We Want to be On the Telly

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘Have a good day!’ said Dad.

  ‘And when you come back we’ll show you the smallest wedding cake in the world,’ said Mum, beaming away like some merry Fairy Godmother about to turn a pumpkin into a carriage.

  *

  At school we spent most of the afternoon in the Art Area. Mr Jollop said we could paint whatever we wanted. I painted a picture of a beautiful, clear blue sea, with hardly any waves – just a calm, blue sea. Happy white wavelets trickled cheerfully on to a beautiful beach of soft, golden sand. Beyond the beach, tall palm trees with luscious, fronded leaves swayed gently in the balmy summer breeze.

  I completely forgot about home and what was going on there. The painting left me feeling calm, quiet and relaxed. I let out a long, slow sigh of pleasure and went to see what my classmates had painted.

  Every single one of them had painted a picture of a giant pink rhinoceros landing in an equally giant bowl of rice pudding. I gritted my teeth.

  When I got home that afternoon, the house was filled with the smell of baking and an air of huge excitement. Dad grabbed me the moment I got in.

  ‘Ma’s done it!’ he said, shaking my shoulders. ‘She’s done it! She’s made the smallest wedding cake in the world. They’re coming round, this afternoon, here, to our house. They’re coming, Heathrow!’

  ‘Who’s c-c-c-coming?’ I asked. My words came out funny because Dad was still shaking me.

  ‘The newspaper people! And once the telly people see the newspapers then they’ll want to come. We’re going to be on the telly! We’re going to be famous!’

  Dad pushed me through into the kitchen. Mum stood there, patting her hair into shape, her face flushed with success. I glanced around, trying to find the smallest wedding cake in the world.

  Mum laughed. ‘He can’t see it, Pa! Heathrow can’t see it!’

  ‘Of course he can’t, Ma. It’s too small!’

  They both burst out laughing. Mum beckoned me over. A small square of white paper was laid out neatly on the side. ‘That’s it, there,’ she said.

  ‘I still can’t see anything,’ I told her.

  ‘I know. Try using this.’

  Mum reached into her apron pocket and produced a magnifying glass. I took it and bent over the paper.

  ‘It’s just about in the middle,’ Mum said helpfully.

  I scanned the paper. Yes, there it was. A tiny crumb of a cake. On top of that was an even smaller crumb. On top of that was an even smaller, smaller crumb. And on top of that was an even tinier dot of white on the top. The icing. It was a three-tier wedding cake, the smallest in the world.

  ‘It is incredibly small,’ I agreed, handing the magnifying glass back to Mum. ‘But why would anyone want a very small wedding cake? Wedding cakes are supposed to feed lots of people so why make such a small one?’

  ‘Just to show you I can,’ said Mum. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense, does it?’

  I couldn’t think of an answer to that, but my dad could.

  ‘It could be for a very small wedding, with very small people,’ he suggested.

  I looked at him and he nodded back at me. Was he being serious or was he joking? Sometimes it was impossible to tell with my dad. Anyhow, at that moment the doorbell went. It was the newspaper photographer and a reporter too. They came bustling into our little kitchen.

  ‘Now then,’ began the reporter. ‘We’re in a bit of a rush. Where’s this amazingly small wedding cake?’

  ‘Yeah,’ cried the photographer, clamping bits of his camera together and checking the settings. ‘Where’s the cake?’ He glanced all around, dumping his heavy camera down on the side with a bang.

  Right on top of the white sheet of paper.

  Mum’s scream could be heard half a mile away.

  After Dad had hustled the newspapermen out of the house, he took Mum upstairs and put her to bed. He came back down half an hour later and sat in the front room with his head in his hands.

  ‘Can’t Mum make another one?’ I suggested.

  ‘She hasn’t got the heart for it,’ murmured Dad.

  I felt very strange. I thought my parents were quite crazy – I mean wanting to be on telly and all that rubbish. They were driving me mad with their daft ideas. But I hated seeing them come so close and have it all taken away – and I mean really taken away, because that crumb of a cake was now firmly stuck to the bottom of that idiot reporter’s camera.

  And most of all I didn’t like seeing them so miserable.

  For the first time I found myself wondering if I could think of something to get them on telly.

  7

  Flying High

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t think of a thing. In fact sometimes I wonder if you have to have a special kind of brain to think up those sorts of daft ideas. Obviously Dad’s brain could do it, and Mum’s brain could do it too. But my brain – well, mine just seemed to be sensible.

  And now, when I wanted it to go crazy, it wouldn’t and I felt as if I was missing something. I began to realize that being sensible was only part of the picture.

  To be honest, I did think of one or two things, but they were pretty useless really. I thought Dad could turn the car into a convertible by cutting off the roof. Then I remembered he couldn’t even get a fountain gnome to work and converting the car was going to be a lot more complicated than a squirting gnome.

  I thought maybe he could build a hot-air balloon. Then I remembered he couldn’t even get a fountain gnome to work and building a hot-air balloon would be a lot more complicated than a squirting gnome.

  Perhaps he could create the tallest tree house in the world. Then I remembered he couldn’t even get a fountain gnome – well, you know the rest.

  Besides, those ideas were too ordinary. They had no crazy spark to them. I was discovering that thinking up crazy ideas was a lot more difficult than you think.

  So the next morning I went down to breakfast in a gloomy mood, expecting to find everyone feeling much the same way.

  ‘Hey ho, Heathrow!’ cried Dad, flashing an enormous smile at me.

  ‘Ready for school?’ asked Mum, handing me a plateful of scrambled egg, bacon, toast AND beans.

  ‘You two seem pretty cheerful,’ I said.

  ‘That’s because we ARE pretty cheerful, aren’t we, Pa?’

  ‘We certainly are,’ agreed Dad. ‘We’ve been talking half the night and we have come up with a cracker of an idea. We are going to make a flying bed. There! What do you think of that?’

  I almost choked on my toast. ‘A flying bed? How will you do that?’ You see, I was already thinking about that fountain gnome.

  ‘Balloons,’ said Mum. ‘Lots of balloons.’

  ‘Tied to our bed,’ Dad continued. ‘Balloons filled with helium.’

  I nodded. ‘It might work,’ I said. You should have seen their faces. It was as if I had given them permission to stay out until midnight. They beamed at each other.

  ‘He thinks it’ll work,’ cried Dad. ‘And, by ginger pudding, it will! Now, you get yourself off to school, lad, and by the time you get back we’ll be all set up.’

  It was great to see them fired up with enthusiasm again and I went off to school rather impatiently because I couldn’t wait to get back to see how it was going. All day I sat in class wondering how things were working out back at home. I’ve told you quite enough about Dad’s DIY skills for you to know why I was still a bit worried.

  However, when I got home I was in for a surprise. Parked outside our house at the top of the hill was my parents’ wooden bed. It was covered with balloons of all colours, shuffling about in the breeze like lollipops trying to escape a crowd of lollipop eaters.

  Mum and Dad were there beside it, in their pyjamas. They were still blowing up balloons with helium and tying them round the bed. I noticed a pile of old bricks in the middle of the bed.

  ‘That’s to stop it floating away,’ Dad explained. ‘It’s almost ready to take to the air. Your mother and I will get in. We’ll toss th
e bricks over the side and off we go!’

  ‘But where are the telly people?’ I asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t come,’ said Dad. ‘They said someone did the same thing last month over in America. I pointed out that this is in Britain, but they wouldn’t listen. Don’t you worry, lad, those telly people will soon come flocking here when they see us drifting overhead in our flying bed. Whoa! Did you feel it try to take off then? I reckon we’re ready, Ma!’

  My parents climbed on to the bed. By this time many of the neighbours had gathered round to watch. They helped me tie the last few balloons to the frame. Finally Mum and Dad started to offload the bricks. The bed began to shift from the ground. The little wheeled feet came away from the road.

  ‘We have lift-off!’ yelled Dad. ‘Yippee!’

  ‘Hooray!’ shouted the neighbours.

  The bed began a kind of dance, sometimes coming back down to the road and sometimes lifting a little way into the air. It began to drift down the hill with the crowd slowly following.

  One or two of the balloons broke away from the bed and soared up into the sky.

  ‘I don’t think you tied them on properly, Pa,’ said Mum as the bed bumped on to the ground again.

  ‘It might have been you, Ma,’ Dad answered crossly, grabbing wildly at a few more escaping balloons and almost falling out of bed as a result.

  Now there weren’t enough balloons to keep the bed afloat and it came clunking back on to the road for the last time. However, they were still near the top of the hill so now the flying bed turned into a racing-car bed and began to whizz down the slope. Balloons streamed out behind it with more and more of them being ripped away by the wind or exploding from the pressure.

  Faster and faster went the bed with Mum and Dad clinging on for dear life.

  ‘Stop them!’ I yelled. But how could anyone stop them? This racing-car bed was going for the world land-speed record. It was careering down the hill straight towards the park at the bottom. And in the middle of the park was the Great Pond.

  I raced back to the house, grabbed my bike and set off after them. Soon I had left the chasing crowd far behind, but there was no way I could catch up with the speeding bed. It was travelling too fast and was way ahead of me. I pedalled like fury, faster faster faster!

  Ahead of me the bed went clanking and rattling through the park gates and headed straight for the Great Pond where all the ducks were quietly dabbling and quacking and inspecting each other’s bottoms.

  ‘Help!’ yelled Dad.

  ‘Help!’ screamed Mum. ‘I can’t swim, Pa!’

  ‘Neither can I, Ma!’ Dad cried.

  I pedalled even faster. My feet were a blur. As I passed between the park gates I saw the bed hit the Great Pond –

  SPLOOOSH!

  A giant wave of water shot into the air. It was closely followed by an explosion of ducks and geese as they took to the air, squawking and squeaking and flippety-flapping as the bed floated into the middle of their pond.

  It was hard to know who was more terrified, the ducks or my parents. The mattress drifted away from the wooden frame, with my parents on it. And then it began to take on water and sink. Deeper and deeper into the water it went, with Mum and Dad clinging to each other, first sitting down, then kneeling and finally standing as the water rose around them.

  ‘HELP!’ they yelled. ‘SOMEBODY SAVE US!’

  I leaped from my bike, grabbed the nearest life belt and threw myself into the water. Urrruuugggh! It was cold – very cold. And full of duck weed. (For the ducks presumably.) I swam out towards my parents, dragging the life belt with me, hoping that one would be enough.

  My heart was thundering. My breath was whooshing in and out of me like a tortoise trying to overtake a Ferrari.

  ‘Hurry, Heathrow!’ yelled Dad.

  I put on a final spurt and reached them just as the mattress finally sank to the bottom and they were left struggling in the water. They clung to the life belt, resting their chins on the top. Together we kicked our feet and slowly, oh so slowly, we headed back to shore. We must have looked like some strange and giant jellyfish wearing pyjamas.

  As we reached the edge of the Great Pond and staggered out, several vans screeched to a halt by the park railings. People tumbled out of them and raced towards us, cameras flashing.

  Suddenly the place was heaving with reporters and onlookers. Everyone was talking at once. I even noticed Mr Jollop among the crowd, holding an escaped balloon. He looked worried too, as if he thought a rhinoceros might come crashing out of the sky at any moment and land on top of him. It was dangerous to be anywhere near my mum and dad!

  The woman next to Mr Jollop shouted out. ‘That lad saved his parents.’

  The others joined in. ‘Threw himself into the water, swam out to them and saved them.’

  ‘Deserves a medal!’

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘What school do you go to?’

  On and on they went, with cameras whirring and bulbs popping. Mum gazed back happily at the cameras and waved. ‘Hello, Mum!’ she said, dripping from head to toe.

  The reporters pressed forward. The cameramen closed round us until their lenses were almost poking up our noses.

  ‘What do you think of your son?’ they asked my parents. Mum and Dad stood there in their soaking clothes, dribbling and panting from their adventure. Dad’s face broke into a broad grin.

  ‘He’s champion,’ chuckled Dad. ‘And he’s on the telly too!’