My Brother's Famous Bottom Makes a Splash! Read online

  Contents

  1. Watch Out, Dad’s About!

  2. Really Gigantic Strawberries and an Awful Lot of Teeth

  3. Ice Cream and Pumpkin Pie

  4. Captain Disaster

  5. Three Lobsters and a Bumpy Problem

  6. Belly Dancing in the Rain

  7. The Hissing Bush

  8. The Big Splash

  9. Wardrobes and a Very Scrappy Plan

  10. Those Orange Trainers Should Be Arrested!

  11. Centipedes as Big as Elephants

  Not Quite the End

  Author’s Note

  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, three cats and a flying cow.

  www.jeremystrong.co.uk

  ARE YOU FEELING SILLY ENOUGH TO READ MORE?

  My Brother’s Famous Bottom

  MY DAD’S GOT AN ALLIGATOR!

  MY GRANNY’S GREAT ESCAPE

  MY MUM’S GOING TO EXPLODE!

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM GETS PINCHED

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM GOES CAMPING

  MY BROTHER’S HOT CROSS BOTTOM

  MY BROTHER’S CHRISTMAS BOTTOM – UNWRAPPED!

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM GETS CROWNED!

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM TAKES OFF!

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM MAKES A SPLASH

  The Hundred-mile-an-hour Dog

  THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  RETURN OF THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

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

  WANTED! THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  LOST! THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG GOES FOR GOLD!

  KIDNAPPED! THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG’S SIZZLING SUMMER

  THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG: MASTER OF DISGUISE

  Cartoon Kid

  CARTOON KID – SUPERCHARGED!

  CARTOON KID STRIKES BACK!

  CARTOON KID – EMERGENCY!

  CARTOON KID – ZOMBIES!

  Romans on the Rampage

  ROMANS ON THE RAMPAGE

  ROMANS ON THE RAMPAGE: JAIL BREAK!

  ROMANS ON THE RAMPAGE: CHARIOT CHAMPIONS!

  AND EVEN MORE?

  THE BEAK SPEAKS

  BEWARE! KILLER TOMATOES

  FATBAG: THE DEMON VACUUM CLEANER

  INVASION OF THE CHRISTMAS PUDDINGS

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

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

  My family is off on holiday …

  But I don’t think it’s going to be very relaxing …

  This story is for Joe and Noah.

  I hope you laugh so much you fall out of bed.

  1. Watch Out, Dad’s About!

  My dad’s been arrested! He really has. He’s always doing daft things and getting into a mess. This time he was put in a police van and taken to the police station by two policemen, one policewoman and three park keepers. I was nearly put in the van with him! There had been a problem at the park. This is what happened.

  A few days ago Dad came home with an extra-large cardboard box. It was very long, not very wide and even thinner. Guess what was inside? A paddleboard. Paddleboards are a bit like surfboards but you paddle them. (Duh! Of course!) They are A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

  ‘Want a go!’ shouted Cheese.

  ‘Want a go!’ yelled Tomato. (They are only three years old. I’m eleven.)

  They both jumped on the board. Dad stood there, hands on hips, and grinned at all of us. The way he was grinning, he looked rather like a three-year-old himself, with a beard. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’

  Mum watched them with her arms folded across her chest. That’s what she does when she can see a problem coming, or even several problems.

  ‘Ron, do you know how to paddleboard?’

  ‘Of course. You stand on it and use the paddle. Ta da! That’s why they are called paddleboards. It’s a board that you paddle. Ta da! Ta da!’

  Mum took a deep breath. ‘Even I have managed to work that out,’ she said stonily. ‘But there’s one thing missing. Water. The sea. The board will be floating on water and you will have to stay on the board and not fall off and drown.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Dad. ‘Do I look like a numbnut?’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ agreed Mum. ‘You just behave like a numbnut. Quite often. Most of the time, in fact.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Dad shot back.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Mum with a smile. ‘I suppose you are planning to take that on holiday next week.’

  ‘Exactly. What is more, I shall do lots of practice before we go, so by the time we set off I shall be an expert.’

  ‘That board won’t fit in the bath,’ Mum pointed out.

  ‘Ha! I shan’t practise in the bath. I’m going to take the board down to the park and practise on the pond. Ta da – again!’

  Mum’s eyes almost jumped out of her face. ‘Are you crazy?’

  Dad drew himself up and tried to look as un-crazy as he possibly could. ‘No, I am not. I need somewhere to practise and the park pond is safe and quiet.’

  Mum turned to me. ‘Nicholas, please tell your father that he can’t paddleboard on the park pond. I’m sure it’s forbidden. They have rules there, you know.’

  ‘It’s true, Dad,’ I said. ‘There’s a big notice that says PLEASE DON’T FEED BREAD TO THE DUCKS. IT IS BAD FOR THEM and another one that says NO SWIMMING, DIVING OR PADDLING.’

  Dad gave us a crafty smile. ‘Is there a notice that says NO PADDLEBOARDING?’

  I shook my head. Mum shook her head. The twins shook their heads.

  ‘Good,’ said Dad. ‘That’s where I shall go and practise, then.’

  And he did. Then he got arrested.

  He didn’t get arrested straight away. Several things happened first.

  He put on his wet suit and took the paddleboard to the park. Do you remember I told you how long a paddleboard is? He did look a little odd as he plodded down to the park in his wet suit, mask and snorkel, carrying the board. I was with him and I can tell you that we got a lot of strange looks from passers-by.

  When we got to the park we found several people already there, mostly mothers and small children. They were feeding the ducks. (Not with bread, obviously.)

  So Dad got his paddleboard and walked to the edge of the lake. He swung the board round to put it on the water. Unfortunately, as the board whizzed round it hit a small girl and sent her flying into the pond. I did try to warn Dad but it was too late.

  The girl screamed. All the mothers yelled and one of them rushed in to grab the victim. Dad was confused and upset. He tried to un-swing the paddleboard and this time he whacked a mother into the water. She crashed into the first mother, who was just rescuing her soaking child, and all three of them fell back into the pond. Everyone started screaming again.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’

  Two park keepers hurried over, shouting at Dad. ‘No paddleboarding on the pond!’

  ‘It doesn’t say that anywhere!’ Dad yelled back. He turned to the mothers and children, this time smacking one of the park k
eepers into the water with a resounding splash.

  ‘Sorry, so sorry. This board is a bit difficult to handle. Oh dear!’ cried Dad, swinging the board back the other way and hurling the other park keeper in to join the first one. I was hopping about from one foot to the other trying to warn Dad, not to mention anyone anywhere near him.

  As Dad explained to Mum later, the problem was that if he watched the front of the board, he couldn’t see what the back was doing, and if he looked at the back of the board, he couldn’t see what the front was doing.

  I heard a distant siren. It was closing in on the park, getting louder and louder. One of the mums had called the police. Well, to cut short a very long, noisy and exceedingly splashy story, one policewoman plus Sergeant Smugg and another child, along with two mothers and one of the park keepers who had already been well soaked, all went smack back into the pond. As for the ducks, they had long since departed to the far corner, where they sat laughing at the clown show taking place.

  Dad tried to explain everything to the increasingly wet crowd around him. ‘We’re going on holiday next week!’ he moaned. ‘I just wanted to practise my paddleboarding.’

  ‘You’re a danger to shipping!’ cursed a sodden park keeper. ‘You should be locked up.’

  And Dad was locked up. It was only for half an hour or so. I don’t think even Sergeant Smugg wanted to put Dad in jail, but they did want to keep the police station safe from giant paddleboards knocking everyone flying. The paddleboard had been arrested too.

  Sergeant Smugg even wanted to arrest me, but Dad told him I was an innocent by-stander, not a major criminal. I had to run home and tell Mum and she had to go and rescue him.

  ‘Daddy’s a climmerlim,’ Tomato announced.

  ‘Criminal,’ corrected Mum, glaring at Dad.

  ‘Bad Daddy,’ Cheese added for good measure.

  ‘Bad Daddy,’ echoed Tomato.

  Dad looked glumly at all of us. ‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ he said.

  ‘You never mean it,’ Mum pointed out. ‘It just happens, Ron. And it only happens to you. Only you could take a paddleboard outside and almost drown nine strangers within minutes of leaving the house.’

  Dad suddenly brightened. ‘Nine? As many as that? Is that a record? Maybe I should contact The Big Book of Records people and get my name in the book.’

  But before Dad could get out his mobile, Sergeant Smugg came across, waving the keys to Dad’s cell.

  ‘I can only let you out,’ the sergeant said, ‘when you have paid for the dry cleaning of two park keepers’ uniforms, three policemen’s uniforms, four sun dresses and five assorted items of children’s clothing. That would come to £175.00.’

  Dad gulped, his lips moving silently as he repeated the figure to himself. He handed over his bank card. It went through the machine and Sergeant Smugg opened the cell door.

  ‘You can go now,’ he said. ‘Have a nice holiday. Please take your paddleboard with you. I suggest you leave it wherever it is that you’re going.’

  ‘Turkey,’ muttered Dad.

  Sergeant Smugg gave a grim smile. ‘Right. Turkey, eh? I’ll phone ahead and warn them that you’re coming.’

  2. Really Gigantic Strawberries and an Awful Lot of Teeth

  Mum suggested that we should make a list of the things we wanted to take to Turkey. ‘Make a note of any special clothes and other items you might want,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget your swimming costumes. Nicholas, you can help the twins.’

  Well, I did help the twins with their lists and this is what I wrote down for them:

  Teddy Bear (for Cheese) and Big Polar Bear (for Tomato. It’s even bigger than her.)

  Lego collection (about eight crates of Lego)

  Tricycle (one each)

  Trampoline

  Tunnel (it’s one of those crawl-through things)

  Plastic slide (for the end of the tunnel)

  Scissors, crayons, glue, sprinkly stuff and those things that go bang in crackers

  Schumacher (he’s our tortoise); Captain Beaky and all our hens; Rubbish (our goat)

  Superman costume (for Tomato); Tyrannosaurus Rex costume (for Cheese)

  Five Six hundred bars of chocolate (for Cheese)

  Clear plastic box with lid (to put a dolphin in to bring back home, for both of them)

  I showed it to Mum. She gave it straight back to me. ‘Fine. Now go and do a proper one. It’s bad enough to have one numbnut in the family. Please don’t encourage the twins.’

  Both the twins burst into tears.

  ‘Poo!’ shouted Tomato. ‘Horrible Mummy!’

  ‘Poo poo poo poo POO!’ yelled Cheese. (Sorry. That’s Cheese’s favourite word. He is only three.)

  ‘You only have a small case,’ Mum explained patiently. ‘You can’t take big things and you certainly can’t take animals.’

  ‘That’s poo!’ said Cheese, pouting his lower lip.

  Tomato sniffed. ‘But they’ll die. Nobody will feed them. We shall come home and find deaded chickens and a deaded tortoise and a deaded Rubbish and a deaded everything.’ She sniffed even more noisily.

  ‘Nothing is going to die while we are away,’ said Mum. ‘Granny and Lancelot are going to come and live in our house while we are on holiday. They will look after all the animals.’

  Tomato stared at Mum for a moment. She wasn’t going to give up and she shook her head. ‘Granny will be deaded and Lancelot will be deaded and his motorbike will be deaded.’

  ‘Stop being silly. Of course they won’t. They’ll be fine. Granny and Lancelot will feed the animals.’

  Mum bent down and wiped the tears from their cheeks. ‘Now, will it help if I give each of you one of those really gigantically enormous strawberries from the fridge? Will that make things better?’

  The strawberries did, and the twins quickly forgot all about Granny and her husband, so that was all right and they went off to pack their suitcases. Fortunately Dad went to check their bags before we actually left for the airport. He stared, astonished, at the open cases. The clothes were heaped in piles and they were moving around as if they were alive.

  ‘What on earth?’ muttered Dad, gingerly taking hold of the corner of a wriggling jumper. He whipped it away.

  ‘Argh!’ He leaped back as a hen poked up its head and snapped at his hand.

  ‘Didn’t your mother say no animals on the plane? What else have you got in there? More hens? Bouncing bananas! You have! All of them! And what’s that under your swimming costume? Schumacher! You can’t take hens and tortoises on aeroplanes! Now help me get them back outside.’

  ‘They’ll be lonely,’ muttered Tomato.

  ‘No, they won’t. Granny and Lancelot will read them bedtime stories every night. Take them back outside.’

  At last we seemed to have everything sorted and we actually managed to set off for the airport. Exciting! Next stop Turkey!

  EXCEPT –

  – we almost never got there at all.

  BECAUSE –

  – we almost missed the plane.

  BECAUSE –

  – there was a bit of a problem at the airport. Everything was fine until we got there, but then Dad’s paddleboard went berserk. It really did seem to have a life of its own. It was OK at first because Dad stood it upright while we waited in the queue to check in for our flight. At last we got to the desk, where a woman with very red lipstick, a big smile and what looked like far too many teeth was waiting.

  ‘Can I see your passports, please, and your booking?’

  Dad turned to Mum. ‘You’ve got them, haven’t you?’

  ‘I gave them to you,’ said Mum. ‘Remember? You said you wanted to keep them all together.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Dad, beaming at the lady behind the desk. ‘Silly me. I’ve got them.’

  Dad began rummaging around in his pockets but it was difficult because he was still trying to hold on to the paddleboard.

  ‘Let me hold it,’ suggested Mum.

  ‘
I can manage,’ snapped Dad, as the paddleboard slipped to the side and almost clouted the woman waiting behind Dad.

  ‘Watch out!’ she cried, ducking to avoid having her head knocked off.

  ‘I am watching out,’ growled Dad. ‘That’s the problem.’

  ‘Can I have your passports, please?’ the lady asked again, still smiling.

  ‘I’m getting them. Just a second –’ Dad changed hands and the paddleboard started swinging about.

  ‘Ow!’ cried an old man in a wheelchair as Dad clunked him on the head.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ shouted the woman as the paddleboard knocked over her suitcase and the contents spilled across the floor. The paddleboard was now swinging about with several bits of the woman’s clothing hanging from it.

  ‘Can’t you control that thing, you idiot?’ someone else demanded.

  ‘It’s the paddleboard that’s an idiot!’ Dad shouted back. ‘Not me!’

  ‘Passports, please!’ the desk lady repeated for the third time, her smile getting rather impatient.

  I could see this could go on forever, so I just grabbed the paddleboard myself and yanked it from Dad’s grasp. I stuck it upright and held on to it tightly.

  Dad began to breathe more easily. ‘Thank you, Nicholas. That’s a great help.’

  ‘Your son is a lot more use than you are,’ someone in the queue muttered.

  ‘And he’s a lot more polite than you are!’ Dad snapped back, pulling out the passports at last and handing them to the lady. She checked them and very wisely said that the paddleboard would have to go in the hold of the aircraft.

  ‘Do you have any unusual objects in your bags?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a hen,’ Tomato piped up.

  ‘Really?’ The lady’s eyes doubled in size.

  Tomato nodded.

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ said Mum. ‘You unpacked the hen, remember?’ Mum looked carefully at Tomato. ‘You did take Mavis Moppet out of your suitcase, didn’t you?’

  Tomato pressed her lips together very tightly. Mum tried to smile at the lady on the desk. ‘I’m sure she took the hen out.’