A Stroke of the Pen, page 7
BANG!
They found Jim’s football boots – with smoke coming out of them – halfway up the terraces. Jim himself (except for his eyebrows, which took weeks to grow again) was found dazed and unharmed on the roof of the changing room. They never found the ball.
The mysterious Blackbury weather had struck again!
That night Alderman Maurice Oxford, chairman of Blackbury Borough Finance, General Purposes and Miscellaneous Things Committee, called a special meeting in the Town Hall.
‘Last week it rained hailstones, as big as cricket balls, just when the Minister for Interference came down to open the Blackbury Institute of Applied Nonsense,’ he said. ‘And I need hardly remind you that on Tuesday we had twelve inches of rain, just when the mayor was opening the new swimming pool. And it only fell on the mayor, too.’
He glared around the room. ‘Something has gone very wrong with the weather in Blackbury, and it’s up to us to find out what—’
He stopped and stared, and they all saw what he was looking at. In the centre of the room the air was beginning to thicken, and in seconds it formed a little whirling spiral no more than a foot high.
‘That is a whirlwind . . .’ began Alderman Oxford.
Whoosh! Papers started to fly around the room, and the committee got stuck in the doorway as they all tried to rush out at once.
With great presence of mind Alderman Oxford slammed the heavy oak doors. They all stood in the corridor and listened to the muffled sounds as the little whirlwind buzzed around the room, knocking over chairs and smashing light bulbs.
Up spoke Councillor E. I. Addio, who was also manager of Blackbury Rovers. ‘Indoor weather isn’t natural,’ he said. ‘If you ask me, there is more to this than meets the eye.’
‘Scatter!’ shouted someone.
A little black cloud had formed overhead. Robes flying, the councillors ran down the corridor, turned the corner – and fell into a snowdrift. There was a heavy blizzard blowing between the Clerk of Works Department and the Accounts Office.
Not only that, but to judge by the noise quite an interesting thunderstorm was banging about in the Town Clerk’s office.*
Outside, other strange things were happening. Icebergs appeared in the kiddies’ paddling pool in the park, while half a mile away, West Blackbury sweltered in a temperature of ninety-six degrees. A gale swept North Blackbury, but in Blackbury New Town the air was perfectly still – and full of giant snowflakes. Strangest of all, a perfect miniature hurricane formed inside a kettle belonging to Mrs E. Blanket of Mafeking Road, and when she let it out, it roared away over the chimney tops.
Late that night Maurice Oxford, Mr Addio and Chief Inspector Charlie Artful, from Gritshire police headquarters, held a special meeting in one of the Town Hall cellars. They all had umbrellas, just in case.
‘The Meteorological Office in London has been on to us,’ hissed Mr Artful under his breath. ‘Apparently Blackbury is the only place where this is happening. All this odd weather stops at the borough boundary!’
‘Have you got any clues?’ asked Mr Addio, glancing nervously at the ceiling.
‘We’ve examined the hailstones for fingerprints. But even if someone was causing this freak weather, and we don’t know how, I can’t see how it’s against the law,’ said the inspector.
‘Aha,’ said Maurice Oxford. ‘If you found the criminal, couldn’t you charge him with causing a breach of the peace? Snowing without a licence, perhaps?’
‘I dunno,’ said Inspector Artful, ‘I just catches ’em, I don’t know what happens to ’em afterwards. There is one thing, though. All the places that have had this weather are either in the Town Hall or within line of sight of the Town Hall clock tower. I suppose if someone had some gubbins or other that could alter the weather, he might be aiming it from the tower.’
‘Gosh,’ said E. I. Addio. ‘Have you been up there?’
‘Yes, and we found a few cigarette butts. Someone has been up there recently.’
Alderman Oxford looked thoughtful. ‘Whoever it is, he seems to like making the council look foolish,’ he said slowly. ‘So I’ve got an idea . . .’
Three days later there was the Blackbury Mayor-Making Ceremony, when the new mayor for the year took office. It was a very old tradition, going all the way back to 1329. The old mayor and the new mayor had to walk along a plank over the river Um and exchange three bows, and there was a lot of official stuff with scrolls and chains and Cedric the duck.*
Policemen were hidden behind every bush. Chief Inspector Charlie Artful himself was lurking in the shrubbery around the clock.
Alderman Maurice Oxford was going to be the new mayor, and as the town band struck up the traditional tune ‘Blackbury Races’, he glanced nervously up at the little windows around the clock and thought he saw a shadow. He inched out over the river Um while the crowd cheered.
The retiring mayor, Horace Milparslie, stood staring up at the tower. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘look who’s up there! It’s—’
Fzzzzzip! A tiny bolt of lightning knocked him into the river, and policemen jumped in all along the bank as the current carried him spluttering away.
The little thundercloud that had attacked the old mayor turned on Maurice Oxford, who slowly backed away. He ducked just in time as it flew over his head and straight into a tuba held by an astonished bandsman, where it made a great din in the pipes.
Maurice Oxford grabbed a trumpet and blew a great blast. ‘To the clock tower! The mysterious weatherman is up there!’ he bellowed.
Of course, a good chase was like meat and drink to the Blackburians. As one man they turned and rushed towards the tower, followed by the band, the town council, Cedric the duck, a wringing wet old mayor and a load of yelling schoolchildren.
The first thing they found was Charlie Artful, frozen solid with his police whistle halfway to his mouth.
‘Are you all right?’ panted Maurice Oxford.
‘Force some whisky between my lips,’ muttered the chief inspector through the frost. ‘He got me before I had a chance to recognize him. Brrrr!’
By then someone had spotted a running figure at the other end of the High Street, and they all thundered off again. By the time they reached the end of the High Street, Maurice Oxford was back among the leaders. People were dashing out of side roads to join the chase.
Maurice saw the figure raise some sort of rifle.
Fzzzzip!
A sheet of ice suddenly covered the road, and people started skidding around. But, mayoral robes flying in the breeze, Maurice skated determinedly on.
On they ran, a smaller bunch now but very angry. Down through Slate Road and doubling back along Market Street, through Bodgers Alley – and Maurice Oxford was gaining.
As he ran, he took his mayoral chain from around his neck and swung it round and round. Then he let go. It shot through the air and knocked the strange gadget out of the running man’s hand.
‘Oh, well done, sir,’ said someone behind him.
Maurice ran on and picked the thing up. It had a big barrel and lots of knobs and levers on it, and the biggest of them was set to ‘Ice’. Maurice switched it to ‘Whirlwind’, pointed it at the running figure, and pressed an interesting-looking blue lever.
Fzzzip!
Kicking and struggling the running man was lifted up and over the streets of Blackbury. The breeze blew him right over the Um, and when he was about over the muddiest bit, Maurice switched the machine off.
Splash!
The man came up gasping and everyone shouted: ‘E. I. Addio!’
‘I thought it might be him all along,’ said Maurice later. ‘After all, he is manager of the Rovers. And he’s never been made mayor, which is why he doesn’t like the council. I think he must have left the machine switched on in the clock tower when he was with us.’
‘Very clever of him to have invented it,’ said Charlie Artful. ‘Er, where is it, by the way?’
Maurice said rather too innocently that he didn’t know.
But later that evening someone tied a rifle-shaped machine to the weathercock on the clock tower and set it to ‘Sunny’.
Maurice had the best weather ever for his year in office, until the batteries ran out.
The Blackbury Jungle
This is the story of the Blackbury Jungle. It happened, like most things in Blackbury happen, at ten past three in the afternoon.*
Anyway, on this sunny afternoon, Blackbury Borough Council met in the high-ceilinged, dusty, oak-lined town hall. One item on the agenda was the park.
‘Now it seems to me,’ said the mayor, Alderman Amos Stepforward, ‘we need a bit more colour in Blackbury. More flower beds and the like. Brighten the town up and attract more tourists. We could have a Battle of Flowers like they do in the Channel Islands.’
‘I didn’t think flowers were all that warlike,’ said the councillor Eli Prune, who was half asleep.
‘Yes, well, hurrrmph,’ said the mayor, frowning at him. ‘Anyway, I propose we send out the park keeper to buy a few seed packets and make a start.’
So, the next day the park keeper, Bert Juggins, sent off for a collection of seeds suitable for planting out in Blackbury’s rather poky little park, which was all green railings and rhododendron bushes.
What he received was a strange green parcel containing only about thirty seeds. There wasn’t even a stamp on it, or the name of the quite reputable seed merchants he had sent off to.
‘Well, I’ll give them a try,’ Bert said. ‘I must say they look rather big for flower seeds.’
He scratched thirty holes in the flower beds, dropped in the seeds, watered them from the municipal watering can and went home.
After dinner he went to get his pipe out of his jacket and realized that he had left it in the tool shed in the park. His cottage was on the edge of the park, behind some trees, so he got a torch and hurried across the moonlit lawns towards the shed.
But there was something very different about the park . . .
It was half past midnight, and Mayor Stepforward was fast asleep. Suddenly there was a clatter at the window, just as if someone had chucked a handful of gravel at it.
The mayor stumbled out of bed, pushed open the window and mumbled, ‘Wassat?’
‘It’s me, Mr Mayor,’ said the park keeper, jumping up and down excitedly. ‘You’ve got to come down! The park’s gone mad!’
‘Mad?’ said the mayor.
‘Everything’s growing!’
‘So I should think!’ said the mayor. He shut the window and got back into bed. ‘What else do you expect in a park?’ he muttered before falling asleep.
Down below Bert wrung his hands nervously and ran off to find someone else.
Meanwhile the park had completely disappeared under a rapidly growing pile of green stuff. Great snaky tendrils whipped up and caught the railings, while enormous tree trunks whizzed up like rockets, exploded into leaf, blossomed, and then produced great big purple fruits. A vine was already creeping up the roof towards the town hall clock.
The mayor woke up in the morning because something was tickling his nose. It was a big yellow flower on the end of a tree branch that had grown through the window. Several other bushes had broken into the room.
‘Goodness!’ he cried, sitting up, and a large green melon plopped onto his head.
He had quite a fight to get his trousers away from a green thorn bush, and as for his hat, it was up near the ceiling on the end of a creeper. He couldn’t get out of the front door – it was quite overgrown – so he had to climb out of the window.
Blackbury could hardly be seen under all the plants, which were still growing. Flowers, fruit and vines were everywhere. The mayor met the postman sitting on a branch eating a banana. He asked him what had happened.
‘It all just grew,’ said the postman. ‘Have a banana?’
Blackbury was hidden under a mound of green. Creepers and vines flourished everywhere. Great big trees grew in the High Street – and as for flowers, there were gigantic red, white and purple orchids growing out of every gutter, and sprays of yellow blossoms on the roof of the town hall.
The mayor made his way across the town as best he could. Often he couldn’t get any further on the ground and had to heave himself, puffing and grunting, up trees and walk along branches.
A lot of Blackburians had come out and were poking wonderingly at the undergrowth. One or two of the more enterprising ones were cutting themselves bunches of bananas and grapes.
‘I think I could grow to enjoy this,’ said the mayor, grabbing the end of a creeper and trying to measure the distance to the next branch. ‘I wonder if I could swing across, like Tarzan of the Apes? You’re as young as you feel—’
A moment later he was sitting on a pile of ferns, clutching his head. Bert Juggins was sitting next to him, groaning. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you coming the other way,’ he said.
‘Oww! My head! Now I know what a conker feels like!’ muttered the mayor. ‘Well, Bert, this is a fine mess you’ve got us into with those seeds!’
‘I don’t reckon the seeds I got were the right ones,’ said Bert. ‘I mean, I ordered hollyhocks and daisies and things like that – not banana trees.’
‘We can’t have Blackbury looking like an overgrown greenhouse,’ said the mayor. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Do?’ said Bert, plucking a big blue plum from a nearby bush and biting it. ‘Do you know how much fresh fruit costs these days? We could make a fortune. And we could organize safaris through the High Street.’
‘Hmm,’ said the mayor, thoughtfully.
That afternoon Blackbury Borough Council met in the town hall. It was a bit difficult, though. Even finding the town hall among all the jungle that had mysteriously grown up was difficult. Councillor Eli Prune got lost in a thicket of bamboo, for example, and the mayor himself had a very sticky time with a gum tree.
The councillors all sat around on branches or tufts of moss. Several of them were eating plums and melons cut from the vines that festooned the room.
The mayor explained Bert’s idea of selling all the fresh fruit and organizing safaris through the jungle to attract tourists. Everyone thought it was a good idea.
No one was really bothered now about how the jungle had arrived. Blackburians soon get used to anything. Within a day or two, it was quite usual to see old ladies going shopping by swinging from tree to tree on creepers, and Blackbury High School moved to the branches of a large elephant tree.
Lorry after lorry loaded with fresh pawpaws, grapes, jungle plums, green melons and coconuts left one end of the town, while coachloads of tourists arrived at the other.
One trouble was that there were no actual wild animals in the jungle, except perhaps the town hall cat, which was always pretty angry. But the mayor solved that by giving impressions of animal noises from behind bushes, while Bert the park keeper dressed up in a rather musty gorilla outfit. It wasn’t a very good one. One tourist, a zookeeper, said sarcastically that it was the only gorilla he had seen with a zip all down his back. But most people were quite happy.
After a week of this the town council met again. Blackbury was making thousands of pounds a day!
‘This is marvellous,’ said the mayor, rubbing his hands together. ‘And tomorrow we’ve got a special large party of tourists arriving!’
But something else was going to happen tomorrow, too.
Like many people, the mayor had moved out of his house, which was buried under a mound of greenery, and had built a treehouse in the branches of a huggermugger tree. While he was watching the tourists, Bert the park keeper climbed up a vine with a battered green envelope in his mouth.
‘I found this hanging in a banana tree in the park,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s the packet those seeds came in. It’s not a proper seed packet at all!’
The mayor looked at it. In yellow and purple writing, it said:
IMMEDIATE JUNGLE SEEDS
Plant in warm place.
Danger: plants grown from these seeds seldom last longer than seven days.
‘Well, what about it?’ said the mayor, leaning against a branch. It snapped, and it was only because Bert caught him that the mayor didn’t fall out of the tree.
‘I’ve been looking around,’ said Bert. ‘Half the trees are as dry and light as bits of paper already. We’d better warn people!’
‘Do you think they’ll ask for their money back?’ said the mayor anxiously, as they climbed down the tree. A very large branch dropped on his head – but instead of hurting him it just puffed into a cloud of dust. By the time they reached the ground, dust and bits of dry twig were raining around them.
The whole jungle was curling and creaking and popping into dust. The houses of Blackbury appeared again as if by magic. All the tourists thought it was marvellous, of course, and were taking photographs like mad. The mayor shook his head sadly.
‘Bang go all the tasty fruits,’ he said. ‘Everything’s just turning into powder. It’ll cost us a packet to clear all this up!’
‘The vines and the flowers were enjoyable, yes,’ said Bert. ‘But frankly, I think I prefer Blackbury the old way.’
‘Me too,’ said the mayor.
‘Come on, let’s go home.’
The Haunted Steamroller
Once upon a time there was a haunted steamroller. It happened like this.
One of the machines in the Blackbury roadworks department was a large maroon steamroller, one of the old-fashioned kinds with lots of brass knobs and copper pipes. It was called J22, which was its works number.
But, of course, it was old-fashioned and used up quite a lot of coal, and it was a bit of a job keeping it bright and shiny.
One day the Mayor of Blackbury said, ‘That old steamroller is past it. I really think it’s time we scrapped it and got one of these diesel ones.’
The borough surveyor agreed. But then he said, ‘Old Bert isn’t going to like it. He’s driven J22 – oh, for years and years, ever since I was a little boy.’
