CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Scrobbler gleered at the sign on the fence and his new, improved bran shuffled and shifted as never before.
The bran worked out that the sign wasn’t in English. It wondered why that should be. It thought about the wide, wet, watery sea, and realised the horrible truth. It was inside a branbox, that was inside a Scrobbler, that was inside a country that wasn’t Britain.
‘Find Jim!’ it screamed and flew into such a fluster that it gave up thinking altogether and ran up and down inside the Scrobbler’s branbox looking for a way out.
This was a very unfortunate thing to happen, because it meant the Scrobbler was left without so much as a scrap of commonsense to guide him.
He gleered through the fence at the aeroplanes. So he was meant to find Jim, was he? Well, the answer to that problem was staring him in the face. It was a beautifully simple answer.
‘Relax,’ the Scrobbler told his panicking bran. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control.’
Jim woke up in a panic. He tumbled out of bed, into his clothes, and down the staircase to the kitchen, where his parents were making breakfast.
‘I’ve got to practice,’ he yelled, snatching Flopsy off the magician’s head.
So Jim practised like mad, while his mum juggled boiled eggs and the magician pulled strings of sausages out of his ears and Sally banged on the kitchen table and begged them all to stop showing off and give her something to eat.
A short while later they piled into the car. Mum in the driver’s seat, the magician in the passenger’s seat, Jim and Sally in the back. They were on their way to Sunnyside.
‘I’m so happy,’ said the magician, with a stretch and a sigh. ‘It’s going to be a great show. There’ll be a huge crowd – six hundred people or more.’
Jim jumped like someone who’d been jabbed. ‘Six hundred people?’ he squawked. ‘I can’t do the Flopsy trick in front of six hundred people. What if I make a mistake? What if something goes wrong?’
‘Don’t get in a jam, Jim,’ laughed the magician. ‘Just be yourself, be friendly, and I promise you, you’ll make six hundred new friends.’
‘But I’m too frightened to be friendly,’ moaned Jim. And more than ever, he wished his Scrobbler was there – to stick up for him, to stand by him, to make him brave.
There was nothing the Scrobbler would have liked better. He was doing his best to get home. At that very moment he was trying to catch a plane.
Unfortunately there were problems: he didn’t have a ticket, there were no large, handy pockets to glop himself into and there were air hostesses guarding the doors of every plane he looked at.
So he decided – what the heck – if he couldn’t travel inside, he’d travel on top.
This is how he came to be sitting on top of an aeroplane that was about to fly to Britain. He’d been told to find Jim, hadn’t he? Jim lived in Britain, didn’t he? It seemed to the Scrobbler he’d done the right thing.
‘I’ve made a terrible mistake coming here,’ thought Jim, as the car pulled up in Sunnyside. Six hundred people? It seemed more like six thousand. There were people getting their faces painted, people queuing up at the bouncy castle, people looking at the food stalls and clothes stalls and second-hand knickknack stalls. But most of all there were people, people, people in front of the stage – shuffling their bottoms on their seats, shuffling their feet on the ground, waiting for the show to start.
The magician leapt out of the car, flung on his pretend beard and was up there making magic at once.
Jim couldn’t believe this was his Dad. He made sparks come out of his fingers and scarves come out of his ears. He was sawn in half by Jim’s Mum (how the crowd roared when she revved her electric chainsaw!) and stuck himself back together with superglue.
‘Wow, he’s fantastic,’ thought Jim.
The audience thought so too. They clapped and stamped their feet and called out for more sparks, more scarves, more sawing and much more superglue.
Jim felt a rush of friendly feeling towards them. He felt as if he knew them. Then his tummy turned over because he did know them. Half the children from his school were in the crowd!
The instant Jim spotted Phil Spit and Carly he stopped enjoying the show and felt terrified instead. This was awful. What if the Flopsy trick went wrong? What if he made a complete idiot of himself? They’d never let him forget it. They’d make fun of him for the rest of his life.
Suddenly Jim found that his heart was pounding, his hands were shaking, and the show, which was meant to last for half an hour was almost over.
‘And now for the grand finale,’ announced the magician. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for my son Jim.’
Oh no, this was it! Jim forced a smile on to his face and bounced on to the stage. Ready, Steady… Three, two, one, blast off!
The plane tore howling down the runway, with the Scrobbler flying out behind like a piece of litter that had somehow got wrapped around the tail fin.
‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ he screamed. ‘I want to get off!’
‘Just because you’re terrified out of your mind doesn’t mean you can stop the show,’ Jim told himself. ‘No. The show must go on.’
Of course it must. Jim got behind the table and checked that the hat with Flopsy inside was properly hidden under there. Then he picked up the other hat, spun it on the end of his finger and tossed it into the audience so they could check for themselves that it was empty.
Phil Spit caught it. Phil Spit agreed that there was nothing inside. Phil Spit very helpfully flung it back to Jim. He could just have easily have run off with it so Jim was pathetically grateful. He was beginning to feel a lot better.
Nothing was going to go wrong.
‘OK,’ he grinned at the crowd. ‘Are your eyes ready to goggle? Are your minds ready to boggle?’ As he spoke, he waved his hands and hey presto, he’d swapped the hats around and no-one had seen. Now it was simply a matter of pulling Flopsy out. ‘Easy Peasy,’ thought Jim. He glanced sideways at the magician and suddenly forgot that six hundred people were waiting for him to wow them with his magic trick. ‘That’s my Dad,’ he thought. ‘Look at him smiling away at me like that.’
Jim winked and the magician gave him a secret thumbs up. But his fluffy rabbit hair-do twitched its nose scornfully.
Jim stared at his Dad’s face. What was Flopsy doing on topsy? Was she magic? Was she evil? Was she out to ruin Jim’s life? The long-eared nitwit was meant to be inside the hat!
In front of six hundred people, Jim closed his eyes and decided to die of embarrassment on the spot.
