Chicken school, p.1
Chicken School, page 1
Tim Witkinson’s life is really, really boring – until he turns into…
… daredevil hero, Captain Goodygoody…
… and amazingly clever Doctor Intensive-Care.
But what’s all this got to do with chickens?
Jeremy Strong once worked in a bakery, putting the jam into three thousand doughnuts every night. Now he puts the jam in stories instead, which he finds much more exciting. At the age of three, he fell out of a first-floor bedroom window and landed on his head. His mother says that this damaged him for the rest of his life and refuses to take any responsibility. He loves writing stories because he says it is ‘the only time you alone have complete control and can make anything happen’. His ambition is to make you laugh (or at least snuffle). Jeremy Strong lives near Bath with four cats and a flying cow.
Are you feeling silly enough to read more?
MY DAD’S GOT AN ALLIGATOR!
MY GRANNY’S GREAT ESCAPE
MY MUM’S GOING TO EXPLODE!
MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM
THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG
RETURN OF THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG
WANTED! THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG
BEWARE! KILLER TOMATOES
CHICKEN SCHOOL
KRAZY KOW SAVES THE WORLD – WELL, ALMOST
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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First published 2004
This edition published 2007
5
Text copyright © Jeremy Strong, 2004
Illustrations copyright © Rowan Clifford, 2004
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-91671-2
This story is dedicated to all those Mrs Doves who rescue children, and in particular to the woman and the girl who saved me from my school and myself – Fanny Kennard and my wife, Susan.
Contents
1 Introducing…
2 A Visit to Mr Dedman
3 Hurrah for Captain Goodygoody!
4 A School Full of Chickens
5 Hurrah for Doctor Intensive-Care!
6 And After the Chickens – a Rabbit
7 The Culprit Is Revealed
8 Hurrah for James Blond!
9 Strange People in the House
10 The Chickens Strike Again
11 Hurrah for Marka?
12 The End of the World Gets Closer
13 Dad’s Story
14 Surprise! Surprise!
1 Introducing…
And the winner of the Most Boring Family in the World award is… wait for it…
THE WITKINSONS OF WIDDLINGWALL!!!
Coming up on to the stage now we have Mr Thomas Witkinson, father of one, and current holder of the title, Most Uninteresting Father in Britain’. Mr Witkinson is forty-one and married to his wife – who else, ha ha ha! – married to his wife, Rachel
Rachel, thirty-seven, is the proud champion of the My Hobby Is More Boring Than Tours Competition, 2004.
And finally, coming on to the stage now is their son, Tim, known to all his schoolmates – not that he has any – as Waste of Space. Tim has absolutely nothing at all of interest to tell you.
*
So there you are. It’s true. We are a boring family. Do you know what my dad does? He has such an exciting job. He works for the Food Standards Agency. See – I knew you’d be impressed. I said to him one day: ‘Dad, what do you actually do?’
And he said: ‘It depends on what day it is. Monday is usually a fish day. I look at fish and see if they’re fit for eating or not. Then on Tuesdays I look at beef and see if that’s fit for eating or not.’
‘Oh. That sounds fascinating. Dad. What do you do if it isn’t fit for eating?’
‘I throw it away’
‘And what do you do if it is fit for eating?’
‘I write a report that says, “This beef is fit for human consumption”. It’s not a very demanding job.’
‘Dad, Gary Jarvis’s father is a wrestler. He gets into a ring with another wrestler and they throw each other about and try to pull each other’s legs off and grunt and scream a lot.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. And Sophie Goodsole’s dad makes jet skis and he has to test them.’
And what does my dad do when he gets home from his boring job? Does he go extreme ironing? I think not. Does he swim with sharks? Not likely.
My dad plays choo-choos. He does. He’s got a train set and he gets it out every night, along with his friend, Mr Smith.
It’s true. They have a massive layout upstairs in our house. The track starts from a little model station in Mum and Dad’s bedroom, travels across the room, out through a hole Dad knocked in the wall, across the staircase, through another hole in the wall and into the spare bedroom, right the way across until it reaches another model station at the end of the line.
And that’s not all. There is a telephone link between them. If you stand anywhere upstairs you can hear the other person quite clearly without the phone, but Dad says it wouldn’t be right if they didn’t do it like they do at real stations.
Almost every evening Mr Smith comes round to our house and plays trains with my dad. They go upstairs. Dad sets up one of the engines on the track. He rings up his friend and it goes something like this:
My dad: Hello? Hello? Calling Appleton Station. This is Snowberry Station calling Appleton…
Mr Smith: I’m here, Snowberry. Is there a train due?
My dad: The eight fifteen 4-8-2 is about to leave and should arrive shortly
Mr Smith: Message received, Snowberry. Goodbye.
My dad: Goodbye, Appleton.
And that’s about it. What an exciting time they have. Every night! They follow a timetable. It’s all written out. First one train, then another, then another. In between they make each other cups of tea and dip biscuits in their mugs and chat about steam locomotives and so on. The trains trundle from one room to another, crossing the staircase (or the Grand Canyon, as Dad likes to refer to it) and then they come back again. Excitement! Thrills! Adventure!
???????
I DON’T THINK SO.
Then there’s my mum. She has an incredibly exciting job – she’s a librarian! Sometimes when she comes in from work she’s all a-flutter because something amazing has happened. ‘You’ll never guess what – Mrs Tuttle brought back her books and, do you know, there was a fly squashed inside one. She said, “I can’t read this, it’s got a dead fly inside.” So she brought it back.’
Gosh.
Sometimes I don’t know how I cope with the level of excitement in our house. But wait for it, I haven’t told you what my mum does while Dad is upstairs being an engine driver. She sticks seashells on flowerpots. She does! I bet you thought nobody actually does that, not for real!
Well, meet my mum, champion shell-sticker. The rooms in our house are floor-to-ceiling with things that have shells stuck on them. If it doesn’t move, it’s probably got shells stuck on it. The TV? Covered with them (apart from the screen, of course). The downstairs toilet? Oh yes, encrusted with shells. Mum would have put them on the seat if I hadn’t stopped her. Imagine that! Ouch!
Mum keeps her shell supply in the back room downstairs. It’s as if an entire tropical-shell beach has been bulldozed into that room. If you open the door, shells come cascading out across the floor. We even got a crab once, which is probably why the garden’s full of gulls. They line up on the roof. They queue in the garden, hoping the shells have still got something edible inside.
Just think of the exciting conversations my mum must have when she goes to a party.
Hostess: And what do you do for excitement, Mrs Witkinson?
My mum: I get lots of shells and I stick them on things.
Hostess: Really? How fascinating. Just hold still for a moment while I pour this bucket of cold custard over your head.
I ask you! What am I to do? Do you see how colourless my life
WHERE’S MY LIFE?!
It’s no better at school. I’m in Mrs Dove’s class. I like Mrs Dove, even though she’s extremely old and grey. She’s OK and occasionally, if there’s time, she gives us great things to do. Sometimes we’re allowed to write a whole story – not just bits – and I like that. Or she might read us a book or tell us about something really exciting from the past, like ancient Egyptians pulling brains out of people’s noses, or baddies being stuck in the stocks and having mouldy tomatoes thrown at them.
It hardly ever happens though because usually there isn’t enough time because we have to follow THE TIMETABLE.
The timetable was set up by our head teacher, Mr Dedman, and he insists that everyone follows it. We have fifteen minutes for multiplication tables, and half an hour for literacy activities, and twelve and a half minutes for playing, and one minute twenty seconds to go to the loo, and a whole hour for sport (because Mr Dedman likes sport) and three minutes for creative writing, and absolutely no time at all for thinking or dreaming or just living.
I don’t think Mrs Dove likes it any more than we do, so every once in a while she squeezes out some extra time so we can do something we like. Even so, she has to post a guard at the door to keep an eye out for Mr Dedman because he snoops around, checking up.
I don’t exactly fit in at school anyhow. I listen to the others in my class talking about what they did at the weekend and it’s all about going on the dry ski slope or visiting a theme park and things like that. All I have to talk about is train sets and different kinds of seashell.
I do have one friend, and that’s Pete Smith. We get on pretty well, largely because it’s Pete’s dad who plays trains with my dad. In other words we share the same problem. Pete usually comes to my house with his dad and we sit up in my bedroom and we try and outdo each other by imagining ourselves as different beings. It’s the only way to escape from the fact that we’re really deadly dull.
I’ll give you an example. One of my favourites is a horrible, blubbery monster called . Don’t laugh! Stop it. I can hear you sniggering and you shouldn’t because is pretty awesome. I become all green and lumpy and fat, like some big blubber monster. My skin is bubbly all over with giant warts. I get a fat, bloated face with flubbery lips and sharp white teeth. My eyes go all poppy and I have no hair left, no hair at all. Instead, all over the top of my skull, there are little horns, about twenty or thirty of them – little blunt-ended horns, like upside-down ice-cream cones.
Then I go off and do things…
I stepped out and crashed through the locked door One big blow from one big fist was all it took. SMASH! I was out! I headed downstairs, my feet making every step on the stairs squeak and squeal.
ΡOW! I smashed through the door of the front room, where Mum and Dad were watching TV. They turned and stared at me in horror.
‘Oh, my God!’yelled Dad. ‘What is it? What kind of creature is this?’
‘We’re going to die!’ screamed Mum. ‘What do you want from us, Big Green Blubber Monster?’
I scowled hideously at them and curled my lips. ‘I have come to obliterate all manner of shelly pot things and all kinds of puff-puff trainy things,’ I bellowed. ‘Get rid of these at once or you will feel the full force of my wrath, for I am The Thing from Thingummy and woe betide those who do not obey.’
Mum and Dad threw themselves at my feet. They clutched at my warty green ankles and pleaded with me, snivelling like little babies who’ve just had their lollies taken away.
‘No, no! We will do anything but that! Please let us play with choo-choos and shelly pots!’
‘No! Never!’ I roared. ‘You must forsake such things and become Interesting and Exciting Parents! Do this and I shall be well pleased and leave you in peace.’
Mum and Dad moaned and groaned and eventually agreed to be interesting for the rest of their lives. I pounded back upstairs…
… and lo and behold! I’m me again – Tim Witkinson.
So that’s what Pete and I play at to stop ourselves from dying of boredom.
Then one morning we went to school and my life changed, because there, on the school wall, in big Day-Glo green spray-paint, was a message:
2 A Visit to Mr Dedman
Of course I like Sophie. Who wouldn’t? She sparkles. She’s not only beautiful but she’s funny too. We laugh about the same things and we’ve got so much to share. She’s the kind of person you really want to know and be friends with, and that’s half the trouble. Most of the boys in the class like her and, knowing my luck, I’m probably last in the queue as far as Sophie’s concerned. I’d like to tell her how I feel but there’s something else about me that I haven’t told you yet.
I’m a mouse.
Not a real mouse, obviously. You know what I mean. I said before that I’ve only got one friend but that’s only part of the story. The truth is, I find it really hard to make friends. It just seems to be the way I am. I find it difficult talking to people. I don’t know what to say, and if I do it’s probably something like: ‘If an elephant stood at the edge of an ocean with its trunk in the water and made noises, would a whale understand what it was saying?’
And when I DO say things like that, they look at me with their faces all screwed up and they say: ‘What kind of rubbish is that?’ Then they wander off, leaving me standing there on my own (again) and the thing is – I REALLY WANT TO KNOW. Can the whale hear the elephant?
About the only person who does talk to me is Pete. He’s a bit weedy, but then so am I. We both like Sophie and neither of us has told her. She’s always laughing and smiling and she’s got this long hair that’s like sunshine, and green eyes and little freckles across her nose. She’s brilliant at running, and gym, and netball, and that kind of stuff – all the sorts of things that Pete and I are hopeless at. She’s clever too. She’s always getting good reports. The only thing Mrs Dove ever says about me is: ‘He’s a quiet child.’
Anyhow, you can see why I have never said anything to Sophie. She wouldn’t look twice at someone like me, but all I want is for her to notice me. It would be a start.
So there we were on that fateful morning when the Day-Glo writing appeared on the playground wall. The first thing that happened was that I was called to the head teacher’s office.
Mr Dedman is small, thin and scrawny. He does all the sport at school. He doesn’t actually do any sport himself. He watches, and what he likes most is when we are all in lines and he gets us doing exercises. ‘Touch toes, stretch, jump, touch toes, stretch, jump,’ and so on. I think he just loves bossing everyone about and watching them all do the same thing at the same time.
At weekends he goes off with his mates and races his Porsche on circuits. He’s sport mad and he doesn’t like me because I’m hopeless at all of them. I can’t help it.
Sometimes I think my brain must be wired up all wrong because my arms behave like they think they’re my legs, and my legs try to do what my arms should. It’s like, you know, I’m out on the football pitch and the ball is coming towards me and my brain’s thinking: ‘Panic stations! Football approaching! Kick the ball! Kick the ball! Is that a leg? No, that’s your arm, dimwit. Kick the ball with your foot! That’s your knee! Don’t knee the ball, kick it with your foot! Oh great, now you’ve fallen over. You’re useless.’
Anyhow, I can think of better things to do with my time.
Mr Dedman was sitting behind his massive desk, drumming his fingers on the surface and drilling through my head with his beady little eyes. All at once he began bombarding me with questions.
‘Witkinson, your name has come to my attention – come to everyone’s attention, in fact. There it is on the school wall, in big letters. What made you do it? Why have you defaced school property? Have you considered how Sophie Goodsole might feel about this? Have you got any sense at all? Aren’t you ashamed?’
