We’re all familiar with Jack and the Beanstalk: ordered to the market to sell the cow, Jack heads towards town but is stopped along the way by one hell of a salesman who manages to trade him a selection of magical beans for the cow.

Overnight the magical beans grow, and a beanstalk allows Jack to climb up high into the clouds and go to the land of giants.

And this is where our story starts. The Smooth Movers found a different copy of the classic fairy tale stashed away in an old dusty attic in the depths of Bayswater . . . here’s what actually happened.

Jack climbs up the beanstalk and looks in each direction, breathing in the air – so fresh up here – and turns back down towards the ground, looking past the hole in the clouds where the beanstalk erupts, peering back down to his poor little village back in old London.

He can make out the smog and the gritty black web of streets below. He looks back up and peers around himself once more, soaking in the luscious scenery. He looks back down at his village. He looks up at the land of the giants once more, and he looks down. And he does it again.

‘Screw it,’ Jack says to nobody in particular, ‘let’s just move here instead. These guys have got it made.’

But with that thought, a great lumbering voice seems to appear nowhere from behind him. Suddenly Jack realises that all this time the Giant had been creeping up behind him.

Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman! The Giant looks down at Jack, tiny in comparison, and crouches down so his massive face is looming over the boy.

Be he alive, or be dead – I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!

‘Mate,’ Jack replies. ‘I’m from freo. Can me and my Mum crash here?’

Oh, the Giant replies, suddenly becoming less hostile. Yeah, that’s cool. Go for it man. Just don’t use up my Broadband.

And with that, the Giant props himself up, turns around, and begins to saunter back to his mansion.

‘Wait!’, Jack cried after him. ‘Can’t you help me move our stuff up here?’

Sorry, said the Giant. I did my back in the other week helping the missus out of bed. You know how it is. Anyway I have to be going, I left the oven on. Cool, great. Can’t wait to have you in the neighbourhood. Alright great, seeya.

And with that, the Giant was gone, already heading back towards his place while finishing his sentence.

‘Well crap,’ Jack says, kicking a clump of cloud at his feet.

So the next day, after climbing back down the stalk, Jack goes back to the vendor who sold him the magic beans.

‘Ah!,’ the vendor says upon seeing him. ‘I remember you from the other week . . . did you harvest everything you’d ever wished for?’

‘Yeah that’s all hunky dory,’ Jack says, ‘but I need to get my Mother’s loom and a bedframe up that bloody thing and I was kind of depending on the Giant to be a decent bloke’.

‘Oh. Oh! Well, I’m sorry young man but I’m busy tonight, I’ve got magical brews to check on and things to do, people to see – ‘

Jack interrupts him.
‘Look, I don’t want you to help me move. Relax. I’m hoping you have some strength beans, or something.’
‘Strength beans?’
‘Well, yeah. You’re a magical vendor aren’t you? A purveyor of mystical goods?’
‘Why yes! Remember those beans?’
‘Yes, like the beans. Except now I need different beans. Don’t you have something that can make me stronger for a day, just enough to lift a loom and a bedframe about twenty kilometres vertically?’
‘Well, no. Not really. We don’t have magic like that.’
‘But you can grow a sixty kilometre beanstalk overnight?’
‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got something here to revive a dead prince,’ the Vendor says, looking through his rucksack, but Jack had already begun walking away. The next day, Jack is halfway up the beanstalk with the family loom attached to his back, tied around his waist and shoulders with an old piece of itchy rope. He does not reach the top until night time, and he finally reaches the top of the clouds and puts down the old loom.

And then he climbs down again for another day, and attaches the family bedframe to his back. So he hoists it to him again, his back straining against all the weight, and climbs up the beanstalk for an entire day and night, reaching the top of the clouds once again, sweating and swearing, veins popping out of his head.

Cool, looks like you made it, the Giant said. Except we were going to put a cabinet there. Sorry Jack. Could you just move the loom to the left a little?

And this went on and on, until Jack finally moved himself and his mother into the land of giants and they were no longer poor and became rich in gold and food, and everything was good, except Jack developed terrible back problems from three days of climbing and after that week he hired removalists forever onwards.

And that is how Jack and the Beanstalk really ends. We promise.