It was after school on Monday and the playground was full of wobbly old tables with wobbly old teachers standing behind them. Me and Tilly and James had just met up with Mum and Dad by the school gates when . . .
Ivy came charging over and grabbed my arm and spun me round a few times. She was a bit hyper because she’d had a biscuit from Martha’s mum’s tea stall, and it had got some of that same yellow icing on it that we’d put on the cake. There’s something in those bright colours that makes Ivy turn into . . . well, Ivy really.
‘COME ON!’ she shouted and then went running off round the tables and shouting out what she thought of each one.
The first table Ivy looked at had Mrs Twelvetrees selling her raffle tickets (‘WOW!’ shouted Ivy). Next to her Miss Barking was selling organic cardigans that she’d knitted from some weird stuff she grows on her allotment (‘WOW!’).
Then there was a chair where you could sit and have your toenails painted by Motley the caretaker (WOW WOW WOW TOTALLY AWESOME WOW!’), and just along from that, the school receptionist Miss Wizzit was selling ‘nearly new’ books which had been rescued when the library had got flooded, and they were still a bit squidgy (‘WOW!’).
As you can see, the person who most impressed Judge Ivy was Motley, so he needs a big round of applause clap clap clap WOW.
‘But that’s silly,’ said Mum. ‘Who’s going to be daft enough to get their toenails painted?’
Motley looked a bit hurt. ‘I’ll do you a special offer. How about six toes for the price of five?’
‘Special offer?’ said Dad. ‘Ooooh . . .’
In the middle of everything was a table with a small stool standing on it. The legs of the stool were wrapped in silver tin foil to make it look posh and groovy, and sitting proudly on top was Dad’s cake. (‘WOW! EH? WHAT? OH. WOW!’ Thank you Ivy for that intelligent contribution.)
Pinned on the front of the stool was a smart little sign:
Guess the weight of the cake 20p
On the table beside it were some old weighing scales out of the school kitchen, and standing next to them was our class teacher Miss Pingle looking very serious. She’s the one who keeps dyeing her hair different colours, and on Monday it was a rather fetching shade of police-trousers blue to make herself look more official.
Miss Pingle was in charge of taking the money and writing down everybody’s guesses. She was desperate to do a good job because she’s a new teacher and normally she only gets to pour out the orange squash. (By the way, it had taken her eighteen goes just to print the sign out on the computer. Of course she didn’t actually tell anybody that, but earlier on me and Martha had found numbers one to seventeen scrunched up in the recycling bin. You can’t fool us ha ha!)
By now Ivy was starting to calm down a bit and had reached the stage where she had to hug somebody and the nearest somebody was me. It’s quite nice for a short time, but you don’t need too much of it. Luckily Bianca saw us and came over.
‘Don’t worry Agatha,’ said Bianca. ‘Ivy can bug me for a hit.’
Eh? But then Bianca took Ivy off me. She must have meant to say ‘hug me for a bit’. YO! Good one Bianca. Top girl.
Meanwhile James had been standing over by the railings and watching a few people have a guess.
‘675 grams,’ said Ivy’s mum.
James had a big grin on his face so I went to ask him why. ‘That’s way too small!’ he told me.
Thank goodness for that. We didn’t need Ivy’s mum winning the cake. You’ve just seen what one little biscuit’s worth of icing does for Ivy, so imagine what a whole cake would do. We’d be pulling her off the moon. Wahoo – GO IVY! We love Ivy.
‘3,762 grams,’ said Bianca’s mum.
‘Miles too big!’ muttered James happily.
Then we saw Martha pulling an old gentlemen over to see Miss Pingle. ‘This is my grandad,’ said Martha. ‘He used to be a baker so he’ll know.’
‘That cake will be about 43 ounces,’ said Martha’s grandad, handing over his 20p.
‘We don’t measure in ounces these days,’ said Miss Pingle who wasn’t really sure what an ounce was. ‘We use grams.’
‘Oh, righto,’ smiled the jolly old gentleman who was admiring Miss Pingle’s blue hair. ‘Can you convert 43 ounces to grams for me?’
‘Of course,’ said Miss Pingle and she carefully wrote down 43 grams.*
(*Warning! The old bloke who is typing this book out says that ounces used to be the old-fashioned way of weighing things. What’s more 43 ounces is not even close to being 43 grams, so if you say it is then you’ll sound like a bit of a weirdo. Mind you, the old bloke says that the real answer is that 43 ounces = 1,219·03 grams. Gosh, anybody who knows that would have to be a COMPLETE weirdo – just like he is! Ha ha ha . . . oh ok, I’m only kidding. Keep typing please.)
James was starting to feel confident. Nobody had come close to the number he’d worked out yet, but then Gwendoline Tutt marched over to the table. She’s the one who lives at the top end of Odd Street in the big house with the tree in front and a space to park two cars. She hates school fetes, but her mum told her that she had to have one go on everything before she could leave.
‘One two three four,’ said Gwendoline Tutt slapping down her 20p coin. Her best friend Olivia Livid was with her and they both sniggered rudely.
‘Do you mean one thousand, two hundred and thirty-four grams?’ asked Miss Pingle.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ said Gwendoline. ‘I don’t want to win the stupid thing anyway.’
‘It looks gross,’ agreed Olivia and then the two of them walked off to make rude remarks about something else.
Next to me James slumped back against the railings like he’d been thumped by a ghost.
‘Aren’t you going to have your go?’ I asked him.
‘No point!’ he groaned. ‘I spent all night working out the exact weight of that cake, and then Gwendoline Tutt just guessed it. She’ll win and she doesn’t even want to.’
‘Oh dear oh dear what a big pity,’ I said being a lovely sister. ‘But maybe you didn’t get it exactly right? You could try guessing one gram more than Gwendoline, and then just to be sure, guess one gram less?’
‘But that’s two goes!’ wailed James. ‘That’ll cost 40p.’
‘It’s either that or you’ll get no more pocket money ever,’ I reminded him. ‘So quick, do it now before somebody else guesses those same numbers.’
James thought about it for a moment, then hurried over to pay his 40p. Miss Pingle carefully wrote down 1233g – J Parrot and also 1235g – J Parrot.
‘You seem very sure, James,’ said Miss Pingle suspiciously. ‘I hope you didn’t weigh the cake at home before it got here?’
Ha ha ha ha! You should have seen James’s face.
‘Oh no, I’d never dream of doing that!’ said James wishing he had dreamed of it. It would have saved him a whole night of sitting up doing tricky sums. Poor little James.
