Floods 10 (19 page)

1
See
The Floods 8: Better Homes & Gardens
.

2
I have chosen these two words because a long time ago, a lady in England reviewing one of my picture books used them to describe my illustrations. My definition of this lady is ‘pretentious', which means self-important show-off. I still can't remember what her two incredibly clever words mean because they are two of the ‘pointless words you never need to learn' group of words. I mean, about eighty per cent of the children who write to me can't even spell ‘write' right – or is that ‘rite' write? By the way – ‘rite' means something completely different. Orlright?

3
Studies have shown that the group of dogs with the most nervous breakdowns are those who belong to map-makers. Dogs are basically pretty stupid so the sensible bit of their brain that says, ‘I will stay at home today' is always overruled when they hear their map-making master saying, ‘Who wants to go walkies in the car then?'

4
Which was not a shop, but a small vegetable garden full of wonderful thistles.

5
Which was not the country, but a big vegetable garden full of wonderful thistles.

6
There were toilets in every house in Transylvania Waters, but they were not so much big white pottery things that you sat on with flushing water and lids to hide the smells, as black holes in the ground that you half-crouched nervously above, with a rather gross species of electric beetles living down them. You do not want to know what happens when you use the bathroom in one of these houses and you most definitely do not want to actually use one of them. Take it from me, it would be a far nicer experience to go out into the garden and poo on a very pointy, prickly thistle, like they all do in Scotland.

7
I tried this. I got ‘train-sets' – this is true!

8
Congratulations to Storme Graham, who came up with this name –
see the back of the book
.

9
Thank you to Nadia Zwecker for that excellent name.
See the back of the book
.

10
A lavatory is a toilet for posh people with luxuries like air-fresheners, warm kittens and toilet paper.

11
Fourteen, give or take one hundred and fifteen.

12
Thirteen.

13
When the wandscreen got dirty, which was bound to happen considering how rough and muddy the roads were, Maldegard turned on the wandscreen wipers.

14
I think I forgot to mention it, but their car only had a roof over the back seats where the chickens lived. ‘It will be much easier to see things and name them,' Winchflat had said when he had taken the front bit of the roof off.

15
Like blow-football, but much slower and with live crickets.

16
What she didn't know was that since the Hulberts had left their old home a very large number of Cardigan Moths had moved in and begun eating their way through them. A strange combination of crumbs and used tissues in the cardigan pockets had modified evolution and the tiny moths were now evolving into a race of Very Big Moths with very bad breath and very bad tempers, but then, that's what oft en happens if you spend too much time around cardigans.

17
As you will see, this was not so much a rumour as a fact and actually modern-day accountants are descended from these primitive people and maintain their evil rituals to this very day.

18
See the previous footnote.

19
This, of course, is exactly what your granny does when she comes to visit.

20
Wizards are intelligent enough to realise that going to the toilet is a lot more interesting, rewarding and important than anything to do with politics.

21
Nearly all of the remaining nought-point-three per cent were male. They were, in fact, Transylvania Waters's answer to nerds.

22
Which are like jelly babies, only they wriggle as you eat them.

23
Some of the other arrivals may also have wet themselves in excitement, but no one was prepared to admit it.

24
The world does not need to know how many chips you ate yesterday or what colour your toilet paper is, or to read endless drivel where every second word is like, ‘like'.

25
You're probably saying to yourself. ‘That's stupid, they could just go out of the back door, climb over the fence and run away across the fields.' WRONG! Nerds can't climb fences and are totally unable to deal with ‘outdoors' unless it is covered in concrete or tarmac. Anything green under their feet freezes them on the spot until they can pinpoint their location with the human type of GPS – which doesn't work in Transylvania Waters. You might also be thinking that because they were wizards, they could just change the lights to green, but Nerd Wizardry is very weak. The best a Nerd Wizard can do is make the Enter key press itself or turn a computer virus into a computer bacteria.

26
A long time ago, I lived in a place called Denton Fell in an old farmhouse which was the only building for miles around. I never met anyone called Denton, though I did find an old, derelict coal mine that he probably fell down.

27
A plugg is the collective name for a group of glow-worms. When they were first discovered they were called a herd of glow-worms. This nearly brought about their total extinction when farmers kept trying to milk them and squashing them flat in the milking machines.

28
Not his supper, obviously.

29
It is so complicated that in Belgium you can go to university and get a degree in naming places.

30
This of course is not true, though it is a scientific fact that being too clean can actually be very bad for you.

31
Waterfall Pixies actually do not exist, but then neither does air.

32
And between them Maldegard and Edna had tasted over four hundred and seven lots of fish and chips, both crumbed and in batter, and even with tartare sauce and potato scallops.

33
What the Grime Reaper didn't realise was that to goblins dog biscuits are as wonderful as the finest chocolate is to humans. If he had, he would have changed them to Vegemite and turnip sandwiches, which are so terrible they are actually illegal in fifteen countries.

34
I should point out here that you and I are members of the human race known as Homo sapiens, which means Wise Man. Witches and wizards belong to a vastly superior race called Homo caelestis, which means Superhuman Man. PE teachers belong to neither species.

35
Bit of a bonus actually, because to Howler the smell of goblin's wee was even more exciting than her own armpits.

36
The shrinking thing had been made up to stop young goblins wandering off above ground or down the wet tunnels. Over time everyone had actually begun to believe it was true.

37
And I'm sure we all know how bad it makes you feel when you have your chimney broken off or your staircase taken out.

38
Not just in her teeth, but in every part of her body.

39
Which is exactly like the human Olympic event of Putting the Shot except that instead of using a human to throw a very heavy lump of metal as far as possible, the goblins use a stick of dynamite to throw a turnip as far as possible. The audience gets covered in thousands of sticky turnip bits and then how far all the individual bits of blasted turnip have travelled are added together to get the total distance. The world record is two thousand, seven hundred and fifty-seven kilometres. This is not an accurate measurement because there are always a few people in the audience who forget to close their mouths and swallow bits of turnip. The record for the human shot-put is less than twenty-five metres, which is pretty pathetic by comparison, but not as pathetic as anything to do with putting golf balls.

40
Many, many years later, when Spudly was the oldest goblin alive, he would tell his great-grandchildren that that helicopter ride had been the most exciting day of his life.

41
‘This' looked like the latest state-of-the-art jet helicopter, which it sort of was. Winchflat had made it out of a small plastic kit, enlarged it in one of his photocopiers, and converted a small but willing mouse into a 1250-horsepower jet turbine. As you do.

42
Yes, yes, I know it's such a brilliant invention that you all want one. Well, look in the back of this book for a picture.

43
And bacon.

44
By the way, and this is top secret as they haven't even told Nerlin and Mordonna yet, Maldegard is expecting another baby. This will be Prince Rheostat and he will make Stephen Hawking and Einstein seem like mere scientists.

45
He had it working perfectly with duck fluffies and was now testing it with windy mice.

46
That one was not going so well. So far he had only got it to work with Belgium and six villages in Patagonia.

47
And I think we can all guess what will happen when he does. You can't? Neither can I, yet.

48
Idiotic Fluid is quite a lot like the Amniotic Fluid that most babies swim around in before they are born. I know quite a lot of people who probably swam around in Idiotic Fluid and some who still do.

49
See the back of this book for more information about this exciting new facility – the Merlin Leisure Centre – fun for all the family, alive or dead, and the chance to win a FREE bacon sandwich EVERY week for a WHOLE WEEK!

50
Obviously, as he was a wizard, Winchflat could perform a Transformation Spell and turn any terrible monster into something safe and cuddly like a kitten, but when you do that sort of spell on a creature the size of a football field, they can be very unstable and undo themselves with no warning at all, and the last thing you want is a massive Annihilatodonersaurus sitting in your lap and turning you into its breakfast.

51
Uh oh, bad idea!

52
‘Cleanish' means the jar had been rinsed out, but there was something brown and slightly hairy still stuck under the rim.

53
See
The Floods 3: Home & Away.

54
If you were a chicken, talking or otherwise, a lifetime would be about seven or eight years, though the current world record is held by Matilda who lived to be sixteen and once worked in a magic act. If you don't believe this, check it out on Wikipedia which, as everyone knows, ALWAYS tells the truth.

55
This is obviously not true because condensed milk is the best taste in the world.

56
Especially the mauve parrots.

57
And mine – yes, it is a real place.

58
I wanted to include another real British town – Wetwang, but it sounds like it might be rude, so I wasn't allowed to, same with
Upper Piddle
and
Lower Piddle.

59
Which is probably a real place-name somewhere in the world.

60
See
The Floodsopedia,
which isn't actually going be published until next year.

61
Of course, this means they are missing out on dozens of exciting turnip-based adventure stories.

62
See the back of this book for a probably-not-complete list of Winchflat's Laboratories.

63
Transylvania Waters donkeys have always been able to talk. This was made possible by one of the original Merlin's spells. Merlin realised it would be much, much easier to travel around if you could actually tell your donkey where you wanted to go, except that most places didn't have any names so it wasn't that useful After all.

64
Or rather, cluck.