Messy Learning
If you were alert today, you’d have
noticed that it was one of those sulky, sullen do-nothing four o clock afternoons
at 36 Lumpslap Close.
Three o clock had turned up, ambled
about and left. School had chucked out thousands of cranky children onto the
streets across town. They had grumbled home, hunched backed with books, and
slammed metal gates behind them. Meandering indoors like a thick, sludgy river. And why were they so grumpy?
Well, you probably know that
already. Their teachers had glared at them all day, sending them off to sleep
during lessons that they had spent long evenings making deliberately dull. They
had soured the lunchtime milk by giving out random detentions. Then, after
filling their bellies with whatever they had boxed up for dinner that morning,
had slopped back in, smelling of cigarettes, fiddled with mobile phones whilst
Rome burned down text books and stared at their computers whilst tasking the
children with chores.
And, if that weren’t bad enough,
given them landfills of rubbish homework. “Finish this worksheet off tonight
and if you don’t, you’ll be in detention tomorrow.”
Hardly any of the teachers smiled
or ruffled your hair kindly these days because they’d be up until bedtime
marking tatty books covered in inkblots and doodles. It was a shared secret
that they hated teaching as much as the children despised being taught.
In the living room of number 36,
Morgan was first in, slinging his bag across the floor, followed by Patience still
shovelling the last of her lunchtime crisps into her gob and last of all, Faith,
who looked under the settee for her favourite cuddly toy.
“Where’s Ma?” asked Morgan,
belligerently – which means he was being insolent and not at all pleasant. And
I’m afraid he farted quite loudly, then smirked, as if he’d been clever.
The two girls looked at each other
and then Patience glowered at Morgan , monster that he is, daring him, just
daring him. Faith giggled until Patience scowled at her to stop. “You know very
well that Ma is at work, Morgan. She has to work more now that Pa’s gone to
war.”
“Well I want my tea. I’m hungry.”
“We all have to make sacrifices.”
“Crap. I don’t see how not having
my tea is making sacrifices just cos there’s a bloody war on.”
There was one of those awkward
little sorry silences for a minute. Well, because, Morgan sort of said
something they all were thinking but he probably shouldn’t have said it. But
that’s what he’s like, being the eldest. With dad gone, he liked to pretend he
was the boss. Patience had to sometimes stop him from being rude to Ma.
Faith’s tummy rumbled.
Anyway, the silence didn’t last
long. There was a distant coughing and grunting. Some thudding from the
upstairs’ landing.
Morgan might have said a very rude
word indeed, being fifteen and all. But even if he did, I’m certainly not
writing it down.
Even if there is a war on.
And very, very slowly, each stair
thudded, one after the other. What does the sound of a wooden stair make, when
a heavy foot treads on it? Maybe I should invent a word. A bit like: 'Duh
-doosh. Duh - doosh'. But not regularly, like a heartbeat, oh no, because every
so often there would be a pause, before more monstrous thumping.
Morgan started to cabbage his bag.
Normally you do that to somebody you don’t like, or for a joke, but Morgan was
doing it to his own school stuff. Books were flying everywhere – History over
there, Maths in the plant pot and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in the tropical fish
tank.
Well at least the angel fish perked
up and looked interested.
But Morgan took the now empty bag
and, showily, with malice aforethought, put it over his head and scuttled
behind the curtain, sitting like a strange new breed of teenage hobgoblin.
Just as Grandad Patches entered.
Now, Grandad was wearing one of his
worst combinations. He’d been in his sixties chest and found a truly dreadful
tie -dye smock and shoved it over torn, patched-up lime green jeans. His body
was a shock of fluorescent colours. Pink, purple and maroon were all scrapping
for space across his rib cage. He looked as though a camel that had eaten
nothing but trifle all day had been sick all over his chest.
He stood at the door, smiling
kindly, with a twinkle in his eye. Then he sniffed the air distastefully.
“Somebody needs to open their bowels,” he remarked at the two children he could
see, who blinked back at him, because they didn’t understand. Then he smiled
again, patted his smock pockets and pulled out his pipe for smoking herbal
briar patch mixture.
“Grandad!” shrieked Faith. She ran
over to him and jumped up, like the dog would have done before she died of old
age. Which makes you think, doesn’t it?
“Hello, Faith, my dear,” chirped
Grandad, “Did you have a good day at school?” And he sat down on the floor,
against the sofa whilst Faith scrambled all over him as though he was a jungle
gym before he detached her, plonking her down beside him on the rug.
“Morgan’s put a bag on his head, Grandad.”
“Pom, pom, pom,” hummed Grandad,
“Did he? By jingo, now then, why do you suppose he did that?”
“He’s behind the curtains, isn’t he
silly?”
A muffled snarl came from the
furthest corner away from Grandad. Patience walked across the small living room
and swung her leg at the bulging curtain as hard as she could. The only reply
was, “I’m not coming out!”
“You’re being very rude, Morgan.
I’ll tell Ma,” Patience hissed, snake-like.
“I’m not coming out!”
“Why not?”
“Not till that silly old fart has
gone.”
Now Grandad, as you know, is
sometimes a bit deaf. Or ‘hard of hearing’ as he would put it. He snargled a
bit at Faith and Patience, then baffled over at the bulging drapes in the
corner. “Silly cold tart? What does he want cold tart for?” His face creased
into a smile. “Ah, quiche! He wants some quiche. And I’m not surprised,
Patience. You shouldn’t kick your brother for that. It was very popular when I
was younger, back in the sixties.”
“Was it?” Patience thought it
better not to explain any further. Instead she too came and sat next to him,
although she did wince a bit at his smock, it’s true.
“Yes. The sixties was a golden time
for quiche. I used to be a chef back then, as you know. I was always whipping
up a quiche.”
A snort was audible from the
corner. “Throwing up quiche, he means.”
But Grandad didn’t hear. His
bearded face was a crease of memories. “Rolling out the pastry, beating the
eggs, whipping the cream. You would ask what they wanted added – a dash of
salt, some spinach, perhaps mung beans…then, slam! Into the oven.”
Faith frowned, listening carefully
whilst trying to bury her head into Grandad’s side. “Whipping? Like Grandad
Biggert does?”
“Now, I’m sure Grandad Biggert does
not do any whipping.”
“He does. Yesterday I saw him with
a piece of rope. He said he was off out to whip the mangy mongrel that had
stolen his pork chop. Grandad? What’s a crappy cringing cur?”
Patience had heard enough. She
stood up, hands on hips, imitating her mother. “That’s enough, Faith. You’ve
been told not to annoy Grandad Biggert before. It’s time to do your homework
before Ma gets home.”
“I wasn’t annoying him. He was in
our back garden trying to pull some meat off Mrs Dander’s dog. It kept biting
him.”
“Homework,” repeated Patience. She
kicked the curtains again until Morgan, still bagged, was beaten into revealing
himself. “And you.”
“Stuff that.” Morgan yanked the bag
off and chucked his body at the sofa. “I’m watching television. I’m not wasting
my life doing two hours of worksheets. Those teachers make it up as they go
along.”
“Homework, eh?” said Grandad,
standing up quickly, because Morgan had only just missed catching him in the
eye with his trainers. “Well there’s an
odd thing. Look what came in the post today!” He patted his pockets and pulled
out a leaflet, holding it above his head.
“Junk mail?” Morgan fumbled for the
remote. Wrestling was always on at four o clock and everyone knows that it’s
the most brilliant thing on telly these days.
Faith hopped up and down, trying to
snatch it from Grandad because she knew that it was bound to be something
exciting. Everything always was.
Patience swotted Faith aside and
took the paper with her left hand, scanning it, whilst her right snatched the
remote from Morgan.
“Grandad, you always, always say
that junk mail is a crime against nature? That every leaflet represents a leaf
falling to mother earth from a slowly dying tree?”
“Hmm. Did I say that? Pom pom pom. Well,
now I wonder? Back in the sixties, I was, for a time, the editor of a
revolutionary rag called ‘Madlurk’. We would hand them out on the street.
Later, we would find them all over the gutter, pick them up and hand them out
again. We were banned by Woolworths.”
“Woolworths? What’s that?”
Grandad looked confused. Well, he
often does, doesn’t he? “I think they were capitalists. But later I found out
they did a nice selection of sweeties for a very reasonable price. Once, many
years ago, I saw a Bruce Forsyth television programme; he was singing, dancing
and saying it was going to be a Woolworth’s Christmas…well, never mind that,
children, look at this! It’s very exciting! It’s a homework competition!”
Morgan groaned. There was a cushion
on the sofa and he put his head right underneath it. “Oh, please. This sounds just like the time
you tried to make us go Scottish Country Dancing by claiming we’d get free
kilts and membership to the clan McDougal. We ended up running for two hours
around a muddy field.
Patience snapped at him: “That
wasn’t Grandad’s fault. He mixed up Country Dancing Competition with Cross
Country Race. Anybody could make that mistake.”
“Anybody who was a prize turnip.”
Ignoring him, Patience looked at
the flyer in her hand more closely and her face crumpled into a jigsaw puzzle.
Grandad smiled cheerfully and picked up Faith who had restarted her puppy
jumps. She also looked at the paper. Eventually, after inspection, she returned
it to him. “Doesn’t look much like junk mail,” she said, “It’s written in
crayons.”
“Did you draw that, Grandad?” asked
Faith, in innocence. “It’s ever so colourful. What does it say?”
“It says: ‘Extreme Homeworking! Do
you love to do homework in unusual places? So do we! Take a picture of yourself
cutting your neighbour’s lawn and win the star prize!”
And there was a badly drawn picture
of a stick man, smiling, waving casually, pushing a lawn mower and water-skiing
whilst solving a Maths puzzle. He was being stalked by a pack of savage sharks.
Purple sharks.
“Extreme homeworking?” Morgan
pulled his head from under the cushion. He tried to look like he wasn’t
interested, but boys of that age tend to love anything with the word extreme
attached to it.
“So,” said Grandad. “What’s the
plan of attack? Let’s see everyone’s homework. Come on, come on, pile it onto
the floor!” The three children scrummaged through bags, pulling papers out, and
gradually a heap of discoloured, torn and distressed worksheets formed an
apology before them. None of it looked particularly exciting, let alone
extreme. The foursome sat in a circle around the mound, contemplating it
suspiciously, perhaps wondering if it was extreme enough to grow legs and make
a bit for freedom down the hall.
“Pom, pom, pom,” mused Grandad,
stirring the pile like a pot of soup. “What fun. I wonder which is the most
extreme? What exciting tasks lay before us?”
Morgan rudely snatched away the one
that Grandad was going for. It was headed ‘Math’s Challenge’. He read it aloud.
“A man has two tins of baked beans. In each tin are 250 beans, not counting the
bean sauce. How many beans does he have if he cooks a tin and a half of beans?”
“I don’t like beans, Grandad,”
moaned, Faith.
“Not Grandad’s beans,” snapped
Morgan, who had a compulsive loathing of the mung variety that Grandad served
for tea, when Ma was late home, “proper beans.” He scuttled to the kitchen.
There were sounds of thrashing through fridges, cupboards and drawers until he
returned with plastic tub. “Look!” he exclaimed, “a fridge pack!” He unscrewed
the top and dumped the contents on the carpet, where they made a slimy mess.
“Grandad! He’s done it again!”
screeched Faith, “Ma told him off, last time he did it.”
“I was being extreme,” shouted
Morgan, crossly. “If Grandad takes a photo, we’re sure to win.”
Grandad pursed his lips and sucked
his cheeks in until they made a popping noise. “No, no, no.” he concluded, “not
nearly extreme enough. We need to go outside.” He snatched Morgan’s baseball
cap from the teenager’s head, rolled up a worksheet or two into a spoon shape
and began scooping the beans into it. When nearly all the beans were safely
inside, he hurried outside. “Yes!” he exclaimed, “why don’t we do it in the
road?” And then, as you will know, he momentarily paused, mid hurry, as his
face assumed a faraway look as it nearly always did when something reminded him
of the sixties. But he soon snapped out of it. “No time for that now! Come on!”
“But Grandad,” said Faith, trying
to keep up, “I’m not allowed in the road.” Patience and Morgan followed behind.
“Grandad! Grandad!”
“Nonsense,” said Grandad, “You’re
not allowed in the road without adult supervision.” And he placed emphasis on
the last two words as though they were EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
I think Morgan snorted again.
Lumpslack Close wasn’t very busy.
Well it seldom was, but today even less so. It had been noisy, however. Some
workwomen, on a government programme, had been digging up the road.
Earlier, this had infuriated
Grandad Biggert. “You!” he had screamed, from his window. “You! Woman wearing
the red high-vis jacket! Yes! You! Don’t try to hide, I know very well you can
hear me! Stop digging up the road! I’m trying to sleep!” But the woman, wearing
ear defenders, had singularly failed to notice his red face, even after he had
thrown a heap of junk mail at her from his vantage point.
Now, however, the women were gone,
and traffic had started to crawl in and out of the close.
Grandad Patches looked left and
right. “Remember Tufty.” He held up his hands to prevent his grandchildren from
piling under a mini metro and walked in front of it as it ground to a halt. The
woman behind the wheel looked confused as he tipped a hatful of baked beans
onto the tarmac in front of her vehicle. She looked even more so when he and
the three children sat down, cross legged in front of them. She rolled down the
window. “’Ere, what gives?”
“Extreme homework, madam,” smiled
Grandad.
“Eh? Well this won’t do, will it?”
Grandad scratched his head, then he
stood up. “Quite right, it won’t.” He scratched his lower lip against his upper
teeth in thought and waved her back. “We can’t have cars coming up here
willy-nilly during extreme homework. Can we? There could be a frightful RTA
involving my three learners here.”
“And they might run the beans
over,” added Morgan.
“Indeed. Tell you what, why don’t
you back up and I’ll try a temporary solution? You can do that, can’t you? Back
up, I mean? After all this is a cul de sac.” Grandad grinned.
The woman didn’t look sure. Her
mouth opened up, then shut, like a venus fly trap. But eventually she agreed
and put the car into reverse. Slowly. Grandad followed her, flapping his arms
like a gigantic flaccid albatross that had forgotten to take its stiffening
medicine that day. She applied the brakes. “Is this far enough?”
“No,” answered Grandad, “I rather
hoped you’d reverse out of the close and go another way altogether.”
“But I want to go into the close,”
she pointed out, reasonably. Nevertheless, she did an almost perfect
reverse-round-a-corner, only catching the kerb once, then pulling the handbrake
up. She opened the door. “Now what’s all this about?”
“I need you to help me move these.”
Grandad gestured towards the three or four red and white striped safety
barriers that the workwomen had left behind after they’d knocked off. They were
around a rather deep hole and were emblazoned with words like ‘danger’, ‘deep
excavation’, ‘beware the yeti’, that sort of thing. Well, the last is a lie,
but you get the point.
Now, you know moving safety
barriers that prevent accidents is not a thing I’d advise, but Grandad Patches
sometimes doesn’t see the bigger picture? Well, I hope he’s not going to move
them, don’t you?
“Come on! If we put these in front
of the entrance to Lumpslap Close, nobody will interrupt our extreme
homeworking!”
Oh dear.
The woman grumpily agreed and,
because she was considerably stronger than Grandad, took the three of the four
and created an impenetrable barrier. No car could possibly pass. But, not
content with this, Grandad found a piece of card adjacent to the pit and
scrawled a large black arrow on it and wrote ‘diversion’ underneath.
Finished, he stood back and admired
his handiwork.
“Can I come in now?” asked the
woman, but secretly knowing that she was the mistress of her own disaster.
“No. There’s a diversion.”
Grandad hurried back to the three
children, who, all this time, had been enjoying themselves by pushing beans
around on the tarmac until they had made a sticky mess. “Hmmm”, he said, “Pom, pom, pom, pom, well,
now, how are we going to add these beans to those beans? Look at this. Where
once there were beans, now there is a splat.”
Suddenly, a rude, loud and gruff
voice interrupted the conference. “What’s going on here? Why aren’t you cutting
my lawn? You, child! Yes, you! What are you doing loitering in the road?”
“Grandad Biggert!” screamed Faith,
jumping up to greet him.
But he pushed her away and swiped
Morgan around the head with a rolled up newspaper.
“OW!”
“Patches? Patches! What the blazes
are you doing? Didn’t you get that junk mail this morning? I expected these
children so be sorting out my garden by now!”
Grandad Patches scratched his chin.
“Why?” He stood up, bristling like a shaving brush and gave Biggert one of his
glares. “Now see here, Grandad Biggert, we’re doing extreme homework and this
is educational. Do you wish to interfere with their education? Don’t you think
that’s more important than weeding and raking your back garden?”
“Pah!” Biggert threw a gaily
coloured packet at Patches’ feet. “I’m returning these,” he snapped.
“My colouring crayons! Thank you,
Grandad Biggert.” laughed Faith, happily. “I was looking for them this
morning.”
“Think nothing of it. I don’t want
crayons cluttering up my kitchen. I broke most of them. They weren’t very
strong. And I don’t have a sharpener anyway.” Grandad Biggert glowered. “And
even if I did have a sharpener, I wouldn’t have bothered. Now see here.” He
jabbered Patches in the chest. “See here. I’m going to the shop for fags. And
when I get back, I expect them kids to be doing my garden. I didn’t go to all
this trouble for nothing, did I?” He snatched the extreme homework letter and
waved it in Patches’ face. Then he swiped Morgan round the head a second time
and stumped off.
Grandad Biggert was probably still
grumpy because of the noisy workwomen, I expect. As he grouched down the close,
he aimed a kick at the swirling pile of junk mail he had chucked out of his
window earlier that day. Then he noticed Grandad Patches’ diversion barrier. “Of
all the blooming check,” he growled. He aimed a mighty kick at the one nearest
to the hole.
In the meantime, Grandad Patches
was examining the Extreme Homework flyer. “Pom, pom, pom,” he muttered. “Look!
I suspect this is a fake!” And he passed it to Patience, who nodded.
“It looks as though it was drawn…with
Faith’s crayons!”
Morgan was still rubbing his
smarting forehead. “By Grandad Biggert!”
“Grandad Biggert is very clever.”
said Faith, happily. Because she was young.
“No,” said Patches, rubbing his face, “He’s very
naughty. See here. It says: ‘Extra star prize for any children weeding my
garden and cutting my lawn’. He’s crossed out ‘my’ and written in ‘your
neighbour’. The scoundrel.”
But at that point, there was a
terrible scream.
It quite clotted the blood. The
scream began very loudly and gradually faded, as though it was becoming more
and more distant. It sounded just like somebody had fallen down a very large
hole.
“Help! Help!”
“What was that?” puzzled Grandad
Patches. He rushed over to the diversion barrier, as fast as his age would
permit, followed by his three charges. Examining the scene, he noted a large
boot mark on the barrier nearest to the hole. It had been slightly displaced.
There were also scuff marks in the dust which lead to the gaping maw in the
ground.
“What happened, Grandad?” asked
Patience, the next to arrive.
“Hmmm. Back in the sixties when I
was an actor, I was asked to play the role of fictional detective Sherlock
Holmes. Now he once famously remarked: ‘when you have eliminated the inevitable,
the remains you find must be the truth’. Well, I think it was that. But how to
test my theory?” Patches now knelt by the hole and shouted down into the hidden
depths. “Hello!” His voice echoed most magnificently, too.
“Help! Help!” Even though it was
distant, the voice was certainly that of Grandad Biggert.
Morgan grinned. “He’s fallen down
the hole! Too good for him, I say.”
“Yes, Morgan. See this boot mark
here? And the scuffs in the dust? Well, I deduce he kicked the barrier, tripped
and tumbled backwards into the deadly depths. Now I wish we hadn’t moved those
barriers.”
“Patches! Patches! Are you up
there? Get help immediately!” Grandad Biggert’s voice sounded very far way and
the hole reverberated at the edges where four faces peered into it.
“Are you hurt, Grandad Biggert?”
“No. I landed in something soft and
soggy, up to my knees. I can’t see what it is. There’s no light down here. It
smells horrible. Now stop standing around up there and get some help!”
“Don’t worry, Grandad Biggert. Help
is on the way.” Patches frowned and looked at his barrier. “Come away from the
hole, children. I think we should move these barriers back in case somebody
else falls in.”
“Yes,” agreed Morgan, “We wouldn’t
want anybody to land on him, would we? Although he’s soft and soggy too, so it
wouldn’t matter too much.”
“That’s enough, Morgan,” Patience
snapped, “He’s your Grandad.”
“Well he didn’t swipe you round the
head with a rolled up copy of The Sun, did he?”
They sweated the barriers back
around the hole, ignoring the ever more loud subterranean protests from
beneath, which I cannot write here because some of them were extremely rude.
“What are we going to do now,
Grandad?” asked Faith, skipping up and down.
“I don’t know. When we decided to
do extreme homework, I hadn’t really considered this outcome.” admitted Grandad
Patches. “I thought we’d have a gay old time counting beans. Not wondering how
we were going to get an extremely large man out of a very deep hole. Any
suggestions?”
The four looked back down, from the
safety of the barriers.
Morgan was first. “I heard
somewhere in school that some dogs are trained to go down holes and retrieve things,”
he frowned. “Perhaps we could chuck Mrs Dander’s down there.”
“Has it been trained, though?”
“I don’t know. We could always
throw a pork chop in first. As bait.”
There was a horrible wail from
below. “Patches! Patches! I heard that! You are not putting that mangy cur in a
hole with me, it bites Think of something else. Hurry, this soggy stuff is
rising. It’s up to my belt now. Seems to be loads of damp tissue paper in it.”
“What if we went down to the
shopping mall and bought dozens of helium balloons, tie them to Grandad Biggert’s
belt and then he would rise to the surface?” offered Patience.
“Yes, yes, balloons!” clapped Faith,
joyfully.
Patches patted his smock pockets
for his briar pipe. “A good suggestion, Patience, my dear. Very good. But how
would we prevent him from taking off into the sky? He might become a hazard to
aviators, you know?”
Just then there was a loud, female
harrumph from behind them. “What’s going on, Grandad Patches? Why are the
children out here and not doing their homework.”
“Ma!” Faith jumped up at her, “Grandad
Biggert’s fallen down a hole, look!”
Ma stood in front of them, solid,
wearing her work clothes. She didn’t look happy, I’m afraid, but she did have a
large back of fish and chips, which smelled gorgeous, all salt, vinegar and
fried fat. Faith’s tummy rumbled and she remembered she was hungry. “Fallen
down a hole? How did that happen? I’d better call the police.”
Grandad Patches looked a little
awkward and shifty. “Police, no, no, dear, no need for that, surely. I’m sure,
with some thinking, we’ll have him out in a jiffy. I say,” he said, changing
the subject, “is that our tea? By jove, fish and chips. Is there curry sauce?”
“Police. Now,” snapped, Ma. “That
hole leads directly to the main sewer.” And she busied herself with her mobile
phone, barking orders into it.
Grandad Patches took his grease
proofed packet of fish and chips, passed others to the children and they chewed
thoughtfully around the hole. “I say! Grandad Biggert! Are you hungry?”
“Of course I’m hungry!” bellowed
Biggert from below, like some beast. “How dare you eat fish and chips while I
stand up to my neck in tissue paper and filth!”
Faith frowned, sadly. “It’s not
fair. Maybe we could give some chips to Grandad Biggert.”
Morgan, having had enough, I think,
stood up. “Oh, I’ll give some chips to him all right.” And he threw the rest of
his packet down the hole. Along with the carton of curry sauce.
There was a slight pause then a
muffled howl. “Ow! Are you trying to be funny, Patches? That curry burnt my
eye!”
At this point, though, the
policewomen arrived, which was probably just as well. It took some time, a tow
truck, effort and a lot of bad language, but half an hour later, a very filthy
Grandad was winched to safety and stood before them. He smelt horrible. Oh, certainly there had been glitches in the
operation. At one point he had become stuck underneath a concrete piton as he
was winched skywards. But, by and large,
there was no need for his reaction, once he was safe. Threatening to sue this,
offering to punch that and being, for the most part, extremely ungrateful.
“Poo. You smell like the toilet,”
offered Faith.
The policewoman in charge was not
smiling and she tapped her truncheon. Tap, tap, tap. “Now then, sir, calm down.
Compose yourself. So, what has been happening here, then?”
“What’s been happening here?”
exploded Grandad Biggert, “What’s been happening here? I’ll tell you what’s
been happening here.” He pointed a quivering finger at Grandad Patches. “This…moron
moved these safety barriers and deliberately pushed me down this hole. For. No.
Reason. Then he purposely poured curry sauce right in my bleeding eye, that’s
what!”
“Well, that would be an offense.”
Morgan tittered and pointed at the
barrier nearest to him. “No, that would be a fence,” he snorted, as though he’d
been very clever.
But the policewoman ignored him,
licked her pencil, fluttered her notebook and spoke to Grandad Patches. “I see.
Is this true?”
Before he could answer, a WPC came
hurrying over, looking worried. She held some paper in her hand. “Another one
of these, Sarge.”
“I see. Where did you find this?”
“Over there.” The WPC gestured
towards 35 Lumpslap Close.
The Sergeant held the flyer up. “We’ve
been getting complaints about these ‘Extreme Homework’ flyers all day and all
from this area of town. They’re a fake attempt by someone to get their
gardening done for free. Are you lot responsible?”
They all shook their heads, Ma
included, but looked over at the smelly heap that was Grandad Biggert. “It wasn’t
me, damn you!” he blustered, rubbing himself down to remove soiled tissues, “I
don’t even have a garden.”
The Sergeant didn’t believe him. “I
see sir. Well I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you to accompany me down to
the station. But first we’ll have to hose you down.”
“HOSE me down?”
“Yes, sir. Like that you are a
public health hazard. And I don’t want that smell in my police station, either.”
Grandad Patches spoke up, in a
helpful tone. “I think we can find a hose if that will help, officer.” And, I’m
afraid, all three children started to snigger. Even Ma looked as though she was
trying not to giggle. Which is very unsporting isn’t it?
“Blast you, Patches!”
Suddenly, however, there was the
most terrible noise. A squeal of breaks. The crunch of metal into metal. A
shriek of car horn. It quite shook the close and the ground trembled beneath
the acrid fumes and smell of burning rubber. One car had smacked itself into
another that was parked outside 35.
“My car!” wailed Grandad Biggert,
in horror.
Ma was first to get there. She
helped the trembling woman out of the driver’s seat. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, just a bit shaken. I don’t
know how I could have lost control and skidded so badly!”
The Sergeant, having quickly
realised that the only damage done was to the cars, peered carefully at the
road. “I think I do,” she announced, grimly. “Somebody has left a mountain of
baked beans all over the highway. Absolute menace. Slippery as a skating rink.
No wonder.”
Now Grandad Patches looked
uncomfortable. “Well it was me. We were doing Extreme Homework.”
“I see, sir. Extreme homework? So
you were in on this as well, were you?”
“No, certainly not…well…er the
beans…but it was homework. Educational purposes.”
“I’m afraid you’d better come along
too, sir.” Now it was Grandad Biggert that was chortling.
“I say, that’s not fair.”
The Sergeant looked at both of them
in an extremely cross manner. “Fair?” she replied, “Well, I don’t know about
that gentlemen.”
She looked at the ground, then at
the grubby ‘Extreme Homework’ flyer and then back in their faces.
She coughed. “But since you both
like homework so much and have both failed to complete it…then perhaps I ought
to give you detention.
And with that, she marched them up
the close.
