My Brother's Famous Bottom Goes Camping

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘Oh dear!’ laughed Mum.

  Mrs Tugg was chuckling too. ‘I know! It was rather embarrassing, of course, but things like that seem to happen to him.’

  I didn’t get to bed until late and even then I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. I have no idea what time it was when I eventually dropped off, but Cheese woke me up in the morning. Or to put it another way, Poop woke me up. She was squawking loudly because Cheese was trying to stuff her into my bag. He was determined that the hen was going to go camping.

  ‘You can’t put Poop in there,’ I said. ‘Mum will find out and she’ll be cross. Poop can’t come with us.’

  Cheese stood there with Poop tucked under his arm and they both stared at me in silence. Even the hen seemed to be looking daggers at me. Cheese stuck his thumb into his mouth and walked off without a word.

  We had a quick breakfast, then loaded a few last things into the camper van. Mum gave the vehicle a final search.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Dad.

  ‘A certain small, brown, fluffy creature,’ hinted Mum. ‘You know how stubborn Cheese gets sometimes. OK, we appear to be without Poop. We can go.’

  Brilliant! We were on the road at last and our first camping holiday had begun. The van decided to celebrate by letting off an enormous, farty BANG, jumping in the air and dying on the spot.

  ‘Dad?’ I panicked.

  ‘It’s all right, Nick, nothing serious. It’s probably the carbo-petrolio-plugga-doo-bit.’

  Mum fixed him with a steely glare. ‘You don’t know what it is, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. It’s – the van.’

  ‘Which bit of the van?’ Mum demanded.

  ‘Er, a big bit,’ Dad ventured. He turned the key in the ignition once more. There was another huge BANG! The entire van leaped in the air as if it had just been stung by a helicopter-sized wasp. The engine burst into life. We were off – again! I can’t wait to see the campsite.

  6 Bitten by a Duck

  We’re on the campsite and Poop is here too! Guess where Mum found her? Cheese had smuggled her into the camper van and hidden her inside the little oven! It was the one place Mum never thought to look. She was quite cross at first but there was nothing she could do about it. I think that secretly she thought Cheese had been pretty clever, and he had too. He was beaming all over his face.

  Dad said it was lucky the oven hadn’t been turned on. ‘Otherwise poor Poop really would be a chicken nugget by now.’

  ‘You have a sick sense of humour,’ grunted Mum.

  ‘I didn’t put the hen in the oven,’ protested Dad. ‘I was only saying.’

  I have never seen so many tents and caravans. There are titchy, tiny tents and there are tents the size of a castle. Some of them even have an upstairs bit. No, just kidding! But they are definitely enormous, and all colours – red, green, brown ones and blue ones. Some people even have stripy tents and one tent has a skull and crossbones flag flying outside. They must be pirates on holiday.

  Some of the caravans are so big they’ve got six wheels. They have TV and aerials and everything. One of them even has a jacuzzi. That’s what Dad said, and I saw a woman WASHING HER TENT this morning. She was, really. I mean – washing a tent? That is weird!

  Cheese has made a friend here, a boy called Lewis. I think he’s four or five. He’s a bit on the tubby side and he’s got a dull face that looks like wet pastry. His parents are in one of the posh caravans. Cheese showed his new friend our camper van.

  ‘It’s very small,’ said Lewis, so my little brother showed him the toilet. He even showed him how to lift up the seat.

  ‘It’s very small,’ sniffed Lewis.

  ‘And it’s a shower,’ Cheese added.

  ‘Our shower doesn’t have a toilet in it,’ Lewis boasted. ‘It’s a proper shower and you can stand up.’

  Cheese pressed on gamely and showed Lewis the beds. ‘That’s where I sleep and my sister, and Nicholas sleeps here and Mum and Dad sleep there.’

  ‘I’ve got my own room,’ Lewis said airily. ‘And so have my mum and dad.’ He gazed round the van. ‘It’s very small,’ he said for the third time.

  I was fed up with this. ‘I know it’s small,’ I said. ‘But we’re small people.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re bigger than me,’ Lewis said flatly.

  ‘We shrink at night,’ I told him. Lewis looked at me carefully. I could tell he was trying to imagine me shrinking.

  ‘How small do you get?’ he asked at last, and I smiled.

  ‘About the size of a cat.’

  Lewis was silent. Hooray. That had shut him up for the time being. Then he saw Poop sitting on top of the fridge unit. Lewis eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘Is that your duck?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s a hen, not a duck. She’s called Poop.’

  But Lewis had lost interest. He’d just spotted something even more unusual. ‘That carrot is wearing sunglasses and a bikini.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the sun’s shining and it’s hot,’ I answered.

  ‘She’s called Cecily,’ Cheese announced. ‘Cecily Sprout.’

  ‘That’s a stupid name for a carrot,’ said Lewis, and I thought that actually it’s a stupid name for anything, let alone a carrot. Besides, what’s a sensible name for a carrot, apart from carrot?

  ‘It’s Tomato’s doll,’ I told him.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tomato,’ I repeated.

  ‘My sister,’ said Cheese.

  ‘They’re twins,’ I added.

  Lewis looked deeply puzzled, as well he might. I knew this was a struggle for him. Poor kid – I was overloading him with odd information. First the hen, then the carrot, and now the Pizza Twins.

  ‘Cheese and Tomato?’ Lewis repeated hoarsely.

  I nodded and eventually Lewis gave up thinking about it and moved on to safer material. ‘We’ve got a dog,’ he boasted. ‘He’s called Henry. It’s a proper name. Henry is a big dog.’

  ‘Oh. So let’s see, you’ve got a big caravan and a big shower and a big bedroom and a big dog?’

  ‘And a big television and a big car and a big daddy,’ Lewis put in for good measure.

  ‘My dad’s big,’ Cheese remarked.

  ‘Not as big as my dad,’ Lewis shot back. ‘His tummy hangs right over his trousers. My mum calls him Mr Hippo.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I murmured, glad that my dad wasn’t a hippo. He’s more like a chimpanzee really.

  ‘We’re going to the safari park this afternoon. They’ve got lions and tigers and elephants and seals and zebras and monkeys and ice creams and Dad said I can have five scoops on mine and it will be the biggest ice cream in the world.’

  ‘What a surprise,’ I muttered.

  ‘We’re going too,’ announced Cheese, even though we weren’t. His eyes were popping. I knew he’d love to go. I’m going to talk to Mum and Dad about it later and maybe they’ll take us.

  Cheese lifted up Poop and held her out to Lewis. ‘You can hold her,’ he said. Lewis took the hen but she began to squawk and flap and finally she flew up into his face, knocking him over.

  ‘Your duck bit me!’ Lewis squawked, picking himself up.

  ‘Hen,’ I corrected. ‘They don’t bite. You held her too tightly. She doesn’t like being squeezed.’

  ‘I’m going to tell my mum,’ said Lewis.

  ‘OK,’ I smiled. ‘Tell your mum a duck bit you and see what she says. Bye.’

  Lewis ran off towards his caravan.

  ‘Lewis is a big boy,’ Cheese declared proudly. It reminded me of when I was four or five and I wanted to be friends with the big boys. I’m not like that now, of course, but I knew how Cheese felt. It was just a shame that my little brother had picked the awful Lewis.

  7 Ice Screams

  Mum thinks that going to the safari park is a brilliant idea.

  ‘Cheese thought of it,’ I said, and Mum ruffled my brother’s hair. Dad sa
id that Granny had taken him to a safari park when he was a child.

  ‘I remember we went on a boat on a lake to watch the seals. I leaned over the side to see them better and I dropped my ice cream. It landed slop-plop on a seal’s head.’

  ‘Dad! What did the seal do?’

  ‘Nothing. Another seal ate it.’

  ‘Bad seal,’ said Cheese.

  ‘You haven’t changed much, have you?’ said Mum.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Dad.

  ‘You were having daft accidents then and you still have daft accidents now,’ she pointed out.

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘Ron, just a few nights ago you were running round the hen house in the middle of the night with a child’s tent stuck round your waist.’

  Dad reddened. ‘Yes, but that was a special occasion.’

  ‘I should hope so too! And last week you were nailing down that bit of carpet in our bedroom and you put a nail through a central heating pipe and caused a flood. And when you cooked supper the other night you left the chocolate puds in the oven and they bubbled up and spilled all over the bottom. It took me two hours to clean it and the puds had to be thrown out. And last month you –’

  ‘La-la-la-la-la-la, can’t hear you!’ sang Dad, holding up his hands. ‘I think we should all go to the safari park right now this minute.’

  ‘Are you trying to change the subject?’ Mum asked with a smile.

  ‘Of course I am,’ grinned Dad. ‘Come on, everyone in the van and, no, Cheese, Poop is not going to sit with us. She might start flapping about and get in the way. She’ll have to go back in the oven. Come on, hop in and let’s go. And I forbid anyone to mention any more accidents that I’ve had.’

  Mum turned and smiled at us.

  The safari park isn’t far from the campsite and we soon joined a queue of cars as they slowly entered the park. We kept passing signs that said things like:

  DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS.

  DO NOT OPEN YOUR CAR WINDOWS.

  DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR CAR.

  IF YOUR CAR BREAKS DOWN,

  WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE.

  IF A TIGER OPENS ITS MOUTH

  DO NOT CLIMB INSIDE.

  No! I made that last one up!

  It was pretty good and Cheese and Tomato thought it was amazing. Tomato held Cecily Sprout up to the window and shouted out the names of the animals she saw. ‘Look, Cecily! There’s a pig!’

  ‘It’s a rhinoceros, darling,’ Mum said.

  ‘A crockerator! You can see all its teeth!’

  ‘Crocodile,’ said Mum. ‘Or maybe an alligator. They look much the same and I can’t read the sign from here.’

  ‘I think crockerator is a rather good name,’ chuckled Dad. ‘It reminds me of Crunchbag. Do you remember?’

  ‘How could we forget?’ laughed Mum. ‘That alligator you brought home almost destroyed the house, not to mention Mr Tugg’s car.’

  Cheese joined in with the animal spotting, shouting right in my ear and almost deafening me. ‘There’s a pencil! And another one – lots of pencils!’

  ‘Penguins,’ I snorted. ‘Not pencils.’

  ‘I wonder if they have a lake here,’ Dad mused. ‘The leaflet says they’ve got seals.’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ said Mum. ‘There’s the sign for it pointing down that track. They have boat rides too. Does this mean you want to feed the seals with your ice cream again?’

  ‘Ice cream!’ yelled Cheese, deafening me again.

  ‘Five scoops!’ ‘Five?’ repeated Mum. ‘Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, young man.’

  I told her what Lewis had said and Mum’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, well obviously some parents are a bit silly.’

  I kept quiet. I’d been planning to ask for five scoops myself. We got to the lake and, sure enough, there was an icecream stall next to the ticket office for the boat. We all got an ice cream because Dad insisted.

  ‘Don’t you dare drop it again,’ said Mum.

  ‘I won’t. I’m going to tape the scoops on to the cone to make sure they don’t fall off.’

  ‘Dad! You can’t tape ice cream!’ I laughed.

  ‘Really? Oh, all right, I’ll nail them on then. Now, where’s the nearest seal?’

  He was joking of course and we climbed on to the little boat and had a fun ride round the lake. The seals swam up to the boat and honked and splashed Tomato, which made her laugh but then her ice cream fell into the water. A seal ate it and Cheese thought it was so funny he threw his ice cream into the water on purpose and a seal ate that too. The twins screamed with delight.

  Mum and Dad were not impressed. ‘We didn’t buy ice creams so that you two could feed the seals,’ complained Mum. ‘It’s your fault, Ron, telling them silly stories about when you were a child.’

  Dad began to protest and splutter but he couldn’t think of where to start. Eventually he turned to me and raised his arms in disbelief. ‘All my fault again,’ he murmured, ‘and I haven’t even done anything!’

  After that it was decided that we ought to head home. Cheese fell asleep in the van and Tomato played hide and seek with her carrot, which meant she hid the carrot and then found her… umpteen times.

  And guess what was waiting for us when we got back to the campsite? Granny and Lancelot! And guess who they had with them? Rubbish, our goat!

  8 A Volcanic Eruption

  ‘They didn’t want to let us in,’ Granny explained. ‘They said “You can’t bring a goat in here!” And Lancelot said oh yes we could because they have a sign that says PETS WELCOME.’ Granny looked at her husband and her eyes twinkled. She slipped an arm through his. ‘He’s my hero!’ ‘Mother, please!’ Dad winced. ‘Not in front of the children.’

  ‘And this babe’s my princess!’ declared Lancelot, planting a kiss on Granny’s cheek. It was a bit embarrassing, and I don’t mean the kissing, I mean calling my gran ‘babe’. She’s sixty-seven!

  ‘Anyway,’ Granny went on, ‘the man at the gate said goats didn’t count as pets and weren’t allowed. So Lancelot said that he had a friend who had a pet camel, and some people kept poisonous snakes as pets, and goats weren’t as big as camels or as dangerous as poisonous snakes and Rubbish was a pet. Then he gave the man a ten-pound note and he let us in.’

  ‘Has your friend really got a pet camel?’ I asked Lancelot. He grinned back at me.

  ‘Yes, he has, Mind you, the camel is made of wood and it’s only fifteen centimetres tall, but I didn’t tell the man on the gate that!’ Lancelot burst out laughing.

  ‘But why did you decide to come camping all of a sudden?’ Mum asked Granny.

  ‘I guess we just got a bit bored, dear, sitting at home. The sun was shining and we thought of you all enjoying yourselves and suddenly realized that we could come too. Now then, Nicholas, you must come and see our tent.’

  ‘Is it special?’ I asked and she shook her head.

  ‘Speckled? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I said “special”, Granny, not “speckled”.’

  ‘Oh, well, yes, it is rather special. Come on.’

  We followed Granny and Lancelot to the other side of the campsite and there we found an extraordinary tent, with Lancelot’s big three-wheeler chopper motorbike parked next to it. Several people had gathered round and were staring, goggle-eyed, at both the tent and the bike.

  The tent was circular, with a round, pointed roof made from proper wooden rafters, and it was pretty big. The most amazing bit was when you went inside. It had four different areas marked out, like little rooms. One was for cooking, one was for living in and the other two were bedrooms. The canvas walls were decorated with strange pictures and designs. The main room didn’t have any chairs, but just a low platform covered with rugs and cushions. The whole tent looked like some magical place straight out of an Arabian fairy tale like Sinbad or Aladdin.

  ‘It’s a yurt,’ Lancelot announced proudly.

  ‘And it’s the only one on the campsite. In fact it’s pr
obably the only yurt for miles around. Pretty big too – we had to bring it on the three-wheeler.’

  ‘It’s fabulous!’ I breathed, while Cheese and Tomato happily threw themselves at the cushions and bounced off.

  ‘It is rather romantic,’ sighed Mum.

  ‘Give me a proper tent any day,’ grunted Dad.

  ‘Yes,’ laughed Mum. ‘You go back to your little play-tent, Ron. You’ll be safe there. I don’t know about anyone else, but I could do with a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ muttered Gran. ‘I haven’t had a chance to go and get any milk yet.’

  ‘Squeeze the goat,’ suggested Dad.

  ‘I can’t take you anywhere,’ Mum murmured. ‘We’ve got plenty of milk at our van. Let’s head back there.’

  No sooner had we returned than Tomato burst into tears. ‘Can’t find Cecily!’ she wailed. ‘Cecily Sprout has gone.’

  ‘Oh, darling, that’s so sad,’ said Mum. ‘Where did you lose her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Were you playing hide and seek with her again?’

  Tomato shook her curls. ‘No. I wasn’t playing anything.’

  ‘Let’s check the van. I hope you didn’t leave her at the safari park?’

  ‘She couldn’t have,’ I pointed out. ‘She was playing with the doll on her way back this afternoon.’

  We turned the van inside out but all we found was a tomato that reminded me of Mr Tugg – red and bald. There was no carrot in a bikini.

  ‘We shall have to scour the campsite,’ sighed Mum, taking Tomato’s hand. Tomato frowned fiercely at the rest of us.

  ‘We ALL have to look,’ she ordered, so the whole family set off on a Cecily hunt, with Tomato calling out the carrot’s name at regular intervals as we searched the campsite. ‘Cecily? Cecily Sprout!’