4 All About Frog Shortening
Good news! Lancelot and Granny have found a house. We all went to see it today Even Mr and Mrs Tugg came along. I haven’t mentioned them yet, have I? They’re our next-door neighbours. We used to be at war with them, because Mr Tugg was always complaining about my dad.
However, ever since Granny and Lancelot got married, things have been a little more friendly. The thing is, Lancelot is Mr Tugg’s father. You’d never guess it, not in a million years. I mean, Mr Tugg is, I don’t know, Mr Normal, I suppose. He always does everything in just the right way His garden is so neat and perfect it looks like something cut out of a magazine.
You’d never think that he and Lancelot were father and son. I told you Lancelot’s a Hell’s Angel. He’s got his hair in a ponytail, and a large carrot tattooed on his left shoulder blade. I know that sounds a bit odd, but Lancelot used to be in the navy. He was sent to Hong Kong, and while he was out there he had this tattoo done.
‘I asked for a parrot,’ he told me, ‘but I don’t think the tattoo man heard me properly.’
Anyhow, we went to see the house they were going to buy. We all met up outside, and the first thing that Mr Tugg noticed was that Lancelot had a ring in one ear. He must have had his ear pierced earlier that afternoon.
Mr Tugg shuddered. ‘Father, I do wish you would be a bit more …’
‘Boring?’ suggested Lancelot.
‘No! I was going to say respectable. Goodness knows what these people here will make of you.’Mr Tugg shook his head in despair.
‘It’s rather pretty’ said Mrs Tugg.
‘No, it isn’t. It’s ridiculous!’ her husband shouted.
My dad was delighted to see how upset Mr Tugg was becoming, and he gave Gran a smug smile. ‘At least you haven’t got one,’ he observed.
Granny pulled up the bottom of her jumper and tugged at her vest. ‘There. What do you think of that?’ Granny had a ring through her belly button!
Mum screamed and clutched her own tummy. ‘Oh, how could you!’
‘That’s really cool, Gran!’ I said.
‘It’s not cool at all!’ everyone else shouted. (I mean my parents and the Tugg Team.)
At that moment, the front door opened and the owners of the house peered out earth we were up to. Granny still had her jumper pulled halfway up her chest. Dad hastily leaped in front of her and beamed at the house owners. ‘Hello!’ he cried. ‘We’ve come to look at your house.’
‘Right. Good afternoon. I’m Bernard Throgmorton and this is my wife, Thelma.’
Mrs Throgmorton’s head dipped and rose, dipped and rose as she nodded. She reminded me of a stork, a very polite stork. She was tall and thin, with a sharp nose.
Mr Throgmorton stood in the doorway surveying us. He didn’t seem to like the look of the two Hell’s Angels. Are they with you?’ he asked Mr Tugg, and the poor man gave an embarrassed nod.
‘They’d better wait outside,’ snapped Mr Throgmorton. ‘They look smelly’
Dad put on his most polite smile. Actually they are the house buyers. This is my mother, and this is her husband. Lancelot is the father of Mr Tugg here.’
‘That’s not possible,’ snapped Bernard Throgmorton. ‘I mean, they’re – they look awful.’
Lancelot strode to the front and whipped off his shades. He eyeballed Mr Throgmorton. ‘I’ve got a scar,’ he growled. ‘Got it in a knife fight. The other geezer’s dead. Lots of blood. Can we come in? Thank you!’
Bernard staggered back as Lancelot and Granny made their way into the hall. Dad followed.
Bernard Throgmorton had gone white. ‘Did he really k, k, ki …?’ he squeaked, and Dad nodded.
Of course Lancelot doesn’t have a scar, and he wouldn’t hurt a tadpole! But it shook Bernard Frogshortener. (That’s what my dad called him after we got home!)
The house looked like it would be just the job. It had only two bedrooms, but it had a nice bit of garden and it was near us.
Granny and Lancelot loved it. So now they’re sorted out. I’m glad they’ve got somewhere to live and it’s not far away. I shall miss them when they go.
Mind you, I’ve always got Imelda for company. Not to mention the baby when it arrives. Lucky me.
5 November: Big Trouble
Boy, you should have heard the row today! I thought the house would fall down round our ears. We’ve all been in BIG TROUBLE WITH MUM.
The thing is, Mum’s cooking has been all wonky for weeks now. She keeps giving us sausages to eat. She seems to have developed a craving for them. We’re given sausages for breakfast, sausages for lunch and sausages for supper. It’s driving us mad. Dad even pleaded with her, on his knees.
‘Please, please, can we have something else to eat?’
‘Sausages are very nice and I like them.’
Granny says that when women are expecting a baby they sometimes go through a phase like this. ‘When I was expecting Ronald, I spent a whole month eating nothing but soap and sardines.’
‘That’s revolting, Granny!’
‘Oh, I know, but I enjoyed it at the time. Don’t worry about the sausages. Your mother will get over it eventually’
It’s all very well for Granny to say that, but those sausages were getting on our nerves. Mum wouldn’t let Lancelot do any cooking either, because she knew he wouldn’t do sausages.
I couldn’t go on like that, so I started hiding my sausages. I’d get them to the edge of the plate and then, when nobody was looking, I’d shove them up my sleeves. I’d get rid of them later. Sometimes I put them down the toilet and flushed them. I buried some in the garden, and the others I stuffed into litter bins on my way to school.
It was all going very well, but then Mum found out. It wasn’t my fault. It was Dad’s. He was so fed up he was doing the same thing. When nobody was looking at him he was sticking sausages inside the front of his shirt. If he had got rid of them like I did I don’t think Mum would ever have found out. But Dad was so stupid. You know where he hid them?
In his chest of drawers, under his socks.
You can imagine what it was like after a month or so. The sausages were going all mouldy and beginning to stink. Mum kept saying she thought there was an odd smell in the bedroom. Dad said it was that time of year.
‘What time of year?’ asked Mum.
‘The time of year for bad smells,’ Dad said mysteriously.
Anyhow, Mum just happened to open Dad’s drawer and discovered half a ton of mouldering sausages piled up in there. Talk about high drama! She went off like some mad tank, firing in all directions at once. She was furious.
‘I wondered why you kept getting grease stains on the front of your shirt. You are a disgusting, disgusting man! How do you expect me to bring a new little baby into the house of a secret sausage-stasher?’
Dad was literally backed into a corner by all this, but Granny came to his rescue, much to my surprise.
‘To tell you the truth, dear,’ Granny began, ‘Lancelot and I have rather gone off sausages ourselves.’
‘Oh yes?’ Mum looked daggers at her.
‘Yes, dear. You see, it’s not just Ronald. I can’t let him get into trouble when we’ve been doing the same.’
Mum’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re not telling me that you’ve been filling your drawers with sausages as well?’
‘Not at all, dear, no. I’ve been putting them in my handbag.’
‘Your handbag!’
‘Yes. And then Lancelot has taken them away on his motorbike, down to the dump, for recycling.’
For a few seconds Mum was speechless. She gazed at Dad and Granny. Finally she turned to me. ‘What have you been doing with your sausages, Nicholas? Give me a nice surprise. Tell me you’ve actually been eating them.’
I shook my head and swallowed. ‘Flushing them down the loo,’ I whispered. And burying them in the garden.’ Mum glared at me as if I were a little boy.
‘How old are you?’
‘Ten.’
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‘Forty-five,’ muttered Dad.
And I’m sixty-three, dear,’ added Granny, very matter-of-factly. ‘I’m sorry, Brenda, but we are fed up with sausages.’
At least Granny was brave enough to speak out. That was when Mum realized that she had a problem, and the problem was her, not us. She was outnumbered for a start, and we all felt the same way. She sat down heavily in an armchair. Dad made a move towards her, but Mum waved him away.
‘Leave me alone,’ she growled. ‘All of you. I don’t even want to see you.’
We crept out of the room and Dad quietly shut the door. ‘She’ll get over it,’ he said. ‘Pregnancy makes women ever so moody, you know.’
Granny was halfway up the stairs, but now she stopped and leaned over the banisters. ‘It’s very easy for a man to say something like that, Ronald. You try carrying another human around inside yourself and see how it makes you feel.’
‘Ouch,’ muttered Dad.
So, we’re all in the doghouse, but at least Mum is speaking to us again. She’s agreed to let Lancelot do the cooking for the rest of us.
‘And I’ll cook my own sausages,’ she huffed.
6 Dad Plays Up
I’m top of my class! I came first! To tell you the truth, there were only two of us being tested, but I still came top. Mum gave Dad and me a Baby-care Test. We took turns with Imelda and we had to:
1. Change her nappy.
2. Bath her.
3. Change her clothee.
4. Strap her in a car safety seat.
5. Burp her.
I wish you could have seen it. Mum had prepared a little surprise for us. Dad had to go first with the nappy changing. He was singing away and saying how easy it was. Then he unfastened the nappy and got the shock of his life.
‘I put some mushy peas in there,’ said Mum, as if it were the sort of thing she did every day ‘I thought it would make it more realistic.’
‘It’s revolting!’ cried Dad.
‘At least it doesn’t smell, Ron. Surely you don’t expect to be changing unsoiled nappies? Now, make sure you wipe Imelda clean before you put a fresh one on her.’
‘But the peas have gone inside the hole where her leg was,’ Dad whined.
‘Clean her!’
‘The nappy keeps slipping down. I told you it would. You need two legs to keep a nappy up.’
‘You haven’t fastened it properly’ Mum said. ‘That’s all.’
Dad went storming off and returned a few moments later with a roll of sellotape. He wound it round and round the nappy across Imelda’s chest and finally up and over both her shoulders. He picked up the doll and thrust her towards Mum.
‘There,’ he grunted. Mum took Imelda and examined her.
‘One out often,’ she said. ‘Now it’s Nicholas’s turn.’
It was a bit messy, but I managed a better job than Dad, and Mum gave me eight, so I was pretty pleased. We did the bathing next, and that was all right, except that Dad played submarines with the doll, and I mean Imelda was the submarine.
‘You’ve scored nought,’ Mum told him. ‘Nicholas, you did an excellent job. Ten out of ten.’
‘That’s not fair!’ protested Dad.
‘Ron, she is not a U-boat. She is a small, defenceless baby.’
‘But the water went up her leg-hole and she sank!’ protested Dad.
I think that after the bathing Dad decided he couldn’t possibly win, so he just played up all the time. It was like having a really naughty kid there. He put Imelda’s Babygro on her upside down. He strapped her in the car seat the wrong way round, so that she was facing the wrong way. And when he came to burp her, Dad thumped her so hard the doll’s head fell off.
I thought it was really funny but Mum had that steely glint in her eye. She sent me off to play while she kept Dad behind so that she could ‘have words’ with him. I heard her telling him that he was a show-off, a ‘bad example’, and that he ‘should know better’. She made Dad stay in and do it all again, properly.
She can be just like some of my teachers.
The thing is though, Mum wants us to pretend that Imelda is real, and we can’t, because she isn’t! She’s impossible to like. I mean, she’s half bald, she’s got a leg missing, and then there’s that awful squiffy eye.
It will be different when the real baby comes. I know it will. Listen, yesterday evening Mum was watching telly when she called me over. She took my hand, put it on her stomach and held it there.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Wait a moment. There!’
I felt a tiny nudge against my hand, and then again. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘The baby’ said Mum. ‘Your brother or sister. It’s kicking.’
I kept my hand there a bit longer, feeling those little nudges, like someone tapping out a message. It was trying to talk to me. It was saying ‘hello’!
That’s how I know it will be OK when the baby comes.
7 December: Surprise, Surprise!
Oh boy! You will never, ever guess in a million years what happened today It was as if Christmas arrived early.
Mum had to go into hospital for a check-up, and Dad and I went with her. I saw something truly astonishing. But I’d better start from the beginning.
My mum’s getting quite big now. I mean, you can tell she’s having a baby Her tummy’s swelling and she has to do things like bending down carefully. I asked her what it was like and she told me to imagine that I’d swallowed a carrier bag full of shopping. It doesn’t sound very comfortable, does it?
Anyhow, we all went trooping off to the hospital. I had to wait outside of course, in case I heard something I wasn’t supposed to, ha ha. I could hear the nurse droning on for hours, asking Mum loads of questions. Finally the nurse gave Mum a scan, and I was allowed to come and look too.
Mum lay on a bed and the nurse rubbed some special jelly all over her swollen stomach. It was really gloopy-doopy! Then she got a scanner – it was a bit like one of those hand scanners you see in check-outs at shops. It made me laugh.
‘They’re going to price up your shopping bag, Mum.’ She burst out laughing, but Dad and the nurse just gave us strange, blank looks.
‘You’re getting to be as daft as your father,’ said Mum.
The nurse plopped this thing on to Mum’s belly and began moving it slowly There was a little TV monitor and this flickering grey image came up on the screen.
At first it was like watching telly when the aerial’s not working. There was just flickering grey fuzz everywhere. And then, all of a sudden, there it was, a little baby!
IT WAS MOVING!
IT WAS KICKING ITS LEGS!
IT WAS SUCKING ITS THUMB!
The nurse turned up the sound and you could hear the baby’s heart beating. You could hear my mum’s heart too – great big booming thing – and then there were these dainty little thuds going on. You could even see its ears and fingers and toes.
Mum was crying, but she had this huge smile on her face. Dad was squeezing her hand. He looked pretty choked too. As for me, I was just amazed. Something burst inside me, like one of those really, really, REALLY expensive fireworks, with hundreds of coloured star bursts and cascading showers of golden glitter. It exploded inside and rushed to every little corner of my body, right up to the very tips of the hair on my head and down into my toes. Even my toenails tingled!
Dad was staring at the monitor and suddenly he gave a horrified croak. He slowly lifted one arm and pointed at the screen, with his finger shaking uncontrollably.
‘It …it …it’s got three arms!’ he gasped. ‘And two heads!’
By this time, Dad had turned the same colour as the hospital bedsheets. His eyes flickered, rolled upwards and he crumpled in a heap on the floor.
The nurse comforted Mum. ‘It’s all right, he’s just a bit shocked.’ ‘But the baby!’ cried Mum. ‘Look!’ Sure enough, the baby was now waving three arms at us.
‘It looks like you’re going to have t
wins,’ said the nurse.
‘Twins?’ squeaked Mum, before going all limp. It was a good thing she was already lying down. The nurse pressed the red ‘HELP’ button and turned to me.
‘Are you going to faint too?’
I shook my head. ‘We weren’t expecting twins,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s a bit of a shock.’
‘So it seems. Can you just hold your father’s head for a moment, while I sort out your mother?’ The nurse bustled around Mum while I sat on the floor holding Dad’s head so that he was comfortable.
It’s a strange world!
Luckily, another nurse arrived and took over from me. Dad soon came round and he was helped on to the trolley bed next to Mum. They made a right pair! I had the job of explaining to Dad that Mum was going to have twins.
‘The second baby was hidden behind the first,’ I told him. ‘The nurse said that it happens like that quite often with twins.’
‘I’d only just got used to the idea of one baby let alone two,’ he murmured. He gave Mum a weak smile. ‘Twins, eh? Who’s a clever girl! Two presents for the price of one. Christmas has come early this year!’
Ever since we got home, Dad’s been telling everyone. Granny was rather taken aback.
‘Brenda’s had a scan and you’ve seen tins? Are you sure, Ron? I don’t know about these scan things, they didn’t have them in my day, but I don’t think they show you tins. Were they tins of baby food? I suppose that might make sense.’
My Mum's Going to Explode! Page 2
