My Brother's Famous Bottom

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘You think you’re funny, don’t you?’ growled Mr Tugg, and his moustache went wriggle wriggle.

  ‘Me? Funny? Oh no, not me,’ said Dad, peering closely at Mr Tugg’s face.

  ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘Is it going to hatch, do you think, Nicholas?’ asked Dad, and I couldn’t help giggling.

  ‘What? Is what going to hatch?’ demanded Mr Tugg suspiciously.

  Dad stepped back. ‘Sorry, Mr Tugg, thought I saw a caterpillar but it was… it was something else.’

  Mr Tugg was breathing heavily. ‘My wife was giving one of her aromatherapy sessions this morning,’ he began.

  ‘Aromatherapy?’ repeated Dad. ‘That’s where you sniff smelly things to make you feel better, isn’t it? I sniffed my socks once but it didn’t work. In fact I felt awful afterwards.’

  Condition Red, and Mr Tugg breathed even more heavily. ‘Mrs Tugg had an important customer and your goat wandered in and stood there smelling like a cowshed. The poor woman was so scared she ran from the house!’

  ‘That’s the trouble with goats,’ said Dad.

  ‘You never know what they’re going to do next.’

  ‘She was only wearing a towel!’ roared Mr Tugg.

  ‘Nothing but a towel? That’s disgusting! I have tried, Mr Tugg. I keep telling her to put on a coat and shoes when she goes out, but will she do it? No.’

  ‘NOT THE GOAT, YOU STUPID IMBECILE – THE WOMAN! THE WOMAN WAS ONLY WEARING A TOWEL!’ Now he was definitely Deep Red. ‘Can you imagine how embarrassing that was for her? And then, and then, when I finally managed to calm her down and get her back indoors I discovered that your goat had been eating my wellington boots.’

  ‘It was very kind of you to feed her,’ said Dad. ‘She gets so bored with grass.’

  ‘My wellies were outside the back door. She’s chewed the toes off them!’

  ‘That’s why we call her Rubbish. She’ll eat anything,’ Dad explained.

  ‘Look!’ cried Mr Tugg, holding up the chewed boots. He had reached Condition Purple now.

  Dad examined the boots. ‘Summer wellies! Look, Nicholas, they’re a sort of mix of boot and sandal – just right for the summer, so your feet don’t get too hot. You could call them bootals, Mr Tugg, or even better, you could be like the Duke of Wellington. He invented wellington boots, and now you have invented summer boots. They could be named after you – Tuggals.’

  Mr Tugg went from purple to white-hot to explosion in about two seconds flat. It was pretty impressive. Mum had to calm him down, just like she always does. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea, Mr Tugg, while Ron catches Rubbish. Sorry she escaped. I don’t know how it happened.’

  ‘I’ll tell you how it happened,’ began Dad. ‘That goat was trained by the SAS, you know. She used to be their regimental mascot. They trained her to sneak behind enemy lines and –’

  ‘Ron!’ barked Mum. ‘Go and get her back. Now.’

  So Dad went and captured Rubbish, while Mum told Mr Tugg that we’d buy him some new boots. Dad wasn’t happy when he heard about that. ‘We’re supposed to be trying to save money, not spend it on new boots for that dinosaur next door,’ he complained. He stood at the back window staring out at the animals. ‘Don’t know how we’ll manage,’ he muttered.

  5 Nuisance Neighbours

  We’re going to be on telly! Mum got a phone call yesterday from the local TV station. They had heard all about the mini farm and they wanted to come and do a bit of filming.

  Dad’s gone even more stupid than ever. ‘We’re going to be big stars,’ he said at breakfast this morning.

  ‘It’s only local TV,’ Mum pointed out. ‘Not Hollywood.’

  ‘You have no ambition,’ Dad answered.

  ‘And you have no sense,’ laughed Mum.

  ‘I could be an all-out action hero in the next fantastic episode of Star Wars, Part 3005: The Phantom Wellie-Eater from Planet Goat.’

  Mum almost choked on her muesli and sprayed bits across the table.

  ‘That is so disgusting,’ muttered Dad. ‘Isn’t that disgusting, Cheese? Do you see your mother? She’s a worse eater than either of you two.’

  ‘Sprrrurrrrrrgh!!’ went Tomato, and her breakfast went twice as far.

  ‘You’ve been practising, haven’t you?’ said Dad, dabbing the table with a cloth.

  Mum had just about got her breath back. ‘You? An action hero? You do know what an action hero does, don’t you? They do action – lots of it. I bet you can’t even do five press-ups.’

  ‘Huh! No problem!’ Dad threw himself on the floor. ‘One, two, er three… gerroff, Cheese! Gerroff my back!’

  ‘Horsey!’ yelled Cheese, hitting Dad on the head with his cereal bowl.

  ‘Now there’s a real action hero!’ laughed Mum.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dad, getting back on his chair.

  ‘I meant James,’ Mum replied.

  But Dad seemed to have drifted off into a dream. ‘I wonder how that TV news team found out about us? And I’ll tell you something, that Martian next door is going to be really fed up when he sees us on television!’

  So this afternoon the telly people turned up on the doorstep. A cameraman, a soundman – and a reporter. ‘Tamsin Plank,’ she said, shaking Dad’s hand. He was wearing dark shades and he’d left his shirt half unbuttoned.

  ‘Johnny Dipp,’ said Dad.

  ‘Depp,’ I murmured. ‘Johnny Depp.’

  ‘Cool,’ nodded Dad. ‘I know.’ He turned to the whirring camera and smiled. ‘Call myself Dipp sometimes to confuse the fans,’ he said.

  ‘You certainly confused me,’ said Tamsin. ‘I was told there’s a mini farm here.’

  ‘There is,’ sighed Mum. ‘Would you like to come through? Please ignore my husband. He’s an idiot.’

  ‘I am not!’

  Mum turned back to the reporter. ‘How did you find out about our farm?’

  ‘Your neighbour, Mr Tugg, he told us. We’re doing a programme about nuisance neighbours – people who grow their hedges too tall, people with noisy dogs that are always barking, that sort of thing. Well, Mr Tugg rang us and reported you.’

  Dad nearly had a blue fit! He certainly did an amazingly good impression of Mr Tugg exploding. ‘He WHAT! That mealy-mouthed manky Martian? He’s the one who should be reported!’

  ‘We’d just like to film the farm,’ explained Tamsin. ‘

  ‘Huh! I’ll show Mr Caterpillar-Face. You can certainly film out there. We have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing. Could you just give me five minutes to get rid of the goat poo?’

  ‘Poo!’ yelled Cheese, crawling out from behind Mum’s armchair with nothing on.

  ‘He means “boo”,’ Mum explained. ‘He likes playing Boo.’

  ‘He’s… goodness! There are two of them,’ cried Tamsin.

  ‘Two poo!’ gurgled Tomato, appearing from behind Dad’s armchair.

  We saw the results on the evening news. It wasn’t too bad, except that the cameras had filmed Dad calling Mr Tugg names, and Rubbish tried to eat Tamsin’s microphone, and they showed Cheese crawling about and looking like one of the farm animals. There was also a rather odd notice written in big red letters on the side of the shed. It read:

  As soon as the programme finished Dad looked at Mum and me. ‘Stand by for Martian invasion,’ he predicted. ‘Five, four, three, two, one –’

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  ‘I know you’re in there!’ yelled Mr Tugg from outside the front door. ‘I am not a manky Martian. How dare you call me Mr Caterpillar-Face you… you big baboon!’

  Dad rushed to the door, crouched down by the letterbox and shouted through it. ‘I am not a baboon!’

  Mr Tugg crouched down on the other side and soon they were at it hammer and tongs, yelling insults at each other. Then Mr Tugg tried to poke Dad through the letterbox with a stick. Dad grabbed an umbrella and pushed that out.

  ‘Ow!’ yelled Mr Tugg. ‘That’s grievous bodily harm, that is.’
>
  ‘You started it, you stick Martian.’

  Suddenly Mr Tugg’s hand and half his arm came through the letterbox and grabbed Dad’s nose.

  ‘Led go!’ bellowed Dad. The twins started crying and that was too much for Mum. She pulled Dad away from the door and wrenched it open, which brought Mr Tugg flying into the room with his arm still stuck through the letterbox. He twisted his head to look up at her.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Tugg. I suggest you go back home.

  When the pair of you are calm enough to speak politely to each other we might be able to sort this out.’

  Mr Tugg growled and went back to his house, while Mum tore a strip or two off Dad. She told him he was childish and he was deliberately winding up Mr Tugg.

  ‘It’s his own fault,’ complained Dad. ‘He makes life difficult for everyone. All I’m trying to do is feed my family.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Mum. ‘You’re the perfect father.’

  Dad shot a look at her. Did Mum really mean that? Or was she being sarcastic? Could Dad tell the difference? No. But I could!

  6 Disaster!

  Big disaster today. It started with a telephone call from Granny to say that the yoghurt was ready for collection. I thought she was going to bring it round in the sidecar on the motorbike, but Granny said she didn’t want to jiggle it about too much. She said I should wheel the twins’ double buggy round and we could strap the tub into that.

  ‘You’ve got time to nip round, haven’t you, Nicholas?’ said Mum.

  ‘I was going to play on my computer,’ I said.

  ‘You can do that afterwards,’ Mum told me. ‘The yoghurt is more important.’

  So I grabbed the double buggy and went round to Gran’s. It’s not far, but you have to go all the way down the High Street, which is a bit of a nuisance when you’re pushing an extra-wide baby buggy. People get cross and scowl and shout at you.

  When I got to Gran’s she was waiting at the gate, peering down the road. ‘I thought you’d never get here,’ she said.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no. No,’ she protested. ‘I was worried about you, that’s all. Come on, let’s get the tub into the pushchair.’

  The plastic tub was pretty big. Lancelot said that he’d used it for making beer before, but it was ideal for the yoghurt. He was sealing the lid with some heavy-duty sticky tape. ‘We don’t want it slopping over the top,’ he said.

  ‘It smells a lot, doesn’t it?’ I sniffed.

  Lancelot and Granny glanced at each other. I thought Lancelot looked a bit worried, but Granny smiled and said goat’s yoghurt always smelled like that in the early stages. ‘It’ll wear off,’ she added. ‘Is that lid on tightly, Lancelot?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Good. Let’s get it into the buggy then. It’s heavy, isn’t it?’

  It was too. That tub seemed to weigh a ton, even with three of us lifting it, but we managed to get it into the buggy eventually. Lancelot got the tape and strapped the tub to the sides. ‘There. That should do the trick. OK, Nick, you can take it away now.’

  I set off back to my house. The buggy was pretty heavy and even more difficult to steer, so it was hard work returning along the High Street. Everyone seemed to get in the way, or I got in the way of them. Then I almost ran Mr Tugg over. He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Do watch where you’re going.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Tugg.’

  He looked at the tub and asked what was in it. I told him.

  ‘Now I’ve heard everything,’ he said. ‘Yoghurt. You be careful, sonny. You don’t want to end up like your dad. He’s a lunatic, you know.’

  I gave him a weak smile. What else could I do? In any case, I was a bit worried about the tub because it seemed to me that it was beginning to bulge for some reason. Then the lid began to lift up and down and rather pongy gases escaped from beneath it. Mr Tugg pulled a face and backed away.

  I thought it might be better if I got off the pavement and pushed the buggy down the side of the road. Hardly had I got the buggy off the kerb when – BADDOOOOM!!!

  The whole thing blew up!

  The lid went spinning high into the air and a great geyser of yoghurt went whooshing up into the sky and then came splopping back down – SHPPLAPP-A-LAPPA-SPLOSH!!!

  Oh dear. Cars were covered. People were covered. I was covered. Mr Tugg was covered. There was only one thing for it… I grabbed the handle of the buggy and raced for home before anyone had time to recover from the shock.

  I hurled myself up the garden path and into the house. ‘How’s the yoghurt?’ shouted Mum from the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve just delivered it all,’ I squeaked and headed for the bathroom to clean up.

  Of course it wasn’t long before there was a thunderous knock on the door. The whole house shook. I crept to the top of the stairs and peered down. Mr Tugg was on the doorstep. You should have seen him! He was plastered from head to foot with goat yoghurt. It was still dribbling from his nose.

  ‘Hello, Mr Tugg,’ said Mum evenly.

  ‘Has Mrs Tugg been giving you an

  aromatherapy session?’

  He was speechless.

  Tomato crawled between Mum’s legs, took one look at Mr Tugg and burst into tears. ‘Bad goo,’ she sobbed.

  Mum picked her up and comforted her. ‘I think you’d better go home, Mr Tugg. You’re frightening the children. Goodbye.’ She shut the door, turned round and looked up at me. ‘Mr Tugg appears to be covered in yoghurt,’ she said. ‘Any ideas on how that might have happened, Nicholas?’

  I told her everything. ‘What is it about this family?’ sighed Mum. ‘Everything we do goes wrong. Oh well, I don’t suppose we’ve heard the last of this.’

  7 Some Gorgeous Bottoms

  Mum was absolutely right. We hadn’t heard the last of it. She showed me the local paper this morning. This was the headline:

  BOY TERRORIST (11) EXPLODES

  YOGHURT BOMB IN HIGH STREET

  I’m famous! Well, not really of course; only down our road. The police came round and questioned me last night, but once they had worked out that it was a genuine accident there wasn’t much more they could do about it. Apparently the yoghurt had exploded because Lancelot had recently used the tub for making beer. He’d left some yeast in the bottom and it had reacted with the warm goat’s milk and that was it – BOOM!

  I learned quite a lot about chemical reactions yesterday. I think that if science lessons at school were like that you’d be a lot more interested, wouldn’t you? I mean, your science teacher might get covered in yoghurt! (So might you.)

  The odd thing is that Rubbish seems to know. I mean, how could she? She wasn’t there in the High Street when her yoghurt exploded, and she certainly can’t read newspapers. It’s almost as if she understood what we said to each other. She just looks at me now with an odd expression that seems to be saying, How could you do that to my precious milk?!

  Anyhow, I might be famous in our street, but I reckon Cheese is going to be the really famous one. We had yet another visitor today, while Dad was home. Cheese had been toddling after Dad for ages, saying, ‘Wetbot, wetbot.’ Dad kept trying to get out of the nappy changing but eventually he had to do it. He’d just finished cleaning Cheese up when the doorbell went. Dad flung Cheese on to his shoulder and marched off to answer it.

  Standing outside was a young lady who squeaked with delight when Dad opened the door.

  ‘That’s the one!’ she cried. ‘That’s the bottom I’m after. Darling, you have the most gorgeous bottom!’

  You should have seen Dad’s face. He went red right to the tips of his hair and struggled for words. ‘Th-th-thank you,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s ever told me that before. Erm, yours is nice too.’

  The woman stared back at Dad. ‘What?’ she said.

  Dad stared at the young woman. ‘What?’ he answered.

  I hurried to the rescue and tugged at Dad’s arm. ‘She doesn�
�t mean you, Dad. I think she’s talking about Cheese’s bottom.’

  ‘Cheese?’ repeated Dad. ‘Really?’ He stared at her again. ‘You want Cheese?’

  The young woman hadn’t got a clue what either of us were talking about. ‘Do I look like I want cheese?’ she demanded. ‘Why would I knock on your door and ask for cheese? I can get my own cheese if I want some, which I don’t.’

  ‘This is Cheese,’ I offered, pointing at my little brother.

  There was a long pause while the woman looked at Cheese, then me, then Dad. ‘He’s called Cheese?’ asked the woman. Dad and I nodded. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he smells,’ Dad instantly replied.

  ‘It isn’t,’ I said, and explained about Mum giving birth in the pizza delivery van.

  The woman started to smile and soon she was laughing. ‘What a very odd name and, oh my goodness, that conversation was so weird! I thought I’d come to some kind of madhouse.’

  ‘You have,’ agreed Mum, appearing at the door with toddler number two. ‘This is Tomato, Cheese’s twin sister. Their proper names are James and Rebecca.’

  Poo!’ cried Tomato.

  ‘No,’ said Mum, shaking her head. ‘When you meet someone new you say “hello”.

  You don’t say “poo”. Go on, Rebecca, say “hello”.’

  ‘POO!’ cried Tomato.

  The young woman laughed. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Babies are so cute, aren’t they?’

  ‘Only when they belong to someone else,’ Dad muttered darkly.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Mum.

  The young woman grinned rather stupidly. ‘Well,’ she went on quickly, ‘I just happened to watch a programme the other day about nuisance neighbours, and I saw Chee… I mean James, and I thought to myself, That is the bottom I need.’