends. Mom worked in a restaurant, and she came back really late each night. So the boy, when he left school each day, had to get on the school bus and sit on his seat by the window near the back, get off the school bus by himself, walk all the way up the stairs to his house, open the door, turn on the oven and cook the food that his mom had prepared, eat it by himself, do his homework by himself, brush his teeth, wash his face, and go to bed all by himself. His mom would come home about 10 o'clock at night and he was always still awake, waiting for her. Whenever he heard his mom close the door as she came in from work, he would close his eyes and wait. You see, every time mom came back home she always, without fail, went to Billy’s bedroom first, just to check he was sleeping. And every night she would see his eyes were closed and every single night she would give him a kiss on his forehead. Billy always tried to stay awake but as soon as his mom kissed his head, he fell fast asleep.

In the mornings when he got up, his mom would have breakfast with him and tell him what food she'd prepared the night before so he would know what he would be having for dinner alone that night. And then he would go to school.

On the weekends Billy’s dad would usually get home on a Friday night around ten or eleven at night. And so that was the night that Billy could stay up a little bit later than usual and also because there was no school on Saturdays he could get to see his dad for bit, but his dad was always tired and didn’t play much with his only child.
You see, this boy, Billy, did not have a very nice life. All he did was come home every day by himself: on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday he would go home all by himself and look after himself until he fell asleep when his mom kissed his forehead. He didn't have any friends to play with, and he could never go outside because his mom said not to play outside. Sometimes he could go out on the weekend but his dad would come home on the weekend, and his dad would usually sleep on the sofa all the time, because he was so tired from working so hard. This meant Billy usually had to help his mom to wash and clean and do all the housework so the boy felt very, very fed up.

Well, one day, I think it was a Tuesday afternoon, the boy was feeling particularly fed up and he got off the school bus and went upstairs to his house. He turned on the oven to heat up his dinner and then he heard a ‘ding dong’ at the door.
“Oh, who's that? Mom didn’t tell me anyone would be visiting!”, he thought.
So he went and opened the door and there at the bottom of the step was a little canvas box and nobody to be seen.
He looked around again but he couldn't see anybody.
“That’s strange”, thought Billy. “Postmen don’t even come at this time of day”.
So, after making sure the coast was clear he took the little box quickly under his arm, closed the door and went and put it on a kitchen table. He turned off the oven and let his food cool down a bit. And as his food was cooling, he sat down and opened up the little box. He unraveled the delicate paper wrapped present to find just a little note. And the little note said,
‘Follow the blue whale’
“mmm, is this for me?”, he thought. “Follow the blue whale, what does that mean?”
Well, he couldn't really think of what the note meant and then he started to get hungry and remembered that his food was getting cold in the cooling oven so he put the card on top of his piano and went and ate his dinner. As he was washing his dishes, he thought about the little note:
“blue whale, blue whale? Follow the blue whale, what does it mean?” As he was washing his face and getting ready for bed, he kept thinking about the blue whale: “a blue whale, blue whale. I have no idea what that means.”
As he was putting his pajamas on and getting ready for bed –
“blue whale, blue whale.”
He had no idea. Frustrated and tired Billy took the box and put it in the trash and then took it out again and put it under the kitchen sink, just in case. He left the card on top of the piano so that he would be able to see it in the morning and so that his mom might see it when she got home and perhaps she would be able to work out what ‘follow the blue whale’ meant.
As he closed his eyes, he thought, “What is this blue whale?” He had no idea. And then as usual, he heard his mom opening the door so he closed his eyes and waited for the kiss. He got the kiss on the head and fell fast asleep.

He forgot all about the note that told him to follow the blue whale.

The next day he got up and did the same as usual – all by himself. And the next day, and the next day and then it was the weekend and his dad came home and slept on the sofa for what seemed like two days straight.
Billy’s life went on like this for a few weeks and I think his dad took the card off the piano because nobody knew what it was for and so everyone forgot about the little note that just said ‘follow the blue whale’.

And then one strange day as Billy was going to school on the school bus, he saw a picture of a blue whale on a car driving by. When he was in the classroom learning his new words for the week there, in his school book was a blue whale at the top of the page. At break time, his friend, David was playing with a toy blue whale and then, as he was getting on the bus to go home to and empty house, in his seat where he always sat, alone, by the window near the back, was a small, handstitched blue whale. He picked it up and it whispered,
“come with me.”
Billy didn't know what to do. So he held on tight to this blue whale all the way home.
When he got off the bus, the blue whale started to pull, like a magnet, but the opposite direction. It was pulling him and so he held on tight. And as Billy was getting close to the door to his house the blue whale pulled him passed and away down the street. Billy was trying to hold on to the blue whale like someone might hold on to a dog that was running away with the leash. The blue whale kept pulling and pulling and pulling. Billy kept running and running and running. He thought his arms and legs were going to fall off. But before he knew it, he was down the street and he didn't know where was.
The blue whale kept pulling and pulling and pulling and pulled Billy all the way to the harbor, where all the boats were parked up. The blue whale pulled Billy onto a ship, a ship that didn’t seem to belong in that dock. Billy was pulled along the deck and down the steps into the belly of the boat and into a wooden cabin that smelled warm and piney. Well, it was dark in the cabin, lit only by candle light and the boy was very hungry, not scared funnily, just hungry. There was some food in the cabin: A nice sandwich and a glass of warm milk. Billy ate the sandwich and drank the milk and had no thought of what time it was, nor the cold food that was waiting for him in his fridge at home, but suddenly the note started to make some sense.
Suddenly Billy came out of his daydream to find himself struggling to balance on his own two feet. He tried to get out and ran up the steps to the deck, but when he got to the top of the ship, the ship had already set sail and there was sea and waves everywhere, all around, lit by the reflection of the clear full moon in the cloudless sky and it seemed that he was hundreds and hundreds of miles away from his home. He didn't know what to do and he started to cry.
But then the blue whale started to nudge him on the shoulder. You see, as I am sure you have guessed, this was a magic, floating blue whale and it was looking at Billy with its innocent eyes.
“What do you want now?” sobbed Billy. “How am I ever going to get home?” “What’s mom going to do when she gets home and I’m not in my bed?” Billy even thought that he may never sleep a wink again in his whole life if he doesn’t get kiss on his forehead from his mom again. The blue whale nudged his shoulder and Billy went back down the stairs, to another room this time, further down the into the belly of the ship. The blue pointed with his tail to a door and the boy open the door with his eyes still wet from the tears. There, inside the room, sitting at a grand wooden desk with maps sprawled all across held down by candle, and compasses and clocks. was a very old man with white hair under his captains hat and a white beard grown neatly to the top of his Navy coat. The smell of the captains pipe mixed with the wax, wood and Old Spice.
“You must be the captain of this mysterious ship” though Billy.

The boy sat down and the old man started to explain everything. Well, almost everything.
“Billy!” said the old man in a deep and warm voice, his face lighting up the moment Billy’s name left his lips.
“Billy! He announced again.
“welcome to my ship! I'm your grandfather.”
With that, Billy actually fell off his chair. He had never, ever, seen his grandfather. And he never even heard a single word about him, let alone the fact that he was a captain of a ship!
“Billy, I’m your daddy’s father and I am the captain of this magical ship.” Well, by the time Billy had gotten back onto his chair, and rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, he began to notice that this old man with thick white hair and a trim beard actually did start to look a bit like his daddy. It was if this captain was an older version of his daddy.
“Billy!” Said the old man again, as if he was greeting his favorite grandson after returning from a long trip. “I’ve been watching you from afar, because I have a telescope on my ship, and I could see everything that you have been doing....

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