Survivor (12 page)
Authors: Colin Thompson
Even though Betty and Ffiona had borrowed the
How To Teach Magic To Someone Who May Or May Not Have A Bit Of Wizard’s Blood In Their Veins
book from Winchflat, it was agreed by everyone that Ffiona was quite magical enough already and there was no need to perform any spells on her. This was great relief to everyone, especially Ffiona, who had realised quite a while ago that what happened when Betty did magic was only very remotely connected to what she had meant to happen.
Betty had to spend three days in Winchflat’s library ironing all the wet books until they were dry.
Then she had to spend another three days mending all the books she had set on fire when she had tried to use a very small dragon with the flame turned down really low, but not as low as she had thought, to help her do the drying.
And in case you were wondering what life was like at Sunnyview School after Bridie had been thrown out and all the other bullies had quietly changed their ways, it was like a lot of school: too boring to write about.
1
Don’t try this at home.
2
And of course you should never compare excitement to a wet fish in a bucket of mud. I have at least three cousins who are nowhere near as exciting as a bucket of mud, even one with no fish in it at all.
3
This was exactly what Winchflat was doing.
4
Skivvytex is a disgusting leather-look plastic made from environmentally nauseous recycled Belgian beach sandals. Greenies love Skivvytex even though it uses ten times as much energy to recycle it as it would to make brand new plastic.
5
You may find this hard to believe but there are girls who really do get called things like Ffion and Aaaqil and Ffarjon, especially in Wales, where everyone thinks with a stutter.
6
See
The Floods 1: Neighbours.
7
Actually, not many people have a sister called Satanella.
8
Though I did have an Uncle Claude who spent the last fifteen years of his life living in a large bucket of preserved eggs in the mistaken belief that the liquid would also preserve him, which it did. It didn’t stop him from dying but it did stop bits of him rotting away after he had died.
9
Although Mordonna kept taking the crocodile away from Betty, she never took it far enough and, being addicted to the fluff from Betty’s socks, which collected under her bed, it always found its way back there.
10
Winchflat calculated on his mega-powerful computer that there was a 98% chance of the twins swapping names with each other at last seventeen more times – and that it was quite likely they had done it before.
11
One of the teachers, Miss Tankard, always wore a very thick skirt that she could have tucked into her boots, but then her legs were so short there was barely room to fit her knees in.
12
I’m sure you’ve noticed that it’s always the shortest one in the middle of a group of bullies who is the biggest coward and does all the talking.
13
Ffiona’s parent thought stamp collecting was a bit too exotic for their family, what with all the bright colours and foreign words on lots of the stamps. They encouraged Ffiona to collect dead leaves, which were nice safe brown colours and had no words or pictures on them at all (apart from one leaf Ffiona’s mother had inherited from her grandmother, which actually had a picture on it that looked exactly like the baby Jesus).
14
So remember, next time you get an email asking you to enter your secret details, it’s probably from Bridie’s mum.
15
This, of course, is how most teachers want parents to feel and, like doctors, their training includes lessons in how to make people feel silly and inferior. Their argument to support this is that most people really are silly and inferior.
16
As everyone knows, Deaf Ears are one of the main requirements for someone to become a headmaster. To be a headmistress, you need Deaf Ears and thick lace-up shoes.
17
Training in The Easiest Thing to Do is another qualification required before becoming a school principal.
18
There aren’t actually any photos of Transylvania Waters, not because cameras are banned, but because it is so damp there that they go rusty and stop working in less than twenty-four hours. There are a few paintings, but because Transylvania Waters is an enchanted place, if anyone tries to paint something bad, it changes into a pretty landscape with baby rabbits and lovely flowers.
19
In the back of this book you will find a page from
What Hair.
Click Here
20
They have no whiskers in their right ears because they sleep with that ear to the wall.
21
Although the book was a bestseller in the world of wizards, large bits of it were completely useless because some of the authors had never actually lived among humans or done any proper research.
22
See
The Floods 3: Home & Away.
23
They had actually taught her two things. The second one was a rather nice recipe for upside-down cake, which she had never made because an upside-down cake seemed too much like showing off.
24
See
The Floods 1: Neighbours.
25
You should NEVER use power tools at all except under adult supervision, and only then if the adult is not Belgian or less than fifty centimetres tall.
26
Twenty-three if you counted the two pockets as well, and twenty-five if you added the two spare ones sewn inside the hem.
27
This made her wonder if undoing her top button had been such a good idea after all.
28
And now I’ve written that, I’ll have to go into my kitchen and eat some too. By the way, if you’re ever in Bellingen make sure you go to the Gelato Bar and get some too because it is brilliant.
29
The cucumber sandwiches, being a lot lighter, had shot up over their heads, and missed them. One even got caught up in a cloud and was later rained down onto a very confused postman in a small Hebridean village.
30
I cannot tell you what numbers one and two on the list are because they are just too gross to write down.
31
What Mrs Hulbert was thinking was, ‘What the hell’, but she had never said the ‘H’ word before and although she was feeling very relaxed, she wasn’t quite ready to go that far.
32
Humans usually use an old-fashioned sixpence, which is far more dangerous. At least if you swallow a rat’s foot, it tastes nice and won’t choke you like a small coin could.
33
A halibut is a type of fish. Mr Gross, who lived up to his name, always called Mr Hulbert
halibut.
34
Queen Scratchrot will enjoy eating a dead Mr Gross because a diet of cats, mice and encyclopedia salesmen can get a bit boring no matter how much tomato sauce you use.
35
Wizards can actually take out their breaths and hold them in their hands. They often do it for a laugh at parties to make everyone think they are dead.
36
Which, of course, is something all hippos do at least three times a day.
37
My grandson Walter, who is eight months old, has just learned to say Mama and Dada, but he is still learning to remember to open his mouth
before
he says the word and not halfway through.
38
A small ant that was also in the corner looked at the mutating purple stuff and thought,
It’ll end in tears.
Which it may well do in another book because that’s the sort of thing that happens with purple stuff.
39
The queen has a small mouthpiece that she attaches to the end of her rat-soup funnel so people who can’t hear her inside their heads can also hear what she is saying.
Everybody needs good neighbours…
The Floods aren’t like other families – for a start, they’re all witches and wizards. And they weren’t made in the traditional way like you or me. Some of Nerlin and Mordonna Flood’s six eldest children were made in the cellar, using an ancient recipe book and a very big turbocharged wand. The youngest child, Betty, is a normal, pretty little girl – but her attempts at magic never go the way she plans.
The next-door neighbours should have known better than to annoy a family of witches and wizards. But they did, and they’re about to find out what the Floods do to bad neighbours.