My Brother's Famous Bottom Takes Off!

by Jeremy Strong

  Lancelot rolled his eyes at me while Mum suggested that we ate our food without saying another word because if we didn’t, she would probably run screaming from the room.

  Tomato started to open her mouth to see if Mum really would run screaming from the room, but Mum stopped her in her tracks by lifting one finger of warning.

  ‘DON’T – EVEN – THINK – ABOUT – IT!’ she said slowly and sternly.

  So we sat there and ate our spaghetti in silence for a while and then carefully we began to talk again, glancing at Mum to see if she was going to have the screaming abdabs or not. (She wasn’t.)

  Dad was looking at the few bits of spaghetti left on his plate as if they were terribly important. I thought at first that he’d discovered the Meaning of Life in them, but no, he had hit upon something much simpler. He lifted his head from his plate and looked round the table at all of us in turn.

  ‘I have an announcement to make,’ he began. ‘I am going to set a world record. It’s something that nobody has ever tried to achieve before, something truly extraordinary and daring. It will place my name among the greatest record-breakers of all time.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Dad?’ I asked, bursting with excitement.

  ‘I am going to create the longest single piece of spaghetti – in the world!’

  Hmmmmm. The longest piece of spaghetti in the world? That didn’t sound very exciting at all. Lancelot wasn’t impressed either.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

  Dad smiled. ‘You don’t understand, Lancelot. My piece of spaghetti won’t just be long. It will be L – O – N – G.’

  Granny sighed and patted Mum’s hand comfortingly. ‘I’m afraid Ron never could stop playing with his food. I remember when he was a child I gave him egg and chips. Before I knew it, he’d turned the whole plate into a face with eggs for eyes, a sausage for a mouth and a big bit of bacon flopping over the sausage like a horrible, fat tongue poking out at me.’

  Dad just sat there and grinned. Granny got up from her chair and laid a gentle hand on Mum’s shoulder.

  ‘Good luck, dear,’ she said. ‘Come on, my knight in shining armour, the food’s all gone. Time we went home.’

  3. Mum Falls Into a Hole

  Dad’s started on his record-breaking attempt! He’s got a big packet of spaghetti and he’s spread it all out on the dining table.

  ‘Here’s the plan,’ he told me and the twins. ‘I am going to stick one piece of spaghetti to another, end to end.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘With superglue! Ta-da!’ Dad held up a tube of FIXIT-FOREVER – the glue that sticks EVERYTHING – FOREVER! (At least that’s what it said on the side.)

  ‘Superglue!’ shouted Tomato.

  ‘Superpoo!’ shouted Cheese, even louder, and they both collapsed in hysterics.

  Dad clamped a hand to his forehead. ‘Won’t you two ever stop? Why don’t you go and play with your mother?’

  ‘Mum’s on the phone,’ I told him. ‘She’s ringing all the local farmers to see if anyone’s lost a sheep. But she did say she’s taking the twins to see Granny and Lancelot when she’s finished.’

  Dad grunted and began arranging spaghetti all over the table. It was going to be a long business, especially as several bits of spaghetti were already stuck firmly to the table, but not to each other. I decided it would be wiser to let him get on with it, so I went out to the back garden to feed the animals.

  I’d only been out there five minutes when Mum came out of the house.

  ‘I got through to every farmer except one. I’ve tried him three times, but he never answers. None of the others have reported a missing sheep. I’ll ring the last one again when I get back from Granny’s. Will you be OK here with Dad?’

  ‘Of course. It will take me a while to feed all this lot. See you later.’

  Mum grabbed the twins, told Dad he’d better-get-that-stuck-spaghetti-off-her-best-table-before-she-got-back-or-there’d-be-trouble and off they went.

  All went quiet, but not for long. There was a loud shout from inside the house. I turned to look and the first thing I noticed was that Mum had left the back door open. The second thing I noticed was that Elvis and Rubbish had vanished. My heart didn’t just sink into my boots, it nosedived into my socks at supersonic speed and proceeded to burrow into the ground beneath.

  THEY MUST BE IN THE HOUSE!

  I raced back indoors. Disaster! Dad was on his hands and knees in the hall, scrabbling about madly in a forest of spaghetti, trying to stop Rubbish and Elvis from wandering all over his record-breaking attempt. Why on earth was he in the hall? I had no idea and it wasn’t the time to ask either.

  ‘GET THESE ANIMALS OUT OF HERE!’ Dad yelled.

  I grabbed Rubbish by the collar and pulled the complaining creature out into the garden. Then I went back to get Elvis, who was sitting on a pile of spaghetti, chewing several of the sticks. I got behind him and pushed and pushed until he went clattering off down the hall, through the kitchen and outside. I followed to make sure both animals were now safely secure in the garden.

  There was another mighty roar from the house.

  ‘NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!’

  Then the doorbell rang.

  BRRRRINNGGG!

  ‘I’m coming!’ Dad bellowed. ‘Wait, I’m coming! Got a bit of a problem! With you in a minute, or two, or fifteen!’

  BRRRRINNGGGG!!

  ‘I said I’M COMING! Nicholas, help me! Help!’

  I dashed back into the house and the craziest sight met my eyes. My dad was staggering round the hall, trying to open the front door, but he couldn’t because both his hands were covered in spaghetti, sticking out at every angle. It looked like he had two giant, angry porcupines on the end of each arm instead of hands. He couldn’t reach for anything without the spaghetti sticks getting in the way. Then I saw his feet were covered too – great mats of spaghetti were stuck to the soles of his shoes.

  ‘Dad! What happened?!’

  ‘I was trying to shoo those wretched animals away and I trod on the Fixit-Forever tube without realizing and squirted superglue all over the spaghetti. When I went to pick it up it just kept sticking to me and –’

  BRRRRIINNNGGGGGG!!!

  ‘I’ll get it, Dad. Can you just move out of the way so I can squeeze past? Oh! I’ve got spaghetti stuck to my feet now!’

  I managed to reach the front door and pulled it open. A smartly dressed woman was standing in the porch with one finger raised to the bell button as if she was about to ring yet again. She stared aghast as Dad lumbered towards her, slowly lifting his monster feet and waving his bristling spaghetti-hands at her.

  ‘Hello?’ said Dad, giving her a weak smile.

  The woman’s mouth fell open, but no sound came out and her eyes filled with terror. She turned tail and made a dash for safety, back up the garden path, where she ran straight into Mum and Cheese and Tomato.

  ‘S-S-S-S-Save me!’ she stuttered, pointing back over her shoulder. She threw both arms round my mother and clutched her as if she was some kind of lifebelt.

  Mum looked over the woman’s shoulder towards the house. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a few moments and composed herself. Then she peeled the woman’s arms from their grip and held her by the shoulders.

  ‘It’s quite all right. You’re perfectly safe. That’s my husband.’

  The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Your husband? You live with – that!?’

  ‘Yes, I live with – THAT.’

  ‘Daddy’s a hedgepodge!’ Cheese cried, jumping up and down and pointing.

  ‘Hedgehog,’ said Mum. ‘And, Nicholas, you look a bit … hedgepodgy too. Don’t tell me, your father had an accident with the superglue and now he’s fixed forever to hundreds of spaghetti sticks.’

  I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘It’s never his fault,’ sighed Mum. ‘So how did it happen?’

  ‘Rubbish and Elvis got into the house and caused a bit of a prob
lem.’

  ‘And how did the animals manage to get inside?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Someone left the back door open.’

  ‘And what idiot did that?’ Mum demanded angrily.

  ‘Well,’ I began slowly, because I knew I was now treading on dangerous ground, ‘you remember you came out to tell me you’d finished phoning the farmers and –’

  I didn’t need to finish. I could tell from Mum’s face that she had just fallen into the hole she had dug for herself.

  She closed her eyes again. Dad and I stood there like lemons – lemons encrusted with spaghetti sticks – and waited.

  ‘I see,’ Mum said at last. ‘I think we’d better get cleared up, hadn’t we? Now then,’ she added, turning to the woman, who was still looking at all of us as if we were way beyond madness and had possibly come from a distant planet called Utterly Bonkers.

  ‘Now then,’ repeated Mum. ‘How can we help you?’

  4. To Infinity and Beyond!

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mum answered breezily. ‘My husband is trying to set a world record.’

  ‘A world record?’

  ‘Yes. He’s trying to see if he can get more bits of spaghetti stuck to him than anyone else.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a world record for that sort of thing,’ said the woman, still eyeing Dad with alarm.

  ‘No, neither did he, but now that he’s got this far he may as well carry on. Shall we go inside? Do follow me. I think we need a cup of tea.’

  Dad began making strange noises and waving his spaghetti fists at us. ‘Wahhhhh –’

  The woman looked to Mum for enlightenment.

  ‘He’s trying to tell us that he can’t drink tea with his hands,’ said Mum and she turned to Dad. ‘Don’t worry, you can have one of the twin’s feeder beakers.’

  Dad’s face creased into a glare. ‘You’re enjoying my discomfort, aren’t you?’

  ‘You do look quite amusing, Ron,’ Mum told him as she pottered about the kitchen.

  When the tea was ready we went and sat at the dining-room table, crunching our way across the floor through the many strands of spaghetti still stuck to it.

  ‘So what can we do for you?’ Mum asked.

  The woman took a big gulp of tea. ‘It’s about Cheese. He is called Cheese, isn’t he?’

  ‘His name is James,’ said Mum, ‘but my husband – this spaghetti-fied creature here – thought we should call him Cheese, and his sister Tomato, because they were both born in the back of a pizza-delivery van.’

  ‘How very strange,’ the woman said in a rather weak and wondering voice.

  ‘Yes. I married a strange man, and I must admit that I knew he was strange when I married him. I just didn’t know how strange – until today.’ Mum went to pat Dad’s hand and instead found herself patting several prickly sticks of snapped-off spaghetti. ‘Ow!’

  ‘As I was saying, I’m really here about Cheese – James. My name is Alisha. Do you know anything about the latest space rocket and the WhoTube competition?’

  We all shook our heads.

  ‘But you do know what WhoTube is?’

  I nodded. I was always looking at it. ‘It has loads of videos and stuff from around the world. Anyone can upload stuff they’ve done.’

  ‘That’s it,’ agreed Alisha. ‘Well, they have been running a competition along with NASA, the American space agency. The agency will soon be launching a special rocket and –’

  ‘– they want to send Cheese into space!’ added Dad, suddenly cheering up.

  Alisha smiled. ‘Do let me finish. Once the rocket is well beyond Earth’s gravitational pull, a small detachable probe will separate from the rocket, its engines will be fired up and that probe will set off into deep space, on its way to unknown territory. It’s designed to carry information to any other living beings – aliens – that might be out there in our universe. The probe will be packed with information about Earth and the humans who live on it.’

  ‘Impressive,’ I said.

  ‘But what about the competition?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Ah! Well now, NASA asked people to vote on the best WhoTube video to send into outer space – something that would show what life on our planet Earth was all about.’

  Alisha’s face took on a strange appearance as she struggled to explain. ‘Several people nominated Cheese and, believe it or not, the video of Cheese’s bottom on the national news won the competition.’

  Alisha looked utterly flabbergasted. So did my mum.

  ‘You mean Cheese’s bottom is going to show any alien beings out there in space that life on Earth is like a baby’s bottom?’

  Alisha gulped. ‘Yes,’ she croaked.

  ‘Oh boy!’ I could barely whisper. ‘Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!’

  Dad grinned at us. ‘I love democracy,’ he declared bafflingly. ‘So NASA is going to send Cheese into space!’

  ‘Just the video – not Cheese himself,’ Alisha pointed out.

  ‘Oh, shame,’ muttered Dad, and Mum tried to poke him but got bitten by the spaghetti again.

  ‘Anyhow,’ continued Alisha, ‘because Cheese has won such an amazing competition, I am here to tell you that your family has been invited to go and see the launch of the rocket itself.’

  My eyes almost fell out. My brain was dancing.

  ‘In America?’ I gasped.

  ‘In America, at the Kennedy Space Center.’

  ‘OH WOW.’ I could hardly breathe.

  ‘The whole family?’ asked Mum.

  Alisha looked across the table at Dad, who was sitting there with his elbows resting on it because he had to keep his hands up in the air.

  ‘All five of you,’ said Alisha, ‘although your husband might have to do something about the spaghetti. I don’t think he’ll be allowed into the USA like that.’

  ‘I’m surprised he’s allowed into this house,’ muttered Mum and we all laughed, apart from Dad, who tried to appear above it all.

  ‘You’ll be away for almost a week,’ Alisha told us. ‘You’ll have a couple of days in New York and then you fly down to Orlando, Florida, and the Kennedy Space Center.’

  ‘New York!’ I was so excited I wanted to scream.

  ‘New forks!’ shouted Cheese, who was just as excited as everyone else, but didn’t really know why.

  Alisha handed over a fat folder with all sorts of things inside – info about the Kennedy Space Center and our journey, hotel details, plane tickets and so on. She finished her tea, congratulated us all and left.

  Mum went straight to the computer and set about finding out how to get rid of superglue. Then she got some nail-polish remover from the bathroom.

  ‘Sit here,’ she ordered Dad. ‘Keep your hand still.’ It took more than an hour, but eventually Mum managed to remove the glue and the spaghetti from one hand.

  ‘There. Now you have one hand free, you can do the rest yourself. And don’t forget to do your shoes as well. After that there’s the table and the hall floor. And if I see you sticking any more spaghetti anywhere I shall – Fix YOU Forever!’

  Dad grinned at her and began to sing. ‘You are the sunshine of my life …’

  ‘No! Stop it!’ laughed Mum, clapping her hands over her ears. ‘I’m not listening!’

  5. New York! New York!

  We’re on a plane! We’re going to America! I can’t believe it. New York! The Kennedy Space Center! We are sitting in Business Class, which means we get bigger seats that fold down so you can sleep on them and they give you a glass of champagne too. (Well, they give it to the adults. Children aren’t allowed, of course. WE NEVER ARE! Adults always get the good stuff, as you well know.)

  Cheese and Tomato spent the first half-hour making their seats fold flat and then go back up again and then go flat, endlessly. Eventually, an air hostess came along and told them to sit up properly or the plane wouldn’t take off.

  ‘I want to see it flap its wings,’ grumbled Chees
e, who wasn’t quite tall enough to see out of the window.

  ‘Planes don’t flap their wings,’ I told him.

  ‘How does it fly then?’ he asked and Dad smirked at me.

  ‘Yes, Nicholas,’ said Dad. ‘How does a plane fly? Please explain the laws of aerodynamics to Cheese and me. We REALLY, REALLY want to know, don’t we, Cheese?’

  ‘YES!’ shouted Cheese and half the aircraft turned to look at us. I was going very red, I can tell you.

  ‘The plane doesn’t need to flap its wings because it’s got very powerful engines that push it through the air.’ I nodded and sat back in my seat.

  Dad was fluttering his eyelashes at me and he started making baby talk.

  ‘But, Nicky, how does the plane stay up in the air? Because it’s vewy heavy like a big lump of lead and big lumps can’t fly, can they? So how does a big lumpy thing like a plane do it? Tell us, Nicky, pleeeese!’

  I was squirming in my seat. I mean, I learned about aerodynamics and curved wings and air pressure and all that in science lessons at school, but how do you explain it to a three-year-old? Then I had a brainwave.

  ‘Ask Mum,’ I said. ‘Mums know everything.’

  Dad’s face fell. ‘That’s cheating,’ he complained.

  I just kept my mouth shut, sat back in my seat again and gazed out of the window.

  Anyhow, Cheese had completely lost interest by this time because all of a sudden the engines were roaring and we were charging down the runway. The plane’s nose went up and whooosh! – I love take-off!

  Actually, I think take-off and landing are the best bits about flying. That long bit in between is pretty boring. It only gets interesting when the aircrew bring food round or you’re watching a film on the seat screen, or something unexpected happens like when the woman two rows ahead of us opened up the overhead baggage locker and the contents of her bag rained down on her because she’d left it in there on its side, wide open. She just crouched there while the bag spewed lipsticks and combs and brushes and scarves and handkerchieves, a pair of comfy shoes, a loose chicken sandwich, an open bag of Maltesers, rolled-up tights, three pairs of knickers, a mini umbrella, another mini umbrella, ANOTHER mini umbrella (how much rain was she expecting?) and a blanket which unfolded and completely enveloped her right down to her knees.