My Brother's Famous Bottom Goes Camping (8 page)

‘They didn’t want to let us in,’ Granny explained. ‘They said “You can’t bring a goat in here!” And Lancelot said oh yes we could because they have a sign that says PETS WELCOME.’ Granny looked at her husband and her eyes twinkled. She slipped an arm through his. ‘He’s my hero!’ ‘Mother, please!’ Dad winced. ‘Not in front of the children.’

‘And this babe’s my princess!’ declared Lancelot, planting a kiss on Granny’s cheek. It was a bit
embarrassing, and I don’t mean the kissing, I mean calling my gran ‘babe’. She’s sixty-seven!

‘Anyway,’ Granny went on, ‘the man at the gate said goats didn’t count as pets and weren’t allowed. So Lancelot said that he had a friend who had a pet camel, and some people kept poisonous snakes as pets, and goats weren’t as big as camels or as dangerous as poisonous snakes and Rubbish was a pet. Then he gave the man a ten-pound note and he let us in.’

‘Has your friend really got a pet camel?’ I asked Lancelot. He grinned back at me.

‘Yes, he has, Mind you, the camel is made of wood and it’s only fifteen centimetres tall, but I didn’t tell the man on the gate that!’ Lancelot burst out laughing.

‘But why did you decide to come camping all of a sudden?’ Mum asked Granny.

‘I guess we just got a bit bored, dear, sitting at home. The sun was shining and we thought of you all enjoying yourselves and suddenly realized
that we could come too. Now then, Nicholas, you must come and see our tent.’

‘Is it special?’ I asked and she shook her head.

‘Speckled? No, I don’t think so.’

‘I said “special”, Granny, not “speckled”.’

‘Oh, well, yes, it is rather special. Come on.’

We followed Granny and Lancelot to the other side of the campsite and there we found an extraordinary tent, with Lancelot’s big three-wheeler
chopper motorbike parked next to it. Several people had gathered round and were staring, goggle-eyed, at both the tent and the bike.

The tent was circular, with a round, pointed roof made from proper wooden rafters, and it was pretty big. The most amazing bit was when you went inside. It had four different areas marked out, like little rooms. One was for cooking, one was for living in and the other two were bedrooms. The canvas walls were decorated with
strange pictures and designs. The main room didn’t have any chairs, but just a low platform covered with rugs and cushions. The whole tent looked like some magical place straight out of an Arabian fairy tale like
Sinbad
or
Aladdin.

‘It’s a yurt,’ Lancelot announced proudly.

‘And it’s the only one on the campsite. In fact it’s probably the only yurt for miles around. Pretty big too – we had to bring it on the three-wheeler.’

‘It’s fabulous!’ I breathed, while Cheese and Tomato happily threw themselves at the cushions and bounced off.

‘It is rather romantic,’ sighed Mum.

‘Give me a proper tent any day,’ grunted Dad.

‘Yes,’ laughed Mum. ‘You go back to your little play-tent, Ron. You’ll be safe there. I don’t know about anyone else, but I could do with a cup of tea.’

‘Oh dear,’ muttered Gran. ‘I haven’t had a chance to go and get any milk yet.’

‘Squeeze the goat,’ suggested Dad.

‘I can’t take you anywhere,’ Mum murmured. ‘We’ve got plenty of milk at our van. Let’s head back there.’

No sooner had we returned than Tomato burst into tears. ‘Can’t find Cecily!’ she wailed. ‘Cecily Sprout has gone.’

‘Oh, darling, that’s so sad,’ said Mum. ‘Where did you lose her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Were you playing hide and seek with her again?’

Tomato shook her curls. ‘No. I wasn’t playing anything.’

‘Let’s check the van. I hope you didn’t leave her at the safari park?’

‘She couldn’t have,’ I pointed out. ‘She was playing with the doll on her way back this afternoon.’

We turned the van inside out but all we found was a tomato that reminded me of Mr Tugg – red and bald. There was no carrot in a bikini.

‘We shall have to scour the campsite,’ sighed Mum, taking Tomato’s hand. Tomato frowned fiercely at the rest of us.

‘We ALL have to look,’ she ordered, so the whole family set off on a Cecily hunt, with Tomato calling out the carrot’s name at regular intervals as we searched the campsite. ‘Cecily? Cecily Sprout!’

Other campers heard us and wanted to know
what was going on. Soon Tomato had half the campsite wandering about shouting out ‘Cecily Sprout!’ at the tops of their voices. I guess they thought it was a real person that had gone missing – not just a carrot with green stalks for hair and wearing a blue bikini.

In the middle of all this a small car drove furiously up to our tent. The door was flung open and out stepped Mr Tugg, our next-door
neighbour, the human volcano, and he was already in full eruption.

‘There you are!’ he roared at Dad. ‘I’ve got something for you!’ He reached into the back of the car and pulled out two wire cages. Inside I could see Captain Birdseye, Mavis Moppet, Beaky and Leaky. They looked mildly surprised, as if they’d just been caught spraying graffiti on Mr Tugg’s shed. Schumacher the tortoise was in
there too, fast asleep.

‘What’s the matter, Mr Tugg?’ asked Mum. ‘You seem upset.’

‘Upset? Of course I’m upset. Do you know what your wretched chickens did yesterday evening? They invaded our house. That’s right – invaded it.’

‘But how? I mean, why?’ Dad asked, puzzled.

‘That fox of yours came back!’ bellowed Mr Tugg.

‘It’s not
my
fox,’ Dad put in swiftly. ‘Foxes don’t belong, they’re just, well, foxes.’

Mr Tugg was too worked up to pay any attention to Dad. ‘That fox of yours scared the hens so much they all ran into my house. Your cock-a-doodle-dumbo there knocked over my wife’s aromatherapy cabinet and then walked up and down Mrs Crossbottom’s back just when she was having a quiet massage session with my wife. It was the shock of her life! She jumped up and ran into the garden.’

‘A lucky escape,’ Dad ventured.

‘Not lucky at all!’ roared Mr Tugg. ‘She had nothing on! And I was out there gardening! I didn’t know where to look!’

‘Oh dear, I should think her bottom
was
very cross after that,’ said Dad, who was beginning to enjoy this. He always seemed to find it funny when Mr Tugg got angry.

‘And then the fox came
inside
the house and chased the hens upstairs. They’ve left feathers all over the place, not to mention the unmentionable. One of them jumped out of the window and landed on Mrs Crossbottom’s head and that set her off again. She’ll never come back and the house is wrecked. Wrecked! So here are your wretched beasts and you’d better not bring them back, ever. You can pay for all the damage. I’m writing to the council about this, and your pesky goat and pesky tortoise.’

Dad reddened. ‘What on earth has the tortoise done? Eaten your house?’

‘NO! MY BEST PRIZE-WINNING BEGONIAS, YOU IDIOT! I hope they arrest you and put you in prison – and your hens too. Good afternoon!’ Mr Tugg leaped back into his car, gunned the engine and roared off across the grass.