Oliver Fibbs and the Abominable Snow Penguin

by Steve Hartley

  ‘Well . . . did you see the Southern Lights?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Someone must have turned off the lights before I got there!’ He chuckled.

  ‘Well . . . did you get lost in a blizzard,’ I tried, ‘and have to pitch your tent in hundred-mile-an-hour winds, which buried you under ten metres of snow, so that you had to dig your way to safety with the spoon you use to stir your ?’

  ‘No, I got lost because my compass broke, and the weather wasn’t too bad, actually.’ He grinned. ‘The most terrible thing that happened was when I ran out of bags, and had to suck on the old ones!’

  As everyone laughed along with my uncle, I tried to imagine saying that to my class when I gave them my next update. It wasn’t hard to imagine the very different kind of laughter I’d get from them: they’d be laughing at me, not with me.

  Uncle Sir Randolph went into hospital the next day, and had his operation.

  ‘Look at these!’ he BOOMED, when Mum and Dad wheeled him back through the front door. He held up a glass container with what looked like two BLACK SLUGS swimming in a pale, yellowy liquid. ‘The surgeon gave me my toes as a souvenir! I can put them on top of my TV at home, next to the finger the mountain lion bit off, and the teeth that gorilla knocked out when I was rambling in the rainforests! If I carry on like this, I’ll end up living in pieces on a shelf!’

  ‘Did you do the operation, Mum?’ asked my brother.

  ‘I do brains, Algy,’ she replied. ‘Not toes.’

  Uncle Sir Randolph got out of the wheelchair and staggered into the living room on crutches.

  ‘You are so brave, Signore Randolph,’ said Constanza.

  ‘You’re like Dimetri Babkin,’ said Emma. ‘Who danced Snow White with a sprained ankle.’

  ‘Or Anna Globa,’ said Gemma, ‘who danced Sleeping Beauty with a broken fingernail.’

  Uncle Sir Randolph laughed. ‘I’m a dopey explorer who should have put on an extra pair of socks!’

  I stood by the door and watched my Super And Special family fussing over my heroic uncle. I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t join in. So I slouched off up the stairs to my Thinking Room.

  There was no doubt about it: when I got to school, I was in even deeper trouble than in Mines of Mystery, when he was nine kilometres underground, at the bottom of a lake teeming with man-eating fish, shackled with chains, tied up in a bag, and locked in a steel box, next to a poisonous gas canister that was about to burst in twenty-three seconds!

  In the morning, Peaches was waiting for me at the school gates.

  ‘Ollie, be SENSIBLE: you’ve got to tell the truth,’ she said. ‘You’ll only get found out if you don’t.’

  ‘OK, Pea,’ I replied. ‘But it’s going to be as Dull And Boring as the World Dull And Boring Championships, in Dull, the capital of Boringland.’

  ‘Having two toes chopped off is really interesting,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, but sucking on a cold bag isn’t!’

  When I saw all the amazingly Dynamic And things everyone else had done with their projects, my heart sank.

  Bobby Bragg had made a model of an iceberg, floating in a tank of water, to show how only one-ninth of the berg shows above the water. He said that they were often full of caves and cracks, and the ice in them was sometimes blue because it was so thick. Then, to show how DANGEROUS icebergs were, he sank a model of the Titanic.

  Toby Hadron showed models he’d made of all the different kinds of snowflake there are, and said that no two flakes are the same.

  Jamie Ryder told the heroic story of Captain Scott, whose team just failed to win the race to be the first to reach the South Pole. Sadly, they to death on the journey home, just eleven miles short of their camp.

  At least Captain Scott failed heroically, I thought. How could I admit that my uncle had just . . . failed?

  My heart thumped as I shuffled to the front of the class. My throat was tight, and my mouth felt as parched as the land ’s spy plane crashes in at the start of . Peaches nodded and smiled sympathetically.

  ‘Erm . . . I’ve got something to tell you all,’ I began. ‘Uncle Sir Randolph . . .’

  Bobby Bragg grinned at me. I licked my dry lips, and coughed nervously.

  ‘Uncle Sir Randolph . . .’ I took a deep breath. ‘. . . was trapped in an ice-dungeon in the Palace of Eric III, Emperor of the Penguins, and D.O.P.E.S. had gone to the rescue, disguised as penguins.’

  Bobby Bragg moaned loudly. ‘Not again!’ he cried.

  ‘Just as Captain Common Sense and I set off to find the dungeon,’ I continued, ‘we came face to face with one of the Boffin’s vicious ice trolls . . .’

  I thought about what Bobby had said in his presentation about icebergs. ‘When we came round, we were inside a gloomy, cave,’ I continued. ‘The walls curved and twisted in great folds of blue and white ice, and shone with a cold, eerie blue light. Huge, sharp hung from the roof, as if the cave had teeth. It was like being in the mouth of a horrible ice monster. Standing in the centre, on a gleaming pedestal, and encased in a crust of glittering frost, lay the frozen body of Norman the Not Very Nice.’

  ‘The block of ice wrapped around the giant penguin began to crack,’ I said. ‘Huge chunks tumbled down and shattered on the floor of the cave. Everyone ducked for cover as splinters like carving knives sliced through the air.

  ‘Norman the Not Very Nice flapped his icy wings, and wiggled his icy toes. The cruel, curving beak cracked open and Norman threw back his head and let rip with a deafening .

  ‘The sound shook the palace, and carried out into the wastes of Antarctica. The ground began to shake.’

  ‘What was happening, Ollie?’ asked Millie Dangerfield.

  ‘It was the start of another Ice Age,’ I replied. ‘The ice had already started to grow! Soon the temperature would plunge even lower than the record minus ninety-eight degrees Celsius!’

  I paused in my story. Uh-oh. How was I going to get them out of this mess when they didn’t have their gadgets to help them?

  ‘Go on, Ollie,’ said Millie Dangerfield. ‘How did DABMAN escape?’

  ‘He didn’t escape,’ sneered Bobby Bragg. ‘Sir Randolph isn’t in the Antarctic any more. He’s been staying at the Fibbs’ house since last Sunday!’

  The class gasped.

  Bobby stood up and pointed at me. ‘He’s telling big fat FIBS again! Sir Randolph got lost, walked around in circles for a few days then had to be rescued. My dad saw it in the brief news section on page thirty-four of the Daily Comet yesterday.’ He waved a newspaper cutting triumphantly in the air, then gave it to Miss Wilkins.

  My teacher looked shocked as she read. ‘Oliver, is this true?’

  My tummy twisted. My heart pounded. My shoulders slumped. ‘Yes, miss.’ I stared at the ground. I opened my mouth to say more, but couldn’t find any words to explain.

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell us?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Ten points off your score, Oliver Tibbs,’ she growled. (Down to minus five.) ‘And TWO playtime detentions.’

  When I sat down, Peaches growled at me like the bulldog with a toothache in .

  ‘I told you,’ she hissed.

  At morning and afternoon break, I had to stay in and write out my fib, and when Constanza came to pick me up, she and Miss Wilkins had one of their whispered chats. I caught words like, ‘shocking!’, ‘disgraceful!’, ‘shame!’ and ‘toad-in-the-hole’.

  ‘Cattivo!’ cried Constanza as I got into the car.

  ‘I’m not a naughty boy,’ I said. ‘I’m just . . . stupido.’

  Algy and the twins were already in the car, and when they heard what I’d done they gasped.

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ said Emma.

  ‘You’re in serious trouble,’ said Gemma.

  ‘You’ll get grounded,’ said Algy.

  They were totally right. That evening, my entire family gathered around to interrogate me.

  ‘Why, Oliver, why?’ demanded Dad.r />
  ‘I was too embarrassed to tell the truth,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t want to tell the class that Uncle Sir Randolph was a .’

  Everyone began to yell and wave their arms about like the maniac meerkats in .

  ‘LEAVE THE LAD ALONE!’ bellowed Uncle Sir Randolph. There was so much yelling going on that no one had noticed him enter the room. ‘I WANT TO SPEAK TO OLIVER IN PRIVATE!’

  They all scuttled out, including Poochie. My uncle closed the door behind them, hobbled over to a chair and sat down heavily. After all the shouting and screaming, the room was quiet. The old clock on the mantelpiece ticked and tocked gently. Uncle Sir Randolph stared at me for ages, saying nothing, and soon the stillness in the room seemed even louder than the yelling.

  I looked down, tracing the pattern on the carpet with the toe of my shoe. My heart raced. I could feel my uncle’s fierce grey eyes boring into me. I’d never known him to be so quiet before; it was seriously scary. I’d been in Big Trouble because of my Big FIBS in the past, but this time I was in Mega Trouble.

  At last, Uncle Sir Randolph took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. ‘I want to know exactly what you told your classmates about my Antarctic Amble.’

  I told him how everybody had found my daily reports Dull And Boring: ‘You walked a bit; it snowed a bit; you had a cup of . They were laughing at me . . . at you! I had to make the updates more interesting, so I added some Arctic ants, a giant squid, and a few ninja penguins . . .’

  As I told Uncle Sir Randolph my DABMAN story, he stared intently at me. I got to the part in the fib about being locked up in the dungeon without our gadgets, and said, ‘That’s as far as I’d got when Bobby Bragg told everyone you’d failed . . . I mean, been rescued.’

  That horrible loud quietness crept into the room again as my uncle sat and stared at me some more.

  ‘You’re right, Ollie,’ he said softly. ‘I am a failure. I’m a useless explorer.’

  ‘No, you’re not! You found the lost pyramid of King Tutti-frutti, and the lair of the legendary Not Yeti, and the buried treasure of Captain Bluenose, and the secret gold mine of Grumpy Gordon McGrundy, and the Magical Dancing Clogs of the ancient Queen of Cleves,’ I said. ‘You’ve fought bandits, and mountain lions, and ducks!’

  ‘I made it all up,’ Uncle Sir Randolph replied.

  ‘But the SCAR on your forehead . . .’

  ‘I got that cleaning the toilet at home: the lid fell on my head.’

  ‘And your missing finger . . .’

  ‘I was careless chopping a cucumber.’

  You could have bowled me over with a burp. ‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’

  ‘Imagine what it’s like growing up with a , prize-winning little brother,’ he said.

  ‘But I can imagine it!’

  ‘And then he married a brain surgeon,’ continued my uncle. ‘And had children: two super ballerinas, a maths genius, and you, Oliver – a great thinker. I can’t compete with all that. I’m useless at everything, so I and go wandering about in different parts of the world. But, even then, something always goes wrong!’

  ‘So, when you come back, you tell FIBS,’ I said.

  Uncle Sir Randolph nodded. ‘Big fat ones.’

  I dragged a chair over and sat down in front of him. ‘So do I! I’m not a great thinker – I only go into my Thinking Room to read comics.’

  Uncle Sir Randolph’s mouth dropped open in amazement. ‘You mean, you’re Dull And Boring too?’

  I grinned and nodded. ‘I’m at being Dull And Boring.’

  He roared with laughter and slapped me hard on my arm, knocking me off my chair. ‘I always take a few comics with me to read on my expeditions. They’re the inspiration for my tall tales.’

  ‘Of course!’ I said, rubbing my arm and getting up from the carpet. ‘Q gets kidnapped by bandits in INVASION OF THE SPHINX MEN. And he’s attacked by a vicious mountain goat in Goat Ghouls of Kathmandu. And he nearly gets eaten by killer cockatoos in .’

  ‘All my best FIBS are “borrowed” from those comics,’ admitted my uncle.

  ‘Maybe we’re both “Going Bad” like that Peter Cowper next door,’ I said.

  ‘And maybe it’s time we both stopped telling big fat FIBS started telling the truth.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘Starting with my talk at your school next week.’

  On the morning of the talk, I begged and pleaded with my uncle not to do it, but he was determined to be honest. ‘The FIBS have got to stop, Ollie,’ he said.

  He arrived at school in style, balancing on my old skateboard and being pulled along by Poochie to take the pressure off his injured foot. The hall was packed and , as every pupil and teacher crowded in to hear my uncle tell them of his Antarctic adventure.

  Our headmistress, Mrs Broadside, stood up to introduce him.

  ‘We are the luckiest school in the country!’ she began. ‘Today we have a real hero in our midst. The world-famous, dashing and brave explorer, Sir Randolph Maxwell Templeton Tibbs, has come to talk to us about his thrilling, death-defying, single-handed Amble Across the Antarctic.’

  Everyone clapped and cheered as Uncle Sir Randolph stood up. Poochie was tired out, and curled up asleep on the skateboard next to him. Bobby Bragg whispered something to Toby and Hattie, and they all sniggered.

  ‘Good morning, children and teachers,’ my uncle began. ‘Thank you for asking me to come today and talk about my trip. I’ve been looking at the projects Year Six have done, and I have to say, they are all splendid!’

  He showed his first slide. ‘The main thing I discovered about the Antarctic is that it’s a very snowy place. In fact, to be honest, it was far too snowy for me.’

  Bobby gave a short snort of laughter, and I saw Mrs Broadside turn round and glare in his direction.

  My uncle pointed at the photograph filling the screen. ‘I took this photo on day one, when I ambled thirteen kilometres. As you can see, it snowed.

  ‘I took this photo on day two, when I ambled nine and a half kilometres. It snowed about the same amount as on day one.

  ‘I took this photo on day three, when I ambled five kilometres. It snowed all day, and probably a bit heavier than on day two.

  ‘I took this photo on the morning on day four ...

  ‘But it stopped snowing in the afternoon, and so I took this photo. I ambled seven and a quarter kilometres that day.’

  Bobby Bragg smirked at me, and nudged Toby Hadron, sitting next to him. ‘Sir,’ he called out. ‘What we want to know is, did you find the Tomb of the Ice Lord?’

  Panic zinged through my body like a of electricity. My face burned, as a ripple of titters and giggles spread along the line of kids from my class.

  Uncle Sir Randolph coughed, and shuffled his feet. ‘I . . . er . . .’

  Bobby grinned. ‘And were you really attacked by Arctic ants? And did you defeat Norman the Not Very Nice?’

  ‘That’s enough shouting out, Bobby Bragg!’ snapped Mrs Broadside. ‘Remember your manners! Raise your hand if you want to ask a question, and be polite to our guest.’

  Millie Dangerfield put her hand up shyly, her face a mask of worry. ‘Sir, are we going to get another ice age?’ she asked quietly.

  Uncle Sir Randolph stood in silence for a moment, scanning the sea of faces staring back at him. I scrunched my body into a ball, and held my head in my hands as I waited for him to tell the truth and seal my doom.

  ‘Of course I found the Tomb of the Ice Lord!’ he ROARED at Bobby Bragg. ‘Of course I was attacked by Arctic ants! I thought Oliver had given you my reports . . . or weren’t you listening?’

  Bobby glanced around nervously, and his mouth opened and closed a few times.

  ‘Ill tell you what happened,’ boomed Uncle Sir Randolph. ‘I was locked in an icy dungeon with DABMAN and Captain Common Sense. The Show-off had made a big mistake, because underneath the penguin suit DABMAN was wearing his special Pants on Fire. He quickly put them into action . . .’

  I couldn’t believe it: U
ncle Sir Randolph was telling the rest of my story, and adding a few FIBS of his own!

  ‘DABMAN and Captain Common Sense swung into action,’ he continued.

  ‘They were so enraged with being tricked that the air was filled with the angry squawks of thousands of angry penguins as they stormed the palace,’ continued Uncle Sir Randolph. ‘But in the meantime the three of us were under attack by an army of ice trolls.’

  ‘It looked like we were doomed,’ said Uncle Sir Randolph, ‘but as the ice trolls closed in for the kill, dozens of ninja penguins charged towards them, screaming ear-splitting, high-pitched squawks. The pain was terrible, and we fell to the ground, covering our ears. But the trolls exploded into a million shards of ice, shattered by the intense cries of the penguins.’

  Uncle Sir Randolph paused. Everyone was gripped by his story. The room was so quiet that I could hear Millie Dangerfield’s knees knocking.

  Then a look of panic crept into my uncle’s eyes. I knew that look: he couldn’t think what to say next. He’d dried up! I jumped to my feet.

  ‘Captain Common Sense and DABMAN dashed to the Throne Room,’ I said, making everyone turn and stare at me. ‘The SAS GANG and Norman the Not Very Nice were celebrating their victory with fish-flavoured ice-lollies.’

  ‘Meanwhile, Captain Common Sense had crept up behind Norman,’ I said. ‘She pulled the XT47 Sub-ionic Toenail Clipper from her sensible bag, and . . . SNIP! . . . she chopped the Toenail of Doom from Norman’s foot.