PUFFIN BOOKS
Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here
Michael Rosen was brought up in London. He originally tried to study medicine before starting to write poems and stories. His poems are about all kinds of things – but always important things – from chocolate cake to bathtime.
michaelrosen.co.uk
Quentin Blake is one of Britain’s most renowned illustrators. Born in the suburbs of London in 1932, he read English at Cambridge before becoming a full-time freelance illustrator. He began his career working for magazines such as The Spectator and Punch. For many years he taught at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration Department from 1978 to 1986. He became the very first Children’s Laureate in 1999 and was made a CBE in 2005.
Books by Michael Rosen
CENTRALLY HEATED KNICKERS
MICHAEL ROSEN’S BOOK OF VERY
SILLY POEMS (Ed)
QUICK, LET’S GET OUT OF HERE
YOU WAIT TILL I’M OLDER THAN YOU
NO BREATHING IN CLASS
(with Korky Paul)
Michael ROSEN
Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here
Illustrated by
Quentin BLAKE
PUFFIN
For Brian, Harold and remembering Connie
For Susanna, Joe and Eddie
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Andre Deutsch Ltd 1983
Published in Puffin Books 1985
28
Text copyright © Michael Rosen, 1983
Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1983
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: 978-0-14-195706-7
Once I was round a friend’s place
and just as we were going out
he went over to the table
and picked a hard lump of chewed-up
chewing gum with teeth marks in it
off the table top
and stuffed it in his mouth.
His gran was there and she said,
‘You’re not taking that filthy thing
with you, are you?’
And he said to me,
‘Quick – let’s get out of here.’
TRICKS
Nearly every morning
my brother would lie in bed,
lift his hands up in the air
full stretch
then close his hands around an invisible bar.
‘Ah, my magic bar,’ he’d say.
Then he’d heave on the bar,
pull himself up,
until he was sitting up in bed.
Then he’d get up.
I said,
‘You haven’t got a magic bar above your bed.’
‘I have,’ he said.
‘You haven’t,’ I said.
‘Don’t believe me then,’ he said.
‘I won’t – don’t worry,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t make any difference to me
if you do or you don’t,’ he said,
and went out of the room.
‘Magic bar!’ I said.
‘Mad. He hasn’t got a magic bar.’
I made sure he’d gone downstairs,
then I walked over to his bed
and waved my hand about in the air
above his pillow.
‘I knew it,’ I said to myself.
‘Didn’t fool me for a moment.’
WASHING UP
On Sundays,
my mum and dad said,
‘Right, we’ve cooked the dinner,
you two can wash it up,’
and then they went off to the front room.
So then we began.
First there was the row about who
was to wash and who was to dry.
My brother said, ‘You’re too slow at washing,
I have to hang about waiting for you,’
so I said,
‘You always wash, it’s not fair.’
‘Hard cheese,’ he says,
‘I’m doing it.’
So that was that.
‘Whoever dries has to stack the dishes,’
he says,
so that’s me stacking the dishes
while he’s getting the water ready.
Now,
quite often we used to have mustard
with our Sunday dinner
and we didn’t have it out of a tube,
one of us used to make it with the powder
in an eggcup
and there was nearly always
some left over.
Anyway,
my brother
he’d be washing up by now
and he’s standing there at the sink
his hands in the water,
I’m drying up,
and suddenly he goes,
‘Quick, quick quick
come over here
quick, you’ll miss it
quick, you’ll miss it.’
‘What?’ I say, ‘What?’
‘Quick, quick. In here,
in the water.’
I say,
‘What? What?’
‘Give us your hand,’ he says
and he grabs my hand
then my finger,
‘What?’ I say,
‘That,’ he says,
and he pulls my finger under the water
and stuffs it into the eggcup
with left-over blobs of old mustard
stuck to the bottom.
It’s all slimey.
‘Oh Horrible.’
I was an idiot to have believed him.
So I go on drying up.
Suddenly
I feel a little speck of water on my neck.
I look up at the ceiling.
Where’d that come from?
I look at my brother
he’s grinning all over his big face.
‘Oy, cut that out,’
He grins again
sticks his finger under the water
in the bowl and
flicks.
Plip.
&nb
sp; ‘Oy, that got me right on my face.’
‘Did it? did it? did it?’
He’s well pleased.
So now it’s my turn
I’ve got the drying up cloth, haven’t I?
And I’ve been practising for ages
on the kitchen door handle.
Now he’s got his back to me
washing up
and
out goes the cloth, like a whip, it goes
right on the –
‘Ow – that hurt. I didn’t hurt you.’
Now it’s me grinning.
So he goes,
‘All right, let’s call it quits.’
‘OK,’ I say, ‘one-all. Fairy squarey.’
So I go on drying up.
What I don’t know is that
he’s got the Fairy Liquid bottle under the
water
boop boop boop boop boop boop
it’s filling up
with dirty soapy water
and next thing it’s out of the water
and he’s gone sqeeeesh
and squirted it right in my face.
‘Got you in the mush,’ he goes.
‘Right, that’s it,’ I say,
‘I’ve had enough.’
And I go upstairs and get
this old bicycle cape I’ve got,
one of those capes you can wear
when you ride a bicycle in the rain.
So I come down in that
and I say,
‘OK I’m ready for anything you’ve got now.
You can’t get me now, can you?’
So next thing he’s got the little
washing-up brush
and it’s got little bits of meat fat
and squashed peas stuck in it
and he’s come up to me
and he’s in, up, under the cape with it
working it round and round
under my jumper, and under my chin.
So that makes me really wild
and I make a grab for anything that’ll
hold water; dip it in the sink
and fling it at him.
What I don’t know is that
while I went upstairs to get the cape
he’s got a secret weapon ready.
It’s his bicycle pump,
he’s loaded it with the dirty washing-up water
by sucking it all in.
He picks it up,
and it’s squirt again.
All over my hair.
Suddenly the door opens.
‘Have you finished the…?’
It’s Mum AND Dad.
‘Just look at this.
Look at the pair of them.’
And there’s water all over the floor
all over the table
and all we’ve washed up is
two plates and the mustard pot.
My dad says,
‘You can’t be trusted to do anything you’re asked,
can you.’
He always says that.
Mind you, the floor was pretty clean
after we had mopped it all up.
I WAKE UP
I wake up
I am not me
I am bodyless
I am weightless
I am legless
I am armless
I am in the sea of my mind
I am in the middle of my brain
I am afloat in a sea of nothing
It lasts for one flicker
of one eyelash
and then
once again
I am my full heaviness
I am my full headedness
I am my full bodyness
Here.
Hallo.
CHOCOLATE CAKE
I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.
Sometimes we used to have it for tea
and Mum used to say,
‘If there’s any left over
you can have it to take to school
tomorrow to have at playtime.’
And the next day I would take it to school
wrapped up in tin foil
open it up at playtime and sit in the
corner of the playground
eating it,
you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it
and there’s that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it’s lovely.
yeah.
Anyway,
once we had this chocolate cake for tea
and later I went to bed
but while I was in bed
I found myself waking up
licking my lips
and smiling.
I woke up proper.
‘The chocolate cake.’
It was the first thing
I thought of.
I could almost see it
so I thought,
what if I go downstairs
and have a little nibble, yeah?
It was all dark
everyone was in bed
so it must have been really late
but I got out of bed,
crept out of the door
there’s always a creaky floorboard, isn’t there?
Past Mum and Dad’s room,
careful not to tread on bits of broken toys or bits of Lego
you know what it’s like treading on Lego
with your bare feet,
yowwww
shhhhhhh
downstairs
into the kitchen
open the cupboard
and there it is
all shining.
So I take it out of the cupboard
put it on the table
and I see that
there’s a few crumbs lying about on the plate,
so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs
scooping them up
and put them into my mouth.
oooooooommmmmmmmm
nice.
Then
I look again
and on one side where it’s been cut,
it’s all crumbly.
So I take a knife
I think I’ll just tidy that up a bit,
cut off the crumbly bits
scoop them all up
and into the mouth
oooooommm mmmm
nice.
Look at the cake again.
That looks a bit funny now,
one side doesn’t match the other
I’ll just even it up a bit, eh?
Take the knife
and slice.
This time the knife makes a little cracky noise
as it goes through that hard icing on top.
A whole slice this time,
into the mouth.
Oh the icing on top
and the icing in the middle
ohhhhhh oooo mmmmmm.
But now
I can’t stop myself.
Knife –
I just take any old slice at it
and I’ve got this great big chunk
and I’m cramming it in
what a greedy pig
but it’s so nice,
and there’s another
and another and I’m squealing and I’m smacking my lips
and I’m stuffing myself with it
and
before I know
I’ve eaten the lot.
The whole lot.
I look at the plate.
It’s all gone.
Oh no
they’re bound to notice, aren’t they,
a whole chocolate cake doesn’t just disappear
does it?
What shall I do?
I know. I’ll wash the plate up,
and the knife
and put them away and maybe no one
will notice, eh?
So I do that
and creep creep creep
back to bed
into bed
doze off
licking my lips
with a lovely feeling in my belly.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
In the morning I get up,
downstairs,
have breakfast,
Mum’s saying,
‘Have you got your dinner money?’
and I say,
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t forget to take some chocolate cake with you.’
I stopped breathing.
‘What’s the matter,’ she says,
‘you normally jump at chocolate cake?’
I’m still not breathing,
and she’s looking at me very closely now.
She’s looking at me just below my mouth.
‘What’s that?’ she says.
‘What’s what?’ I say.
‘What’s that there?’
‘Where?’
‘There,’ she says, pointing at my chin.
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘It looks like chocolate,’ she says.
‘It’s not chocolate cake is it?’
No answer.
‘Is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
She goes to the cupboard
looks in, up, top, middle, bottom,
turns back to me.
‘It’s gone.
It’s gone.
You haven’t eaten it, have you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? You don’t know if you’ve eaten a whole
chocolate cake or not?
When? When did you eat it?’
So I told her,
and she said
well what could she say?
‘That’s the last time I give you any cake to take
to school.
Now go. Get out
no wait
not before you’ve washed your dirty sticky face.’
I went upstairs
looked in the mirror
and there it was,
just below my mouth,
a chocolate smudge.
The give-away.
Maybe she’ll forget about it by next week.
BOY FRIENDS
Christine Elkins said to me
under the oak tree
in the Memorial Park –
‘I’ve got boyfriends.’
‘?’ I said. ‘?’
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