Giant Jim and the Hurricane

by Jeremy Strong

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Giant Jim and the Hurricane

  Jeremy Strong once worked in a bakery, putting the jam into 3,000 doughnuts every night. Now he puts the jam in stories instead, which he finds much more exciting. At the age of three he fell out of a first-floor bedroom window and landed on his head. His mother says that this damaged him for the rest of his life and refuses to take any responsibility. He loves writing stories because he says it is ‘the only time you alone have complete control and can make anything happen’. His ambition is to make you laugh (or at least snuffle). Jeremy Strong lives in Kent with his wife, Susan, two cats, and a pheasant that sits on the garden fence with a ‘can’t catch me’ grin on his beak.

  Other books by Jeremy Strong

  THE AIR-RAID SHELTER THE DESPERATE ADVENTURES OF SIR RUPERT AND ROSIE GUSSET

  FANNY WITCH AND THE THUNDER LIZARD FANNY WITCH AND THE WICKED WIZARD

  FATBAG: THE DEMON VACUUM CLEANER THE HUNDRED MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  THE INDOOR PIRATES THE INDOOR PIRATES ON TREASURE ISLAND

  THE KARATE PRINCESS THE KARATE PRINCESS AND THE CUTTHROAT ROBBERS THE KARATE PRINCESS TO THE RESCUE THE KARATE PRINCESS AND THE LAST GRIFFIN

  LIGHTNING LUCY MY DAD’S GOT AN ALLIGATOR! MY GRANNY’S GREAT ESCAPE THERE’S A PHARAOH IN OUR BATH!

  THERE’S A VIKING IN MY BED VIKING AT SCHOOL VIKING IN TROUBLE

  Jeremy Strong

  Giant Jim and the Hurricane

  Illustrated by Nick Sharratt

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Viking 1997

  Published in Puffin Books 1999

  16

  Text copyright ©Jeremy Strong, 1997

  Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 1997

  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: 978-0-14-191662-0

  For Poppy

  Contents

  1 How to Arrest a Giant

  2 Homeless and Hopeless

  3 A Bed for the Night

  4 Disasters Everywhere

  5 Help!

  1 How to Arrest a Giant

  There was a very strange noise coming from beyond the window. Constable Dunstable sat up in bed and scratched his head. It was half-past six in the morning. What could be making such a noise? He got out of bed, went across to the window and pulled back the curtains.

  ‘Aargh!’ Constable Dunstable leaped back. Staring through the window at him was a huge face, with a ginger beard as big as a forest and –

  the face belonged to a head, and

  the head belonged to a body, and

  the body had two long, hairy arms,

  and two huge legs.

  ‘It’s a giant!’ cried Constable Dunstable. He ran downstairs and ran across the room. He opened his front door and ran outside, right between the giant’s legs, and he carried on running and running, still in his pyjamas.

  ‘There’s a giant in our town!’ yelled Constable Dunstable as he hurried through the streets.

  Windows were thrown open. Sleepy people poked out their heads to see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Well I never!’ murmured Mrs Sniffling. ‘Constable Dunstable is running round the streets in his pyjamas. He is shouting something about a giant.’

  ‘A giant?’ sniffed Mr Sniffling, and he sat up in bed. ‘I don’t believe in giants.’

  ‘I think you might believe in this one,’ said his wife. ‘Because this giant is

  standing at the end of our road. He is as tall as four houses sitting on top of each other, and he is holding a giant saucepan in one hand and a giant wicker basket in the other, and he has a giant saxophone strapped to his back.’

  Mr Sniffling growled and climbed out of his nice, warm bed. He went to the window. ‘Oh!’ he cried. ‘A giant! There’s a giant in our town!’

  ‘Do you know, that is exactly what Constable Dunstable was saying,’ said Mrs Sniffling. ‘Look, now you are running round in your pyjamas too!’

  It was quite true. Mr Sniffling was racing down the street in his pyjamas. In fact, almost half the town were rushing about in pyjamas and nightdresses, and they were all shouting at each other.

  ‘A giant! A giant! We shall all be squashed!’ cried Mr Sniffling.

  ‘We shall all be squished!’ squeaked Mrs Goodbody. She hurried across to

  Constable Dunstable. ‘Arrest that giant at once!’ she insisted.

  Constable Dunstable looked up at the giant’s big, ginger head and swallowed hard. He was an awfully big person to arrest.

  ‘I shall have to put my uniform on and get my handcuffs and my Giant-Spotter’s Handbook. Then you can all come with

  me and we will arrest the giant and shoo him out of our town. We don’t want giants here.’

  ‘No! We don’t want giants in our town!’ everyone shouted.

  ‘What’s wrong with giants?’ asked little Poppy Palmer, the farmer’s daughter. But nobody listened. She thought the giant looked rather nice.

  The crowd marched off behind Constable Dunstable and waited patiently until the policeman had changed into his uniform. When Constable Dunstable came back out they all got up and marched behind him once again, and that helped him feel a bit braver.

  They went up the road and there was the giant, standing at the other end and frowning down at them with his great big, bearded face. The crowd stopped.

  Mr Sniffling pushed Constable Dunstable forward.

  ‘Go on,’ he muttered. ‘Arrest that giant at once.’

  Constable Dunstable took two wobbly steps forward and then stopped. He pressed his knees together very hard, so that he couldn’t hear them knocking any longer. He stared up and UP and UP.

  ‘I arrest you in the name of the law!’ he cried. ‘Put on these handcuffs at once!’

  The giant looked at the tiny handcuffs. They were much too small for his great hands. Carefully he put down his saucepan and his wicker basket and gently held out his hands. Constable Dunstable just managed to push the handcuffs over the tips of the giant’s fingers. He snapped them shut.

  ‘There,’ said Constable Dunstable. ‘Now you are our prisoner. I am going to put you in jail for years and years and years.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything,’ said the giant. His voice was such a roar that half the townspeople were blown back down the road and the other half fell over on th
e spot.

  Constable Dunstable picked himself up.

  ‘It is against the law for giants to come to our town,’ he said severely.

  ‘That isn’t very fair,’ said the giant, and everyone fell over again. Constable Dunstable picked himself up.

  ‘AND – you keep knocking everyone over.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said the giant, and everyone fell over again. Constable Dunstable picked himself up for the third time.

  ‘Then I shall have to put you in jail for ever and ever!’ said the policeman.

  And that was when the giant began to cry. Huge tears filled his eyes, trickled down his cheeks and crashed to the ground far below.

  ‘Stop it!’ cried the soaking townspeople. ‘We shall all drown!’

  This made the giant cry even more, and it was just like two long, thin, sparkling waterfalls. The giant cried for half the morning. Soon there was a little pool of tears, and the pool became a pond, and the pond became a lake. Some people got out their umbrellas and some people got out their boats, but the children got out their swimming costumes and swam about splashing each other.

  Mrs Careless, the Mayoress, was becoming most concerned. ‘We can’t have this,’ she told Constable Dunstable.

  ‘We must do something. This lake will start overflowing any minute and then the whole town will be flooded. Tell the giant you won’t arrest him if he stops crying.’

  So Constable Dunstable told the giant to stop crying.

  ‘I won’t arrest you,’ he explained. ‘But you must promise to be a good giant.’

  ‘I am a good giant,’ snivelled the giant, and he blew his nose –

  – and everyone who wasn’t swimming fell over, and half the rowing boats were overturned, and Constable Dunstable disappeared into the lake.

  ‘I have always been a good giant,’ the giant added, poking a helpful finger into the lake and hooking Constable Dunstable back on to dry land.

  ‘Do you think you could speak more softly?’ asked Mrs Goodbody. ‘Every time you speak it makes a terrible wind and we all fall over. And please don’t sneeze.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the giant, and everyone fell over.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again, very quietly, and everyone picked themselves up.

  The policeman glared angrily at the giant.

  ‘Right then, you sit down on that hill. You are going to have to answer some questions.’

  ‘Oh good! Is it a quiz, like on television? Will I win a painting set?’ asked the giant, sitting himself down on the hill with an enormous, thunderous thump.

  ‘Not exactly. First of all, question one: What is your name?’

  ‘Jim.’

  ‘I want your full name,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Oh. Giant Jim.’

  ‘Question two: Where do you live?’ ‘That’s obvious,’ said Giant Jim with such a big smile that his whole beard went crinkly. ‘I live right here.’

  2 Homeless and Hopeless

  ‘Here!’ cried everyone else. ‘In our town?’

  ‘Well, I would like to live here,’ said Giant Jim. ‘It’s nice here. You’ve got a lake and everything.’

  ‘We didn’t have a lake until you came here and started crying,’ sniffed Mr Sniffling.

  ‘But it is a nice lake,’ said Poppy Palmer. ‘We can go rowing and swimming and sail our boats.’

  ‘You might fall in,’ warned the children’s mothers.

  ‘We like falling in!’ shouted the children.

  ‘I am not at all sure about this,’ said Constable Dunstable. ‘Giants can be very dangerous. How do we know that you won’t eat anyone?’

  Giant Jim looked most hurt. ‘Of course I won’t eat anyone. I don’t eat meat. I’m a vegetable.’

  ‘I think you mean that you are a vegetarian,’ said Poppy Palmer.

  The giant grinned. ‘That’s right. I’m a vegenariable!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ grumbled Constable Dunstable, and he got out his Giant-Spotter’s Handbook. He thumbed through the pages.

  ‘Have you only got one eye? No? You’re not a Cyclops then. Have you got a golden harp and a hen?’

  ‘I don’t have a golden harp, but I do have a hen!’ cried the giant. ‘You are clever! How did you know that? I have a hen in my wicker basket here,’ and he tapped the big basket.

  Constable Dunstable took several steps back.

  ‘If you’ve got a hen then you could be a Beanstalk Giant. My book says that Beanstalk Giants are very, very dangerous. They eat humans.’

  The giant looked heartbroken and he shook his head sadly. ‘But I don’t eat people. I eat vegetables and eggs. That’s why I have my hen. Her name is Florence Fluffybum and she lays eggs for me. I put them in my saucepan and I have scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, or maybe an omelette or egg-bread…’

  ‘Yes, yes, all right,’ muttered the policeman. ‘You’re not a Beanstalk Giant then. How about a Big Friendly Giant? Do you do dreams? Is that a dream-puffer strapped to your back?’

  The giant shook his head.

  ‘No, this is my saxophone.’

  Constable Dunstable turned over the page and his face lit up.

  ‘Ah! Now I’ve got you! If that’s a saxophone then you must be a Jazz Giant!’

  ‘A Jazz Giant,’ murmured Giant Jim. ‘I’m a Jazz Giant.’

  ‘That’s right. And my book says that Jazz Giants are harmless, cheerful, but often noisy, especially if they play the drums.’

  ‘I don’t play the drums. I play the saxophone,’ said Jim with a big smile. He swung his saxophone across his front.

  A moment later the air was shattered by an explosion of music and everybody fell over yet again.

  The nearby trees had half their leaves blown off. The terrified sheep ran round their field so fast that the sheep at the front caught up with the sheep at the back and they all collided in a big heap. The cows tumbled on to their backs and waved their legs in the air, with their udders wobbling about like big, pink jellies.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ yelled Constable Dunstable, with both hands clasped over his ears.

  Giant Jim put down his saxophone.

  ‘Did you like that?’ he grinned. ‘I’m a very good saxophone player.’

  The townspeople struggled back to their feet, shaking their ringing heads. ‘You are a very good saxophone player,’ they agreed. ‘But please don’t play so loudly.’

  ‘It was brilliant!’ yelled the children, who always liked a free disco.

  Constable Dunstable was rather relieved that Giant Jim did not play the drums. After all, if the giant saxophone knocked everybody off their feet, giant drums would probably start an earthquake. However, he still had some important questions to ask.

  ‘Where are you going to live?’ he wanted to know.

  The giant gazed down at Poppy Palmer. ‘I’d like to live with you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh!’ said Poppy. ‘That’s nice, but our house is too small for you.’

  ‘It’s a farmhouse,’ grunted Mr Palmer the farmer. ‘It’s for farmers.’

  ‘Then I shall live with you!’ said Giant Jim, pointing at Constable Dunstable.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said the policeman firmly. ‘I live in the Police House and it’s just for policemen.’

  ‘In that case,’ smiled Giant Jim, ‘if the Farmhouse is for farmers, and the Police House is for policemen, I shall live in the Giant House.’

  Everyone looked at each other.

  ‘The Giant House?’ they muttered.

  Wherever was the Giant House? Constable Dunstable frowned.

  ‘We haven’t got a Giant House, because giants have never lived here. You are homeless and you will have to sleep outside on the hills until you find a house for yourself. Now, be very careful where you tread because you are big and everything else round here is small and you don’t fit in.’

  With that, Constable Dunstable set off back to the town and everyone followed, except for Poppy Palmer and her best friend, Crasher. (He was called
Crasher because he ran around so fast that he kept crashing into things. He also crashed out of things – like trees, when he was halfway up them.)

  Giant Jim stared after the disappearing townspeople.

  ‘I’m homeless,’ he muttered. ‘Everybody has a home except me. I’m homeless and hopeless.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ said Crasher, trying to cheer up the giant.

  ‘Oh yes there is. My feet are too big…’

  ‘They are quite large,’ agreed the children.

  ‘And my legs are too big…’

  ‘They are a bit like tree trunks,’ nodded Crasher.

  ‘And my chest is too big…’

  ‘It is – huge!’ murmured Poppy.

  ‘And my head is too big.’

  Poppy and Crasher looked at each other. ‘You are very big,’ they said.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean that you are hopeless,’ said Poppy. ‘I bet you can do lots of things. You’ve already made us a lake.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Giant Jim.

  ‘I know, but it’s a lovely lake. We’ve always wanted a lake, and so we are going to help you find a home.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Giant Jim, and he looked a lot happier. A moment of silence passed and then he asked, ‘Have you found one yet?’

  ‘No!’ Crasher laughed. ‘It will probably take a little bit of time. Come on, Poppy, let’s go house-hunting.’ Crasher raced off, tripped over his own laces and went crashing all the way to the bottom of the hill.

  Poppy ran after him, and the two children spent the rest of the morning searching for a Giant House, and the whole afternoon, and most of the evening too. They had no luck at all. At nine o’clock that night they had to tell Giant Jim that they hadn’t found anywhere.