My Brother's Christmas Bottom--Unwrapped! Read online

  It’s Christmas!

  But Dad’s lost his job so we have to think of ways to make some money.

  Looks like my brother’s famous bottom might come to the rescue again …

  Jeremy Strong once worked in a bakery, putting the jam into three thousand doughnuts every night. Now he puts the jam in stories instead, which he finds much more exciting. At the age of three, he fell out of a first-floor bedroom window and landed on his head. His mother says that this damaged him for the rest of his life and refuses to take any responsibility. He loves writing stories because he says it is ‘the only time you alone have complete control and can make anything happen’. His ambition is to make you laugh (or at least snuffle). Jeremy Strong lives near Bath with his wife, Gillie, four cats and a flying cow.

  Are you feeling silly enough to read more?

  BATPANTS!

  THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS (A Cosmic Pyjamas Adventure)

  THE BEAK SPEAKS

  BEWARE! KILLER TOMATOES

  CHICKEN SCHOOL

  CHRISTMAS CHAOS FOR THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  DINOSAUR POX

  DOCTOR BONKERS! (A Cosmic Pyjamas Adventure)

  GIANT JIM AND THE HURRICANE

  THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  KRANKENSTEIN’S CRAZY HOUSE OF HORROR

  (A Cosmic Pyjamas Adventure)

  KRAZY COW SAVES THE WORLD – WELL, ALMOST

  LOST! THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM

  THERE’S A PHARAOH IN OUR BATH!

  THERE’S A VIKING IN MY BED AND OTHER STORIES

  JEREMY STRONG’S LAUGH-YOUR-SOCKS-OFF JOKE BOOK

  JEREMY STRONG’S LAUGH-YOUR-SOCKS-OFF EVEN

  MORE JOKE BOOK

  Jeremy STRONG

  Illustrated by Rowan Clifford

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2010

  Text copyright © Jeremy Strong, 2010

  Illustrations copyright © Rowan Clifford, 2009, 2010

  Extract copyright © Jeremy Strong, 2009

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-141-93083-1

  This is for my grandchildren, Sam and Ben.

  Please keep your bottoms well wrapped.

  I hope this story makes you laugh.

  Contents

  1. Doom and Gloom for Christmas

  2. What a Lovely Clean Car You Have, Mr Tugg!

  3. Who’s the Poop-a-doodle Noodle-brain?

  4. Here Come the Christmas Vampires

  5. A Weapon of Mass Destruction

  6. Some Unwrapped Cheese

  7. It’s Raining Indoors!

  8. I’m in Heaven

  9. A Bit of Zap!

  10. Mr Tugg Gets RUDE!

  1 Doom and Gloom for Christmas

  BIG PROBLEMO! Dad’s lost his job. He’s been working at the paper factory for YEARS AND YEARS. Now it’s going to close down. Dad’s fed up and not like his usual cheery self at all. He hardly speaks to anyone and when he does he says very gloomy things.

  ‘It’s almost Christmas and there won’t be any money for food or presents or jolly holly stuff like a Christmas tree. No balloons, no Christmas cake –’

  ‘Hooray!’ I shouted. ‘No Christmas cake! I HATE Christmas cake. It tastes like YUCK. In fact it tastes like yuck with muck.’

  Mum was upset. ‘Nicholas, if you don’t mind, I go to a lot of trouble to make our Christmas cake each year and most people love it.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I reminded her.

  ‘It’s YUCK!’ laughed Cheese. ‘Nicky said it’s yuck.’ He stuck out his tongue and made revolting noises. Cheese is my little bother, I mean brother. I’ve also got a little pester, I mean sister. She’s called Tomato. Cheese and Tomato are twins.

  Odd names, aren’t they? That’s because they were born in the back of a pizza delivery van and Dad said they ought to be called Cheese and Tomato. The names stuck. My dad’s always thinking up silly things. At least he was before he lost his job.

  Anyhow, Mum wasn’t going to give up. ‘Some people,’ she went on, ‘LOVE my Christmas cake. So there.’

  None of this cheered up Dad. ‘There’s no point in making one this year,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll have to cancel Christmas.’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Mum said. ‘No need to panic. We can get by. We’ll just have to cut back a bit.’

  Our house was getting more dismal by the second! Tomato stuck out her lower lip and did her best to look like a picnic in a downpour.

  Cheese threw himself across Mum’s lap and wailed, ‘I WANT CHRISTMAS!’

  ‘There are still five weeks to go before Christmas,’ Mum said evenly. ‘I’m sure by that time everything will be all right.’

  Cheese sniffed loudly and looked at Dad to see if he agreed but Dad was standing at the window, staring gloomily out at the rain.

  BOY OH BOY! Were we getting miserable, or what? Maybe I could do something to help. I thought hard. Aha! ‘I could get some work,’ I suggested. ‘I could do a paper round or something like that.’

  At least it put a smile on Mum’s face. ‘That’s a kind idea, Nicholas, but I’m sure we can get by. I have my part-time job at the school, so that’s one good thing, and maybe we can make our Christmas presents this year instead of buying them.’

  Cheese stared at Mum, aghast, and collapsed on the floor in a crushed heap. ‘You can’t make a space ship!’ he sobbed.

  ‘Of course we can,’ Mum said cheerfully. ‘We can get some old yoghurt pots and used toilet rolls and some tin foil and you can use your felt tips and …’

  ‘NOT A SILLY TOILET POTTY SPACE SHIP!’ yelled Cheese. ‘A, A, A REAL SPACE SHIP THAT REALLY GOES INTO REAL SPACE!’ He gave an almighty sniff and hurried on. ‘And I’m on board and so are Rubbish and, and, and Captain Birdseye and Poop, Beaky and Leaky and Mavis Moppet and ALL the rabbits.’

  By this time we were all staring at Cheese in amazement. He wanted to take all the backy
ard animals into space! Even Dad came out of his World of Gloom.

  ‘Jumping jellyfish! You can’t put our goat and all our chickens and rabbits into a space ship. It would be like Noah’s Ark – and the messiest, smelliest space ship ever.’

  Tomato looked across at her twin brother and shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ she began, very matter-of-factly. ‘You can’t go into space because you won’t be able to breathe and if you don’t breathe you DIE, don’t you, Daddy?’

  ‘Um, yes, that is true,’ Dad admitted. ‘Unless you have a space suit. It’s always a good idea to wear a space suit if you’re going into space.’

  Cheese frowned hard for a moment and then suddenly hit on the answer. ‘That’s my second present I want – a space suit.’

  Dad raised his eyebrows at Mum. ‘Don’t think you can make a space suit out of yoghurt pots and toilet rolls,’ he said, getting gloomy again.

  ‘Well …’ Mum started.

  ‘Aha!’ cried Dad, interrupting, and the gloom vanished. ‘I’ve got an idea.’ He waggled a finger in the air for a moment and then stopped. ‘Hmm. No I haven’t. It won’t work.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked Mum.

  ‘I told you, it won’t work,’ Dad insisted.

  ‘Tell us!’ snapped Mum.

  ‘OK. We get a bath and we put it outside the shopping centre in the middle of town. We fill the bath with something daft – baked beans, tinned tomatoes, marmalade, sausages, cold chips –’

  ‘All right,’ said Mum. ‘We get the idea. Then what?’

  ‘Well, there’ll be loads of people watching us by then, so I say: “I bet you one pound that my wife will lie down in that bath.” And they say: “Of course she won’t. You’re on.” And then you get in the bath and lie down and we get a pound from everyone!’

  Mum folded her arms. ‘I’m not getting into a stinky old bath full of splodge,’ she said.

  Dad sighed. ‘That’s why it won’t work. I told you it wouldn’t. Then I realized that we haven’t got a spare bath to get into and that’s another reason why it won’t work.’

  Silence fell. Tomato’s bottom lip started to quiver again.

  ‘Maybe we could sell something?’ I suggested.

  Dad’s face exploded into a huge smile. ‘Of course! Sell something! We’ll sell Cheese and Tomato! They could be used as ornaments. They could sit at either end of a mantelpiece and make cheerful chirpy noises!’

  Dad flopped his hands like little paws. ‘Wheep, wheep, wheep!’ he squeaked in a tiny voice. ‘I’m a Christmas Elf, and I’m sitting on your shelf!’

  ‘You’re a Christmas Turkey, more like,’ Mum laughed. ‘And you know we can’t sell the twins.’

  ‘OK, how about we sell our car?’ Dad said.

  ‘I need it,’ Mum replied flatly.

  ‘How about we sell Mr Tugg’s car?’ Dad suggested.

  Mum smiled. ‘He’s our next-door neighbour, you daft bumblebrain! He’d probably explode.’

  Mum was certainly right there. Mr Tugg is famous for exploding. He’s really good at it. In fact he’d make a brilliant firework. This is what he’d be like:

  1. Light the blue touch paper and stand well clear!

  2. Smoke pours out of Mr Tugg’s ears.

  3. Sparks shoot out of his eyes.

  4. BOOM! BANG! Aerial bombs whizz from his mouth and explode all around.

  5. His arms and legs whirl round like Catherine wheels.

  6. And finally – his head explodes and falls off!

  Anyhow, all that talk of cars had given me a better idea. ‘Why don’t we set up our own car wash?’ I suggested. ‘We could stand out on the street with a sign that says CAR WASH. All we need is a bucket of soapy water and some sponges and cloths.’

  Mum relaxed back into her armchair. ‘Thank heavens there are at least two sensible people in this family,’ she declared.

  ‘Two? Who are they?’ asked Dad, puzzled, looking at Cheese and Tomato and shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Me and Nicholas,’ Mum answered sharply. ‘You were born daft and you’ll stay daft.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Dad happily. ‘Right then, I shall just go and have a bath. Where are the baked beans?’

  ‘Daddy’s going to have a bean bath!’ shouted Cheese.

  ‘Silly Daddy!’ added Tomato.

  Mum laughed. ‘And I’m going to get the bucket and sponges,’ she said. ‘Car washing, here we come.’

  2. What a Lovely Clean Car You Have, Mr Tugg!

  CAR WASHING.

  GIVE YOUR CAR A CHRISTMAS

  CLEAN-UP!

  SOAPY WASH AND RINSE – £5.00

  SOAPY WASH, RINSE AND DRY – £7.50

  That’s what our sign said, and guess who the first customer was? Only my headteacher, Mrs Underdone!

  I have noticed something odd about cars and their drivers. Quite often you see a huge car – maybe one of those ground-crunching four-wheel-drive monsters – and it comes to a halt. Then the driver gets out and they’re like some teeny-tiny ant person.

  And then you see a tiny car – maybe it’s one of those weeny-meeny tinny-Mini things that could probably drive down a rabbit hole. It comes to a halt and the driver gets out and they are mega-gigantic, like an elephant. (Tomato calls them bellypants!)

  Well, Mrs Underdone has a four-wheel-drive tank and she is an ant person. She is very slim too and could probably climb through the letterbox on your front door. She has a quiet, soft voice that sounds like milk chocolate.

  ‘Oooh, what a LAAARRVELEE idea,’ chortled Mrs Underdone, jumping down from the car. ‘I definitely need some Christmas sparkle. I’ll have the full works – soapy wash, rinse and dry.’

  ‘And what about the car?’ winked Dad.

  My face went bright red with embarrassment!

  For two seconds Mrs Underdone looked rather puzzled. Then she beamed a wicked smile at my dad. ‘Oh, you are daft!’ she cried, giving Dad a playful poke. ‘I mean the car, of course.’

  Dad silently mouthed the words ‘Me? Daft?’ at me and tried to look hurt, but I knew he was only play-acting, as usual. Anyway, I love him being crazy! I’d hate to have a serious or boring dad.

  We got Mrs Underdone’s car all clean and shiny. She was very pleased and we’d made our first bit of money.

  Then who should coming roaring round the corner but Granny and Lancelot with their mega-motorbike and sidecar. Granny was driving and she almost did a hand-brake turn, except that she didn’t have a hand-brake.

  Lancelot leaped out of the sidecar, pulling off his helmet. ‘Wow! That was some full stop we came to there, honey-babe!’ he laughed.

  Honey-babe? How could he possibly call my gran honey-babe? I mean to say, she’s almost seventy!

  ‘Do you wash motorbikes?’ Lancelot asked. ‘Is it cheaper? It should be, because they’re smaller.’

  Dad stroked his beard and eyed the chunky machine. ‘We’ll do the bike for four pounds, but the old lady will take a lot more scrubbing up so she’ll be very expensive.’

  That made Lancelot crease up with laughter. Granny didn’t seem to think it was so funny.

  ‘I heard that, Ronald. How dare you speak about your own mother like that? I’ve a good mind to send you to your room without any supper.’

  ‘Mother, I’m forty-nine years old. Besides we don’t live in the same house any longer.’

  ‘Jolly good thing too, if you ask me,’ muttered Granny. ‘Are you going to wash this motorbike or not?’

  Dad and I grabbed our buckets and made a pretty good job of it. Lancelot was so impressed he decided to tell his son. Now then, guess who Lancelot’s son is? Mr Tugg – the human firework who lives next door to us!

  You’d never think they came from the same family. I mean, Lancelot is big and big-hearted, while Mr Tugg is short and short-tempered. Lancelot has his grey hair swept back in a ponytail. Mr
Tugg is bald! They’re complete opposites.

  Mr Tugg came outside to inspect the car-washing team. He didn’t seem all that happy but then he saw how sparkly his father’s motorbike was.

  ‘I’ll bring my car out of the garage and leave it on my drive. You can wash that too,’ he said.

  Dad tugged at the front of his hair and nodded. ‘Arrr, thank ’ee kindly, sir,’ he began in a silly voice. ‘That be most kindly of ’ee.’

  Mr Tugg’s eyes narrowed. ‘There’s no need to be silly. Normally I wouldn’t let you near my car. I haven’t forgotten the time you allowed your pet alligator to sit in the back of it. However, I heard you lost your job and that can’t be good just before Christmas. I’m only doing this to help you out,’ he sniffed.

  ‘Arrr, you be a right gentleman,’ Dad drawled. ‘I could tell you was a gentleman the moment I saw your shiny bald head, sir. I said to myself, I said: “Now Ron, that’s either a gentleman coming along or a satellite dish with legs on it.” An’ lo and behold, it were a satellite dish on legs. An’ now we’re going to make your car even more sparkly than your head, sir.’

  Mr Tugg let out a long-suffering sigh. ‘I shall ignore your gibberish. Just get on and wash the car. I’ll be back out in ten minutes to see how you’re doing.’

  Granny and Lancelot took off on their clean-gleam machine while Mr Tugg brought his car out from the garage, parked it on the drive and then disappeared indoors.

  ‘We’d better make a good job of this,’ I said to Dad.

  ‘It’s going to be the cleanest car in the country,’ declared Dad. ‘Let’s get to work, Team Super-Wash! Give me five!’ We did a high five. It would have worked a lot better if we hadn’t BOTH been holding wet sponges. As they squidged together water sprayed out in every direction.