The Nutty Neighbours of Possum Road

by Iron Geoffrey

Unfortunately, Mrs Wigglit suddenly came around the corner and caught him in the act. She looked very cross until David explained that the glue was part of a plan to upset Mister Sewage.

  “I didn’t see anybody stealing sticky glue from the stationary cupboard” she said, as she turned away from David and walked off down the corridor. David was surprised by her reaction and now knew that the teachers disliked Mister Sewage as much as the schoolboys.

  David went out into the playground with the sticky glue and found Naughty Brian, who had just got back with a schoolbag containing a lunchbox full of bees and a pot of special potion.

  The potion consisted of honey and nectar, which is especially tasty if you are a bee. In fact bees go mad for Naughty Brian’s special potion. David added some of his sticky glue to the potion and it was ready to be used.

  Nectar:

  Favorite food of bees and hippopotamuses.

  If you upset them when they are eating nectar, the bee will sting you on the nose and the hippopotamus will sneeze in your face.

  Before the arrival of the photographer, David and Naughty Brian sneaked into Mister Sewage’s office. They looked around the office but could not see what they were looking for so decided to look inside a large cupboard, but it was completely empty. Then they decided to look inside Mister Sewage’s desk drawer. They opened the drawer and found exactly what they had been searching for.

  “MISTER SEWEGE’S HAIRGEL!” They both whispered loudly.

  Naughty Brian pulled his special potion out of his schoolbag, being careful not to accidentally open the lunchbox and release the bees. He poured some of his potion into Mister Sewage’s bottle of hair gel, shook it up, then replaced the hair gel carefully back into the drawer.

  To be on the safe side, they also stole his mirror. They gave each other the ‘thumbs up’ and crept silently out of the office.

  Later that afternoon the reporter from “The Bottomhamsted Times’ arrived, so Mister Sewage went to his office to apply some hair gel before having his picture taken. He pulled out the bottle and covered his hair in Naughty Brian’s special potion.

  Mister Sewage had insisted that everybody was present to see him being photographed by the local newspaper, so all the pupils and teachers were gathered in the cold and windy school playground. Mister Sewage soon appeared, looking very pompous.

  Everybody immediately forgot about being cold when they saw his fantastic hairstyle. His hair was spiky and sticking out in all directions.

  He hadn’t noticed what had happened to his beautiful hair and nobody dared mention that he now looked like a short fat scarecrow.

  He proudly posed for his photos, and was obviously convinced that he was looking his absolute best. The reporter took a few more photos of him with the school in the background, then uploaded them straight to the internet for all to see. Mister Sewage gave a short speech to the reporter about everything he was going to ban, then went back inside the school to admire the photographs of himself on his computer.

  As soon as Mister Sewage was inside, David and Brian quickly picked up the school bag containing the bees and ran as fast as possible into the school towards his office. They hid behind some curtains outside the office door and waited.

  Brian’s bees were now very angry at being shut in the lunchbox and were also getting hungry. They were so keen to get out, that Brian could feel them bouncing around inside the lunchbox. The bee’s buzzing was now so loud that the lunchbox was actually vibrating.

  “I hope Mister Sewage downloads his photos soon” said Naughty Brian as he was now starting to worry about his bees.

  Naughty Brian really cares for his bees, and although he has thousands of them, he has different names for each one!

  Then suddenly they heard a loud scream coming from Mister Sewage’s office.

  “AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHH, MY HAIR” screamed Mister Sewage who had obviously just seen his new photographs.

  He ran out of his office with a bright red face and spotted David and Brian peeping out from behind the curtains. He charged towards them, obviously suspecting they were somehow responsible for his huge embarrassment.

  “RELEASE THE BEES NOW!” shouted David.

  Brian pulled the top off the lunchbox just as Mister Sewage was about to grab them.

  The bees exploded out of the lunchbox, and immediately smelt the irresistible potion of nectar and honey on the headmaster’s hair!

  They flew straight towards Mister Sewage and buzzed furiously around his head. Some of the bees actually landed on his head and started eating the tasty honey and nectar. Mister Sewage’s face went an even brighter shade of red and he ran off down the corridor in a cloud of hungry and angry bees, waving his arms in all directions.

  He ran out into the playground where everybody was still assembled, including the newspaper reporter who took some more pictures of the new headmaster running through the playground, being chased by a swarm of bees. The sneaky reporter decided to use these new pictures for the front cover of this week’s ‘Bottomhamsted Times’.

  David and Naughty Brian followed Mister Sewage round to the school pond and watched him jump in with a huge splash. The bees suddenly lost interest in his hair as it was now wet, and flew back into Naughty Brian’s school bag. He pulled a jar of pure nectar from his pocket and fed it to his bees as a reward.

  Now the bees had gone, the bedraggled Mister Sewage climbed back out of the pond. He was absolutely fuming and stream was definitely coming out of his ears, but instead of taking his anger out on the two boys, he just walked slowly out of the school gates and was never heard of again.

  YAWNING ROY

  World’s longest yawn

  The next day in class everybody was talking about how glad they were that Mister Sewage had mysteriously disappeared, when David heard a commotion outside in the playground. A football had been kicked into a small gated area and the boy who was trying to retrieve it, had been locked in by a group of bullies. Earlier in the week, these bullies had dismantled an unpopular teacher’s car and were now throwing the car parts at the trapped boy. Wheels, bumpers, seats, and an engine where all used as missiles and thrown at the poor boy. David saw what was happening through his classroom window and decided to help out. He ran outside, lay down in the middle of the playground and shouted “PILE ON!!” as loud as he could. The bullies immediately stopped throwing missiles and started running towards David.

  Before the bullies could reach him, David jumped up and ran as fast as he could back to the classroom and hid under a desk. After only a few minutes of hiding, he dared to take a peek though the window. It seemed he had managed to foil the bullies as he watched them searching all over the playground for a fallen boy.

  Mrs Wigglit was unimpressed by David, running out of the classroom. As a punishment started talking about an extremely boring and permanently yawning Possum Road resident called Roy.

  “Roy is so bored that he can never be bothered to get changed, so always wears the same jumper. It’s grey with the words ‘I AM BORING’ written across it. He hopes with this jumper to attract an equally boring mate. It is said, that he is a direct descendant of the original Bottomhamsted settlers. Although no methane explosions have been reported in Bottomhamsted for many years, to be safe he drives a convertible car with the roof always down, and his house windows are permanently left open. Roy holds the record for the world’s longest yawn. The official duration of this yawn is ten years, but as he is continuously yawning, the record is broken every day”.

  David thought that Roy sounded pretty boring but that he would probably visit him soon.

  Back at home later that day, David became aware of a continuous noise, which could be heard coming from the house next door. It sounded like a vacuum cleaner, but as it never stopped this was unlikely. It could be a muffled jet engine, thought David but people don’t usually have jet engines in their houses. Although, David once had an eccentric friend who used a rocket engine to power his high performance toaster.
David decided this noise needed investigating so went to visit his next door neighbour the very next day.

  The house next door was definitely the most boring house in the street. It had been painted with very dull grey paint and had dreary grey curtains. Strangely, all the windows were open but the front door was closed. There was no doorbell, so David knocked on the boring grey door. He could hear the strange noise growing louder as somebody came to the door. The door swung open to reveal David’s yawning next door neighbour who was wearing a jumper with ‘I AM BORING’ written across it. David immediately realised what the source of the noise was - a ridiculously long yawn. He also realised that this must be Roy.

  “Good day, I am your new neighbour” said David.

  “Welcome to Possum Road, come in and have one of my famous cups of boring grey weak tea” yawned Roy.

  David could not refuse such a generous offer and stepped enthusiastically inside the grey house. Whilst drinking the tedious tea, Roy amazed David with stories of the days when he used to have a hit single. The song was just one continuous yawn but was extremely popular and a surprise Christmas number one. This great musical success had made Roy very popular with the ladies and he often had to fend off autograph hunters when he was out and about. Roy also made David very worried with tales about how his ancestors were the original