My Brother's Famous Bottom Goes Camping (6 page)

We had a quick breakfast, then loaded a few last things into the camper van. Mum gave the vehicle a final search.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Dad.

‘A certain small, brown, fluffy creature,’ hinted Mum. ‘You know how stubborn Cheese gets sometimes. OK, we appear to be without Poop. We can go.’

Brilliant! We were on the road at last and our first camping holiday had begun. The van decided to celebrate by letting off an enormous, farty BANG, jumping in the air and dying on the spot.

‘Dad?’ I panicked.

‘It’s all right, Nick, nothing serious. It’s probably the carbo-petrolio-plugga-doo-bit.’

Mum fixed him with a steely glare. ‘You don’t know what it is, do you?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s – the van.’

‘Which bit of the van?’ Mum demanded.

‘Er, a big bit,’ Dad ventured. He turned
the key in the ignition once more. There was another huge BANG! The entire van leaped in the air as if it had just been stung by a helicopter-sized wasp. The engine burst into life. We were off – again! I can’t wait to see the campsite.

We’re on the campsite and Poop is here too! Guess where Mum found her? Cheese had smuggled her into the camper van and hidden her inside the little oven! It was the one place Mum never thought to look. She was quite cross at first but there was nothing she could do about it. I think that secretly she thought Cheese had been pretty clever, and he had too. He was beaming all over his face.

Dad said it was lucky the oven hadn’t been turned
on. ‘Otherwise poor Poop really would be a chicken nugget by now.’

‘You have a sick sense of humour,’ grunted Mum.

‘I didn’t put the hen in the oven,’ protested Dad. ‘I was only saying.’

I have never seen so many tents and caravans. There are titchy, tiny tents and there are tents the size of a castle. Some of them even have an upstairs bit. No, just kidding! But they are definitely enormous, and all colours – red, green, brown ones and blue ones. Some people even have stripy tents and one tent has a skull and crossbones flag flying outside. They must be pirates on holiday.

Some of the caravans are so big they’ve got six wheels. They have TV and aerials and everything. One of them even has a jacuzzi. That’s what Dad said, and I saw a woman WASHING HER TENT this morning. She was,
really. I mean – washing a
tent
? That is weird!

Cheese has made a friend here, a boy called Lewis. I think he’s four or five. He’s a bit on the tubby side and he’s got a dull face that looks like wet pastry. His parents are in one of the posh caravans. Cheese showed his new friend our camper van.

‘It’s very small,’ said Lewis, so my little brother showed him the toilet. He even showed him how to lift up the seat.

‘It’s very small,’ sniffed Lewis.

‘And it’s a shower,’ Cheese added.

‘Our shower doesn’t have a toilet in it,’ Lewis boasted. ‘It’s a proper shower and you can stand up.’

Cheese pressed on gamely and showed Lewis the beds. ‘That’s where I sleep and my sister, and Nicholas sleeps here and Mum and Dad sleep there.’

‘I’ve got my own room,’ Lewis said airily. ‘And so have my mum and dad.’ He gazed round the van. ‘It’s very small,’ he said for the third time.

I was fed up with this. ‘I know it’s small,’ I said. ‘But we’re small people.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re bigger than me,’ Lewis said flatly.

‘We shrink at night,’ I told him. Lewis looked at me carefully. I could tell he was trying to imagine me shrinking.

‘How small do you get?’ he asked at last, and I smiled.

‘About the size of a cat.’

Lewis was silent. Hooray. That had shut him up for the time being. Then he saw Poop sitting on top of the fridge unit. Lewis eyed her suspiciously.

‘Is that your duck?’ he asked.

‘She’s a hen, not a duck. She’s called Poop.’

But Lewis had lost interest. He’d just spotted something even more unusual. ‘That carrot is wearing sunglasses and a bikini.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Because the sun’s shining and it’s hot,’ I answered.

‘She’s called Cecily,’ Cheese announced. ‘Cecily Sprout.’

‘That’s a stupid name for a carrot,’ said Lewis, and I thought that actually it’s a stupid name for
anything
, let alone a carrot. Besides, what’s a
sensible
name for a carrot, apart from
carrot
?

‘It’s Tomato’s doll,’ I told him.

‘Who?’

‘Tomato,’ I repeated.

‘My sister,’ said Cheese.

‘They’re twins,’ I added.

Lewis looked deeply puzzled, as well he might. I knew this was a struggle for him. Poor kid – I was overloading him with odd information. First the hen, then the carrot, and now the Pizza Twins.

‘Cheese and Tomato?’ Lewis repeated hoarsely.

I nodded and eventually Lewis gave up thinking about it and moved on to safer material. ‘We’ve got a dog,’ he boasted. ‘He’s called Henry. It’s a proper name. Henry is a big dog.’

‘Oh. So let’s see, you’ve got a big caravan and a big shower and a big bedroom and a big dog?’

‘And a big television and a big car and a big daddy,’ Lewis put in for good measure.

‘My dad’s big,’ Cheese remarked.

‘Not as big as my dad,’ Lewis shot back. ‘His tummy hangs right over his trousers. My mum calls him Mr Hippo.’

‘Lovely,’ I murmured, glad that my dad wasn’t a hippo. He’s more like a chimpanzee really.

‘We’re going to the safari park this afternoon. They’ve got lions and tigers and elephants and seals and zebras and monkeys and ice creams and Dad said I can have five scoops on mine and it will be the biggest ice cream in the world.’

‘What a surprise,’ I muttered.

‘We’re going too,’ announced Cheese, even
though we weren’t. His eyes were popping. I knew he’d love to go. I’m going to talk to Mum and Dad about it later and maybe they’ll take us.

Cheese lifted up Poop and held her out to Lewis. ‘You can hold her,’ he said. Lewis took the hen but she began to squawk and flap and finally she flew up into his face, knocking him over.

‘Your duck bit me!’ Lewis squawked, picking himself up.

‘Hen,’ I corrected. ‘They don’t bite. You held her too tightly. She doesn’t like being squeezed.’

‘I’m going to tell my mum,’ said Lewis.

‘OK,’ I smiled. ‘Tell your mum a duck bit you and see what she says. Bye.’

Lewis ran off towards his caravan.

‘Lewis is a big boy,’ Cheese declared proudly. It reminded me of when I was four or five and I wanted to be friends with the big boys. I’m not like that now, of course, but I knew how Cheese felt. It was just a shame that my little brother had picked the awful Lewis.

Mum thinks that going to the safari park is a brilliant idea.

‘Cheese thought of it,’ I said, and Mum ruffled my brother’s hair. Dad said that Granny had taken him to a safari park when he was a child.

‘I remember we went on a boat on a lake to watch the seals. I leaned over the side to see them better and I dropped my ice cream. It landed slop-plop on a seal’s head.’

‘Dad! What did the seal do?’

‘Nothing. Another seal ate it.’

‘Bad seal,’ said Cheese.

‘You haven’t changed much, have you?’ said Mum.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Dad.

‘You were having daft accidents then and you still have daft accidents now,’ she pointed out.

‘No, I don’t!’

‘Ron, just a few nights ago you were running round the hen house in the middle of the night with a child’s tent stuck round your waist.’

Dad reddened. ‘Yes, but that was a special occasion.’

‘I should hope so too! And last week you were nailing down that bit of carpet in our bedroom and you put a nail through a central heating pipe and caused a flood. And when you cooked supper
the other night you left the chocolate puds in the oven and they bubbled up and spilled all over the bottom. It took me two hours to clean it and the puds had to be thrown out. And last month you –’

‘La-la-la-la-la-la, can’t hear you!’ sang Dad, holding up his hands. ‘I think we should all go to the safari park right now this minute.’