The Parent Agency

by David Baddiel

  “I don’t know,” said Barry. “Not very good. The Rader-Wellorffs about five million to one. And Vlassorina about twice that much.”

  The Head looked shocked – both eyebrows went up this time, but not in a yes-I’m-so-clever-and-witty James Bond manner: just in a straightforward OMG! way.

  “Write that down, Secretary One,” said Secretary Two.

  “I’m writing it dow—”

  “No, don’t,” said the Head. Now it was The Secretary Entity’s turn to look shocked. “Just… don’t,” he repeated. There was an awkward pause. TSE put their pads down.

  The Head turned back to Barry. “So. Barry. You’ve still got three sets of parents left in your package. What kind would you like next?”

  Barry took his list out of his pocket. It was looking torn and bedraggled now, and so creased it was becoming hard to read. But it was still clear enough (and anyway he knew it by heart) to read Number 3: ‘Being tired all the time’.

  “Fit,” he said. “I’d like some really fit and strong parents, please. I’d like Parents who never get tired.”

  It didn’t take long for the next set of parents to appear. In fact, almost as soon as The Secretary Entity had found a match for the words FIT and NEVER TIRED on the computer, a man and a woman appeared at the door of the Head‘s office.

  “Hello!” said the man.

  “Hello!” said the woman.

  They were both wearing bright blue, all-over Lycra bodysuits, white headbands and very big trainers. “I’m Derek Fwahm! And this is my wife Emily Fwahm! We got here as quickly as we could!”

  “Which, as you may have gathered,” said the woman, “is really, really quickly!”

  “Hoor-hoor! Hoor-hoor! Hoor-hoor!” they said together, which Barry thought, but wasn’t entirely sure, was laughter.

  “Fwahm?” said Barry.

  “No,” said the man. “Fwahm! With an exclamation mark! Not a question one!”

  “So you have to shout it?” said Barry.

  “No,” said the woman. “It’s more the way you say it! We prefer to say it with this action!” She said “Fwahm!” while moving her hand sharply away from her, palm down. “Sort of an action word! It might go in a comic strip with something moving away from you very fast! A car! A rocket!”

  “Fwahm!” said Derek Fwahm!, doing the hand action.

  “Fwahm!” said Emily Fwahm!, doing it too.

  “OK, I’ve got it,” said Barry, who was beginning to wonder whether he should just ask the Head to start looking through the options for parents number 4.

  CHAPTER TWO

  But he didn’t.

  Derek and Emily had brought Barry some running gear, so that they could sprint all the way to their house. There wasn’t anywhere to change as they were on the street outside the Parent Agency. So, to protect his modesty, the Fwahms! ran round him very, very fast, forming a circle of speed which, from a distance, looked like a wobbly blue fence.

  Back in his own world, at school, Barry had sometimes gone running, and he’d worn a pair of white shorts and a Barcelona top from 2009 that was too small for him, but the Fwahms! gave him a child’s version of their blue Lycra suits, a white headband and trainers. He thought it probably looked really embarrassing – the Lycra was very tight – but once he’d put it on he did feel like he could go faster than normal.

  Then, once they started running, he was sure he was actually going faster than normal. The trainers were really bouncy and the suit felt like it just glided through the air. The only problem was, however fast he went – and Barry was a pretty fast runner: he’d come second in the school cross-country run (and would’ve come first if Taj hadn’t cheated by getting a secret lift halfway from his mum and dad) – he couldn’t go anything like as fast as the Fwahms! Most of the time, they were at least a hundred metres in front of him. Then they’d stop and say, “Come on, Barry! Nearly there!” When he got close to them, though, they’d be off again: fwahm!

  Eventually, to save time, Derek Fwahm! lifted Barry up and ran with him on his shoulders all the way to their house, which Barry wasn’t sure about as he knew it might look quite babyish – but really, because Derek moved so fast, it was kind of fun. It was like riding a blue, Lycra-suited, two-legged horse.

  After a while, Derek skidded to a halt – Barry actually pulled on some imaginary reins and went “Whoa!”– and put him down. In front of them was a large white building with the words Sweat Shop on its front.

  “Here we are!” said Emily.

  “Sorry, where are we?” said Barry.

  “Our house!” said Derek who, like Emily, didn’t seem able to say anything that didn’t end in an exclamation mark. He got his keys out and approached the doors of Sweat Shop.

  “That’s a gym, isn’t it?” said Barry.

  “It used to be!” said Emily, taking his hand and leading him into it. “But now it’s our house!”

  Barry went into the building. There was a lobby area with a wide desk at one end. “Oh, so you converted an old gym into a house?” he said, remembering that in his world the same thing had happened to an old church just off the A41.

  “Nope!” said Derek. “We live in it just as it was!”

  “So…” said Emily, who by now was standing behind the desk. “Would you like membership of our house?!”

  “Hoor-hoor! Hoor-hoor! Hoor-hoor!” they said together.

  As it turned out, though, it was fun living in a gym. Particularly a gym that no one else apart from the three of them was allowed into. Barry liked having free run of the exercise bikes and the treadmills and the endless number of enormous rubber balls. He liked being able to drink as many energy drinks as he wanted. (The ones here, which came free out of the machines, were called PowerFizz and Energyade, and were purple and green and very bubbly.) And he liked that there were loads of TVs hanging above the treadmills. Except none of them seemed to be working.

  “Ah!” said Derek, when Barry pointed this out. “We don’t have normal TVs in our gym! Too easy to just stand and watch them! No! Get on and you’ll see!”

  Barry stepped on a treadmill and started running. As he got his speed up, the TV came on. It was a show called Pop-Newz, just starting. It had a title sequence with lots of different people singing a theme tune which went:

  “Pop-Newz! Pop-Newz! More interesting than shoes!”

  “Now, Barry, slow down a bit…!”

  Barry slowed down to a quick walk. As he did so, the TV slowed down too. The singers started moving in slow motion, and the sound of their voices went all low and weird and stretched out, like ghost voices in films. “Pooooppp… Newwwzzzz… Poooooppppp… Newwwwzzz… Mooooorrrreee ffffuuuunnnn tttthhhhaannnn a baddddd bruissssse…”

  “Right, now speed up!” said Derek. “As fast as you can go!”

  Barry moved his legs faster and the TV went back to normal. Then he went faster still and all the singers started moving as if they were speeded up, and their voices became high-pitched, like they’d sucked on helium.

  “Pop-Newz!Pop-Newz!Moreexcitingthanelectrical fuse!!!” they sang.

  “It’s designed to make sure you run at exactly the right speed!” said Derek. “Brilliant, isn’t it?!”

  “Yes,” said Barry, which was all he could say, since he was completely out of breath. He noticed that the first item on Pop-Newz was a piece about Vlassorina. They were being filmed smiling at home with their new child, Patarina. Barry slowed down.

  “Weeeeeveeee alllllwwaaayys waaaannnnttteeed a girrrrrlllll…” Vlad was saying, while bouncing Patarina on his knee.

  “Maybe I’ll do a bit more of that later,” said Barry, getting off the treadmill.

  “OK!” said Derek, who was in the middle of doing some star jumps.

  “So…!” said Emily, who came skipping into the room – not skipping as in doing a hoppy, jumpy walk, but skipping, properly, with a big yellow skipping rope – “we’ve got it all sorted for your party!!”

  “The football party?”<
br />
  “Yes!”

  Barry had felt that, party-wise, it was perhaps time for a change, the James Bond idea not having gone so well in the previous parental try-outs. So he had suggested to the Head that a football party would be equally to his liking. The Head had said he thought that would be right up the Fwahms!’ street.

  “Great!” said Barry.

  “There’s a place where we can have a football party right up our street!” said Emily, still skipping.

  “Right! Yes, that’s what the Head said. Although I thought, when he said that it was right up your street, he meant… it was something you’d be good at doing.”

  “It is!” said Derek. “But it also happens to actually be right up our street! At the end of this street is Wobbly Stadium!”

  “Wobbly Stadium?”

  “Yes!”

  “Does it… um… wobble?”

  “Only when there’s a lot of people in it…!” said Emily. “Anyway,” she continued, dropping the skipping rope, but joining in with Derek’s star jumps, “there’s a game on tonight, a big international…!”

  “Oh! Right! Who between?”

  Derek smiled, stopped star-jumping and leapt on to a treadmill. The TV immediately started up. It was a different show from Pop-Newz, although with quite a similar theme tune. “Sports-Newz! Sports-Newz! Including stuff about teams nicknamed The Blues!” it went.

  “So…” said a voice-over when the theme tune had finished, “all eyes tonight are on Wobbly Stadium where, of course, everyone is gearing up for the big game between the United Kid-Dom and Boysnia-Herzogeweeny.”

  The TV showed a film of a group of kids of about Barry’s age playing in front of enormous crowds. One team was in white and one in yellow.

  “Oh!” said Barry. “They have kids’ football on the TV here?”

  Derek and Emily looked at him, amazed. “Of course!” said Emily. “I mean there’s grown-up football as well! But that’s not on TV! It’s only kids’ football that’s everyone’s really interested in!”

  “The last time these teams played,” the voice-over continued, “United Kid-Dom won 3–0, mainly down to a fabulous hat-trick scored by this boy among boys…”

  The film cut to a boy on the United Kid-Dom side, beating four defenders, flicking the ball up with the backs of his heels, then jumping up and overhead – kicking it into the goal. The crowd went wild.

  Barry squinted at the boy as he punched the air and ran towards the camera. “He looks like a younger version of Lionel Messi…” he said.

  “Lee-oh-nel Messi?!” said Derek, still running, but not at all out of breath. “No, that’s Lionel Tidy! The best kid player in the country!”

  “What’s Lee-oh-nel Messi like?!” said Emily.

  “Well, a bit like that,” said Barry. “Only from a place called Argentina. And grown-up. Although actually about the same size.”

  “But, despite that result, the United Kid-Dom still need a win tonight to qualify for the Planet Birth Cup!” said the commentator.

  The TV switched back to the studio.

  “So…” said Barry, “…is that where we’re going for my party? To watch the game?”

  Derek got off the treadmill, stopping the TV. He winked at Emily, who winked back. Emily suddenly ran out of the room, with a particularly quick fwahm! “Going to watch it?!” said Derek.

  Emily came back, again with a fwahm! She was holding in front of her a United Kid-Dom football kit. She turned it round. On the back was printed the word ‘Barry’.

  “You’re playing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” said Derek and Emily together, with more exclamation marks than Barry had ever heard.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “OK,” said Big Col, “what I want from you, Bazza… is for you to stay in the hole, lying deep, holding up the ball when you need to, but in a free role right at the tip of the diamond, and we’ll stick with the zonal marking 1–3–2–3–1 formation. OK? Although obviously I’d want you to track back when we go man to man.

  “Right…” said Barry, nodding. He shouldn’t really have been nodding as, although Barry knew a lot about football, he had no idea what Big Col was talking about.

  Big Col was the manager of the United Kid-Dom team. He looked like a fatter and balder version of Jonty/Peevish. He wore a big blue Puffa jacket with the initials BC on it. They were in the home changing room at Wobbly Stadium, and Barry was doing up his boots. He was very, very excited.

  There were two reasons why Barry was here.

  First, there was a tradition in this world that one ordinary boy, whose birthday it was (Barry had kept quiet about the fact that it wasn’t actually his birthday for another two days), was allowed to play in every one of the United Kid-Dom’s games.

  Second, Derek and Emily Fwahm! turned out to be the team’s fitness trainers. This reason was particularly important as it meant that they managed to sneak Barry in right at the top of the long list of kids who wanted to play. Barry had to admit that he was warming to Derek and Emily, having originally thought they were probably numpties.

  “OK, Bazza’s been given his instructions. The rest of you – say hello to Bazza!”

  The team were all changing into their kit. They stopped and looked over at Barry. They didn’t look that pleased to see him. They also looked very familiar.

  “Jezza, Tezza, Mezza, Hezza, Quezza, Smezza, Sea Anemonezza and Dave: I said say hello to Bazza!”

  They mumbled a kind of growling hello and went back to putting on shin pads and tying shoelaces.

  “So…” said Barry, “you lot are the best kid players in the country? Wow! That’s amazing, what with you all being from the same famil—”

  “Um…” said Big Col, interrupting and looking slightly embarrassed, “well, never mind about that. Though here’s someone who is definitely one of the best players in the country.” He led Barry over to one other player, who had his back to him, stretching his calf. “In fact, he could be the best player in the world. Our star man – Lionel Tidy!”

  Their star man turned round. He smiled. “Bazza! Hola!” he said.

  “Um… hola…” said Barry.

  “Que pasa?”

  “Um… OK… thanks,” said Barry.

  “Muy bueno,” said Lionel.

  Barry nodded and Lionel turned back.

  Big Col bent down and whispered: “We don’t know why he speaks like that. Some kind of weird language. But he’s so good we don’t ask.”

  Big Col gave Barry a thumbs up and went back into the centre of the changing room. Barry put on his United Kid-Dom top. His heart was beating with pride. In fact, his heart was beating on a pride, as the badge, which was next to his heart, was three lion cubs.

  Big Col clapped his hands. Barry looked up.

  “Right, everyone!” said Big Col. “Time for the warm-up!”

  The team came out on to the floodlit pitch. The stadium was already three-quarters full. There was a roar as the crowd saw Lionel Tidy. He acknowledged it with a little smile. Then he ran to the touchline with a ball, flicked it up on to his right foot, then his left, then his right, then spun round while the ball was in the air and kicked it in a perfect arc all the way cross field to where Barry was standing. Barry raised his leg, and trapped it dead underneath his left foot. There was a burst of applause.

  This is going to be brilliant! thought Barry. Then he heard a noise.

  Fwahm!

  Fwahm!

  He looked round. Derek and Emily were now standing in the centre circle, wearing United Kid-Dom versions of their Lycra suits. They said together in a sing-song voice:

  “OK! Everybody! Gather round!!”

  “Oh no…” he heard Jezza say.

  “Not again…” said Tezza.

  “Must we…?” said Smezza.

  “I wish I hadn’t eaten that cheese,” said Dave.

  But they all ran over anyway, led by Lionel Tidy. Barry joined them. They
lined up in a semi-circle in front of Derek and Emily.

  “Right!” said Derek. “Stretches first! Follow us!” Barry mentally prepared to do a bit of leg lifting and carrying – he thought he might try that one he’d seen on TV when footballers bend one of their knees up backwards and grab the boot from behind – but then Derek and Emily together leapt up in the air and landed on the ground… doing the splits.

  Ouch, thought Barry. But Lionel Tidy copied them with ease. Jezza, Tezza, Mezza and all the rest of them just about managed to do it, but without the jump and with a lot of groaning.

  “Come on, Barry!” said Emily. “It’s your party so you should be leading the way!”

  “Uh… OK…” Barry did a frankly rubbish little jump in the air. He landed with his legs only slightly apart, and was planning to say, “Sorry, Derek and Emily, don’t think I can do it,” when his front foot slipped on the grass, and… well… fwahm! Next thing he knew he was bang on the ground with his legs as far apart as they could go.

  “OWWWWW!” he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “That’s brilliant, Barry! Fantastic!” said Derek. “Best splits I’ve seen in a long time!”

  “OWWWWW!” said Barry.

  “Are you all right, Barry?!” said Emily.

  “OWWWWWWWwww…” he said.

  “Breathe, Barry… remember to breathe…!”

  “I don’t think he can, Derek!”

  “What! Quick! The Grübenschnitzel Manoeuvre!!”

  “Of course! Grübenschnitzel to the rescue!!”

  Suddenly, Derek had lifted Barry up under the arms and turned him upside down.

  “Hey! I can breathe! I just banged my…”

  Derek slapped him on the back. Again. And again.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” said Barry.