My Brother's Christmas Bottom--Unwrapped!

by Jeremy Strong

  Mum checked it through when he got back. She went to the back door, peered into the garden for a minute or two and came back.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Dad.

  ‘I was looking for the elephants. You’ve told everyone that we have elephants in our back garden. So where are they?’

  ‘Well, of course they’re not there yet,’ said Dad. ‘But they will be.’

  ‘Really? Where are you going to get elephants from?’ Mum demanded.

  ‘Cheese has some. He’s got three model elephants in his play zoo. I am going to put them in the garden.’ Dad smiled triumphantly.

  ‘They’re so small nobody will see them,’ said Mum.

  ‘Exactly. In fact I am going to hide them. If someone manages to find one of them they’ll get a prize – like a Christmas vampire. Something special.’

  ‘You know, Ron, sometimes you surprise me. Sometimes you can really be quite clever. That’s a good idea – except for the Christmas vampire. Nobody will want one of those. We’ll give them a special packet of gingerbread Christmas shapes instead.’

  So everything is sweetness and light in our house once more. We are all set for our Grand Open Day tomorrow. We’re going to have a big tidy-up first thing, indoors and out.

  Granny and Lancelot are coming over to help. They’ll be here on the Open Day too, helping to make drinks and serve them from the kitchen. Mum wants me to be a waiter and Dad will be out in the garden keeping an eye on the animals to make sure they behave themselves.

  I think Dad might need to behave too!

  5. A Weapon of Mass Destruction

  Did I say Dad would be making sure the animals behaved themselves? Ha ha ha! I must have been joking. Well, actually I wasn’t joking but things didn’t work out as we had hoped. I guess I’d better tell you.

  Lancelot and Granny arrived first thing in the morning carrying a bulging bag of old clothes.

  ‘You could sell these as jumble,’ suggested Granny. ‘Anything to make an extra penny or two.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ said Mum. ‘What a good idea.’

  Dad pulled another extremely large pair of knickers out of the bag. ‘Mother, I don’t think ANYONE will want to buy THESE!’

  Granny wagged a finger at him. ‘You’d be surprised at what people buy sometimes. And stop waving them around like that, you’re embarrassing Nicholas. Look, his face is like a traffic light on STOP. Now then, how can we help?’

  ‘There’s so much tidying up and sorting to do,’ Mum told her, so Granny began bustling about. She picked up things that Mum wanted, like a special bowl – that sort of thing – and put it away somewhere. Then Mum would spend half an hour looking for the bowl she thought was on the table and would eventually discover it where Granny had put it. Then Mum would go to get the vacuum cleaner from the cupboard and find it wasn’t there because Granny had used it in the hall and hadn’t put it back. While looking for the vacuum cleaner Mum would put the bowl back on the table.

  While Mum searched for the vacuum cleaner, Granny would see the bowl on the table, shake her head and put it away again. Mum would return with the vacuum cleaner only to find the bowl gone. She’d hunt for the bowl and Granny would take the vacuum cleaner and clean the bathroom upstairs even though nobody was supposed to be going there anyway.

  There was a lot of shouting going on between them, mostly up and down the stairs or from one room to another.

  ‘Have you seen the blue bowl?’ Mum would yell.

  ‘The poo mole?’ Granny would answer. She’s a bit deaf sometimes and doesn’t hear things properly. ‘I didn’t know you had a mole. What did you get a mole for and why –?’

  ‘No! The BLUE BOWL!’

  ‘A BLUE mole? I’ve never heard of a –’

  ‘BLUE B – O – W– L!’ Mum would spell out.

  ‘No need to shout, dear, I’m not deaf.’

  ‘Yes you are!’ Mum replied.

  ‘What did you say?’ Granny would ask, and then Mum would have to let off steam.

  ‘Aaaaaargh!’

  All this time Cheese and Tomato were ‘helping’. That mostly meant getting in the way and stealing cakes from the kitchen, but at least they were enjoying themselves. Amazingly, things slowly began to take shape. The table in the dining room was piled high with scones and gingerbread. We cleared a bookshelf in the front room and set out all the Christmas decorations on it. We spread Granny’s jumble on a folding table.

  The kitchen was the real centre of operations. Granny and Lancelot had brought round all their cups and saucers and plates so that there would be enough for all the visitors we were expecting. There were no less than three kettles ready to boil up water and the fridge was stuffed with milk, butter and cream, ready for the teas.

  Out in the garden Dad had managed to wash Rubbish using the hose and some shampoo. Washing goats is a bit tricky because they jump about a lot, ram you with their head and kick you with their back feet. So Dad also managed to wash the back wall of the house, the kitchen door, most of the windows, a bit of the roof, a lot of himself and Mr Tugg’s face.

  That last bit was a mistake. Dad hadn’t meant to wash Mr Tugg’s face but Mr Tugg stuck his head out of his back door at just the wrong moment and got the hose up his nose.

  ‘Sorry!’ cried Dad.

  ‘Spllllrrrgrgh!’ yelped Mr Tugg, very wetly.

  Still, Rubbish looked sparkly clean by the time Dad had finished. So did Mr Tugg’s head.

  Two o’clock in the afternoon was opening time and THERE WAS A QUEUE! People came pouring through the front door, where Lancelot was charging them fifty pence to get in. The crowds came pounding down the hall, spilling into the downstairs rooms and out into the garden. Dad was suddenly overwhelmed with shouting parents and their even noisier children.

  ‘Oh look – rabbits! There’s a rabbit. Look at the rabbit, Taylor. Taylor, look at the rabbit!’

  ‘Look, LOOK! A hippo!’

  ‘No, Trixibell, that’s a goat,’ said Trixibell’s mother. Trixibell wanted to know what goats ate and held out her hand towards Rubbish.

  ‘Goats will eat anything,’ Dad explained, just as Rubbish stuck out her long tongue, licked Trixibell’s hand from top to bottom and then tried to swallow it.

  ‘She’s eating my arm!’ complained Trixibell, while her brother, Jayden, fixed Dad with a sneer and bet my dad that goats wouldn’t eat a nuclear bomb.

  ‘Or a planet,’ Jayden went on. ‘Or a house, or a space ship, or a car, or the Empire State Building, or a whole island with trees on it and everything, or a Tyrannosaurus rex, or a black hole, or a –’

  ‘I think I’ve got the general idea,’ Dad muttered wearily. ‘Why don’t you see if Rubbish can eat your head?’

  ‘I heard that,’ scowled Jayden’s father. He lifted his eyebrows and squinted at my dad. Then he added in a rather thoughtful tone that it might be a good idea, and smiled.

  Inside the house the teas were selling like hot cakes. Although, actually, the hot cakes were selling like hot cakes and the tea was selling like, well, tea. The decorations we’d made were being snapped up too.

  And guess what? My Christmas vampires were sold IMMEDIATELY! I whizzed upstairs and got out the extra ones I’d hidden away and those sold in seconds too. Result! But the funniest thing was the jumble. There was this very loud woman who looked as if someone had tipped a lorry-load of hay on top of her head but it was all her own hair – amazing! Anyhow, she was going through the jumble and she pulled out Granny’s giant knickers and BOUGHT THEM!

  I couldn’t help asking her what she was going to do with them.

  ‘Oh, I’m going to sew up the leg holes and I shall knit a pair of colourful handles and they’ll make a lovely shopping bag.’

  Aren’t people crazy?!

  The whole afternoon was going brilliantly. Even Mr and Mrs Tugg had come round to join in. Mrs Tugg is a very large, wo
bbly lady. She laughs a lot so you do rather notice the wobbling. It starts with her chins and goes right the way down her body. It looks as if there’s someone inside her shaking very hard. I like Mrs Tugg. She’s much friendlier than her fire-cracker husband.

  Mr Tugg had come in his latest hat. He often wears hats in the winter. I guess his bald head gets cold. He was sporting a smart, check-patterned flat cap. He kept tweaking the front of it. I think he was hoping that people would notice. He sat at the back of the dining room, with a cup of tea and a cream-filled scone, scowled like mad and tweaked his hat at everyone.

  Everything was going pretty well and we were almost at the end of the afternoon when disaster struck, and the disaster was goat-shaped.

  It wasn’t really Rubbish’s fault. A man brought his dog. That was pretty brainless for a start, and it wasn’t just the man who was brainless. The dog didn’t have a brain either. You don’t take dogs to a place where small animals are running around. OK, so Rubbish may not be all that small, but hens and rabbits are. I’ve no idea how the man managed to get the dog past Lancelot.

  It was a big dog too. A big stupid dog. As soon as it saw the rabbits the dog was off. It pulled the man right over, into the mud. Served him right too, but he let go of the lead, didn’t he? The dog went zooming off and the rabbits scattered in every direction, which is hardly surprising.

  Now everyone in the garden was screaming and shouting. The rabbits were whizzing round tripping everyone up. The dog went galumphing after them, knocking people over as if they were skittles, and that set Rubbish off.

  The goat took one look at the big black hairy thing thundering towards her and leaped straight out of her pen. She went charging down the garden path, through the kitchen and into the dining room. She only came to a halt when she crashed into Mr Tugg’s table, upsetting all the cream and milk into his lap and causing his hat to fall off.

  He tried to jump up but couldn’t because the table had trapped his legs.

  That was when Rubbish ate Mr Tugg’s new hat. I think she liked the green bits best. They probably reminded her of grass. Mr Tugg wasn’t happy. He did a volcano AND firework imitation all in one go. It was pretty impressive. And noisy.

  Dad came wading through the mess after Rubbish and hauled her back outside. By this time people were trying to escape and leaving fast. Most of them had something to complain about – clothes covered in jam, or mud, or cream, or cake – maybe even the whole lot.

  Jayden’s father had torn his trousers. He eyed Dad and Rubbish on the way out. ‘You should sell that goat to the army,’ he advised. ‘She’s a weapon of mass destruction.’

  6. Some Unwrapped Cheese

  GLOOM. It’s been like a rainstorm in our house, only without the rain – just the doom and gloom. This morning there were about ten envelopes on the doormat. They all had bills inside from people who had got damaged clothes from our Open Day. There were bills for cleaning, bills for repairing and some people had had to buy brand-new clothes and wanted us to pay for those too.

  We’d made a lovely little pile of money for Christmas from all our hard work. Now most of it would have to go towards paying people for the trouble caused by Mr Idiot and his idiot dog.

  ‘We’re back to square one,’ moaned Dad. ‘Now what do we do? We can’t hold another Open Day. It was our one chance of rescuing Christmas and it’s gone.’

  ‘Something will turn up,’ said Mum, but she looked pretty uncertain about it.

  I tried hard to think of some clever plan that would make us oodles of money and put a smile on everybody’s faces. I couldn’t bear it. It was even worse when I overheard Cheese and Tomato talking to each other.

  ‘I’m getting a rocket for Christmas,’ Cheese told his sister. ‘And it’s as big, as big, as big as a WHALE!’

  ‘Can I come in your rocket?’ asked Tomato.

  ‘Hmm. But you’ll have to sit at the back because I’m driving.’

  ‘Will we go to the shops?’

  ‘No. You don’t go shopping in a rocket. You go to Space,’ replied Cheese.

  ‘Oh. Does Space have shops?’ said Tomato.

  Cheese went quiet. I wondered what he would say. He was thinking hard. Were there shops in space? If there weren’t then where would they get their food?

  ‘Hmm,’ he said eventually. ‘There are shops on some of the stars.’

  ‘Do they have parking?’ asked Tomato. I almost laughed out loud. Mum and Dad are ALWAYS looking for a parking space when we go shopping. Dad usually ends up shouting at people.

  I never got to hear Cheese’s answer because at that point the doorbell rang. You will never guess who it was – someone from our past, someone quite large and very cheerful.

  ‘Jack Dumper!’ cried Mum, giving him a hug and a kiss. ‘What are you doing HERE?’

  ‘Hey!’ said Dad, trying to sound cross, but actually grinning from ear to ear. He tapped Mum on the shoulder. ‘Put that man down at once!’ And he shook Mr Dumper’s hand.

  Here’s a quick bit about Jack Dumper. He’s the boss of a big company that makes disposable, eco-friendly nappies. When Cheese was very small he appeared in a famous advert for the nappies. Even more famously, Cheese appeared on the national news! He was on TV, crawling across the newsreader’s desk with no clothes on! That’s how he got his famous bottom!

  But Cheese is much too old to do any more nappy advertisements, so why was Jack Dumper standing on our doorstep?

  ‘OK, here’s the info,’ Mr Dumper began. ‘I’m branching out. We’re not just making nappies any more. We’re going into children’s clothing. Got a whole new range of snazzy stuff – gonna call the range JUMPA-DUMPS.’

  ‘Jumpa-Dumps?’ repeated Dad. ‘That’s a catchy name. But why go into making kiddies’ clothes?’

  Mr Dumper smiled. ‘You remember when Cheese got on TV by mistake and half the nation saw his bottom? Of course you do. Well, recently there was a programme on TV where they asked people to choose their funniest film clips. You know what?’

  Mum gasped. ‘Cheese won?’

  Jack laughed and shook his head. ‘No, but almost – he came third! Imagine that. Thousands of people chose that film clip as their funniest and favourite one. That got me thinking. Cheese is already a star. So why not use Cheese – and Tomato – in a new ad campaign? Only this time it won’t be nappies, it will be young kiddies’ clothes. And that’s how Jumpa-Dumps was born.

  ‘I want Cheese and Tomato to be my models for a lot of the clothes. We’ll do a big photoshoot. It’ll be in all the best magazines, maybe on TV too. Cheese and Tomato will be the face of Jumpa-Dumps when we launch just in time for Christmas. And of course you’ll all get paid for whatever work you do. What do you think?’

  Mum looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mum. I looked at both of them. They looked at me. I looked at Cheese and Tomato. They looked at each other. There was an awful lot of looking.

  ‘I think,’ Dad began, ‘I think we should open a bottle of champagne!’

  ‘Shame we haven’t got one,’ chuckled Mum.

  Mr Dumper nodded. ‘I’ve got one in the fridge in my car. I was hoping you’d agree. I’ll go and fetch it right now.’

  Dad and I looked at each other. Our eyes were on stalks. Mr Dumper had a FRIDGE in his CAR?!!

  Wow!

  7. It’s Raining Indoors!

  MAD DAY! It’s been completely bonker-loony. It started with the twins arguing.

  ‘Uncle Jack is going to take us into space,’ Cheese told his sister.

  ‘He’s got a CAR,’ Tomato answered flatly. ‘Cars can’t fly and they can’t go into space.’

  ‘Yes they can if they have rockets,’ Cheese replied. ‘They can go whoosh and they go up and up and up higher than Mount Everest and then they’re in space.’

  ‘And you haven’t got a space suit and you’ll die,’ Tomato went on unhelpfully.

  Cheese would have non
e of it. ‘I’ll have space socks and space shoes and space pants and space trousers and a space top and space gloves and a space helmet and I won’t die.’

  Tomato chewed this over for a few seconds. ‘And anyway it’s boring in space and you can only ever eat sandwiches because you can’t cook and anyway you can’t see anything because it’s dark as dark as dark.’

  Cheese smiled triumphantly. ‘Well, YOU won’t see anything because YOU’RE NOT COMING WITH ME! SO THERE – NURR!’

  The twins happily quarrelled away while the rest of us got ready for the first fashion shoot. Mr Dumper had arranged for a car to come and collect us. All he had told us was that the twins would be modelling a range of clothes for winter and another range for summer.

  Cheese pulled anxiously at my leg. ‘Tomato says we won’t see anything in space because it’s dark.’

  ‘I’ll lend you my torch,’ I told him and he happily beetled off to tell his sister.

  The car took ages to arrive. That was because the front part of it seemed to arrive hours before the back part. The car was SO LONG! It was a white stretch limo. It seemed to take up most of our street.

  It had a proper chauffeur too, with a uniform and a peaked cap. He came marching up our drive but before he could reach our door he was ambushed by Mr Tugg.

  ‘You’re parked across my drive,’ grumbled Mr Tugg.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the chauffeur began politely. ‘In fact, I’m parked across three people’s drives but I shall be gone in five minutes.’

  ‘But I can’t get out,’ snapped Mr Tugg.

  ‘I shall be gone in a jiffy, sir.’

  ‘But suppose I want to go right now?’ demanded Mr Tugg. ‘It could be an emergency. I might be expecting a baby.’

  The chauffeur looked at Mr Tugg’s belly and then at his face. ‘I don’t think you’re pregnant, sir, and, as I said, I shall be gone very soon. In fact, if we could stop talking I could knock on this door and we would be able to go straight away.’