his amazement, when he opened the passenger door he was faced with a wall of whoopee cushions which entirely filled up the car.
“Just squeeze yourself in-between all the whoopee cushions” shouted Stanley.
With a lot of embarrassing raspberry noises, David managed to force himself between the whoopee cushions and close the door, but found he couldn't see anything. David remembered a time when as a small boy, he had sandwiched himself between two mattresses and decided this was a very similar feeling. He tried to talk to Stanley, but his face was pressed so tightly up against the cushions that he could hardly speak. David could only tell that they were now actually moving, because the whoopee cushions started to continuously produce embarrassing raspberry sounds as he bounced around inside the car.
Not being able to see out of the windscreen was very distressing for David, so he tried frantically to move some of the cushions out of the way so he could at least see where he was going. After a lot of struggling, he managed to create a small gap between two cushions and was able to peer through the windscreen. The first thing he noticed were the horrified expressions on people’s faces, as Stanley’s car travelled down the road, brushing against parked vehicles and houses. Although this appeared fairly terrifying to onlookers, scraping the car against solid objects actually guided Stanley in the right general direction down the street. When Stanley came to the end of a street, his satellite navigation system would shout out directions so he would know which way to turn the steering wheel. His Sat Nav had a special ‘Extra Dark Sunglasses’ setting, which gave loud and clear instructions.
Honk, Honk, Honk, Honk. Stanley warned fellow motorists of his arrival by continuously blowing the horn. This was very noisy and annoying but at least people could hear him coming and try to get out of his way.
David continued to watch through the small peep hole between the whoopee cushions, in amazement as pedestrians ran for their lives and other motorists swerved or screeched to a halt. Despite the soft sponges and rubber bumpers, he noticed that a parked car, a street lamp and also a telephone box were damaged as Stanley’s car scraped past them. David had by now realised that this was utter madness but was fascinated to see what would happen next.
The shop was not too far away, but something would happen on this journey, which can only be explained by the fact that David was always involved in coincidences. In the next street, another cool person wearing very dark shades had just moved in, and was heading back from the same shop with some teabags in the same type of modified vehicle. To make matters worse, Stanley was now in a hurry as he was really desperate for a cup of tea, so had decided to drive faster than usual! There is a notorious ‘blind’ corner in Bottomhamsted where several unfortunate incidents had happened before, and it seemed that the two blind drivers would meet at exactly this point.
Stanley had just flattened a garden gnome and the other blind person had squashed a row of prize winning marrows, when they both rounded the notorious blind corner at the same time.
A nasty accident now seemed unavoidable. “BLIMEY!” shouted David as the cars crunched straight into each other.
CRUUUUUUUNCH, RAAAAAAAAAASSPP
The impact caused all of the whoopee cushions in both cars to ‘blow off’ at the same time, creating a very amusing sound like an enormous breaking of wind. David was joggled around inside the car, but no harm was done.
Thanks to the ingenious idea of the whoopee cushions and the extra absorbent rubber bumpers, nobody was hurt during the bizarre collision. Actually it was quite a calming and pleasant experience for all involved, including some witnesses who couldn’t stop sniggering about the huge rasping sound. Unfortunately, both cars suffered damage and had crumpled nose areas. David and the two blind people got out of the vehicles and discussed how pleasant the accident had been, and how comfortable they were during the impact. In fact, Stanley and the other blind person said they had enjoyed the accident so much that they agreed to have another one. They both climbed back into their cars and rammed each other a few more times until their cars were properly dented. David suggested it would be too dangerous for Stanley and his new blind neighbour to drive their bashed cars anymore, so they phoned a local garage and both cars were towed home.
Later that day, David and Stanley were standing in Possum Road discussing the day’s events and assessing the damage to the car. David explained to Stanley that although the car was damaged, it would be perfect for the Bottomhamsted Main Event. He explained the details of this great event and Stanley looked very happy. David said good-bye to Stanley and went home, pleased that he had learnt a little about the challenges of life as a blind person.
MISTER SEWAGE
The worst headmaster in the world
The next day in the school playground, David sensed a completely different atmosphere. Instead of getting up to the usual dangerous and hilarious activities, the schoolboys were just hanging around in groups, muttering amongst themselves. David approached one of these groups to find out what was going on.
Apart from the general chit-chat, David discovered that the headmaster had left because a shark had eaten his goldfish. He had been replaced by a new nasty headmaster called Mister Sewage, who was starting today.
Sewage:
Stuff which flows slowly through underground tunnels. Farmers spray this stuff at cows with their muck spreading machines.
David backed away from the group of gossips and went off to class as usual.
As he entered Mrs Wigglits’ classroom, he noticed she was looking unusually angry.
“Today we are not discussing anybody from Possum Road, but instead we will be learning about the history of concrete”, she grumbled in an angry voice.
“Concrete?” everybody said in a very surprised manner.
“Yes Mister Sewage has banned all interesting subjects from the classroom” replied Mrs Wigglit.
David was very disappointed about this, as he was really looking forward to hearing the next unbelievable story about somebody from Bottomhamsted. He was so disappointed that he tried to put the rubbish bin over his head, but it was full of crumpled paper-airplanes and discarded chewing gum.
David and his class mates had to endure a couple of awful hours learning about the history of cement mixers and concrete walls.
When the bell finally went off, everybody was desperate to dash out into the playground but Mrs Wigglit announced that there would be no break this morning! A special assembly had been arranged for everybody to meet the new headmaster.
“BOOOOOOOOOOOOO” shouted the class, and shuffled off in the direction of the hall.
Everybody was assembled in the school hall and had been waiting impatiently for at least five minutes, when a short fat man suddenly burst through the door and jumped up on the stage.
“I AM MISTER SEWAGE!” shouted the short fat man at the top of his voice.
Some of the school boys sat bolt upright and looked terrified, others showed very little reaction, but some pupils were so bored by Mister Sewage’s announcement that their brains stopped functioning and they fell off their chairs.
After this bold introduction, he pulled out a small mirror, admired his face, then proceeded to apply some hair gel.
“Mister Sewage seems to be mad” whispered David to the boy sitting next to him.
Mister Sewage then made a short speech.
“There will be no more ice-cream van.
No more throwing fireworks at teachers.
No more poisonous reptiles.
No more World War 2 Grenades.
No more sharks in the fish pond.
No more games of ‘Pile-On’.
No more dismantling teacher’s cars.
No more throwing new pupils into the skip.
No more days off to dream about Australia.
No more interesting lessons”
He checked his appearance in the mirror again, applied some more hair gel then jumped off the stage and left the hall.
Ever
ybody, including the teachers looked slightly bewildered and started talking quite loudly amongst themselves.
David turned to his classmates and suggested they should do something to get rid of the mad Mister Sewage. It was decided to hold a secret meeting in the caretaker’s room at lunch time.
Word quickly spread around the school about the emergency meeting, so a good turn-out was expected. Lunchtime came and David walked over to the caretaker’s office with some of his class mates, and found it was already completely stuffed full of angry pupils. They managed to force themselves into the office and take part in the loud discussions about how they might tackle this horrible new headmaster.
After much arguing, an ingenious plan was devised which would involve a boy called ‘Naughty Brian’.
Naughty Brian was very popular in the school because he lived on a farm, which had several bee hives. Today he was going to be particularly useful as he would nip home after the meeting and collect a large lunchbox full of bees.
That same afternoon, a reporter from ‘The Bottomhamsted Times’ was due to come to the school to take some pictures of the new headmaster. This event would also form part the ‘Great Plan’.
During the meeting, David had been given the task of finding some extra sticky glue.
He thought he should be able to find some sticky glue in the school stationary cupboard, so after checking there were no teachers in the area he opened the cupboard and quickly grabbed a tube of glue.
The Nutty Neighbours of Possum Road Page 8