After the first rush of wild excitement, there’s always about an hour of school fetes which is really boring. That’s because everybody has to hang around until Mrs Twelvetrees gives out the raffle prizes, and she never does that until she’s dead certain that we’ve all got tickets.
Most people are like Martha’s mum who bought loads of tickets for Martha because she always does. Lucky Martha.
Unlucky me.
Our mum HATES buying raffle tickets and she makes it totally embarrassing. Usually she tries to sneak away early, but this time we all had to wait for Dad’s cake to be weighed, and that was going to be after the raffle. Thank goodness! If they’d weighed the cake before the raffle, it would have ruined my revenge on James as you’ll see.
Mum was standing in the middle of the playground with Tilly swinging on her arm, and chatting away with some other mums (who all got tickets for themselves AND got tickets for their kids by the way).
‘I say, COO-EE! Mrs Parrot? HELLO!’
Mrs T cruised up alongside Mum, clutching a cake tin full of money. All the other mums laughed a bit and dived out of the way leaving our mum to face the Mighty Twelvetrees all by herself. Mum was already trying to be tough and pull her no thank you face, but it’s not as if she had any choice about it. Headteachers are specially trained to hunt down mean old mums.
‘I just wanted to say . . .’ said Mrs T sadly, ‘. . . how jolly sorry I am that Tilly only got to say two words in the infants concert last week.’
‘Pardon?’ Mum was caught completely by surprise. ‘Oh! It really doesn’t matter . . .’ she said feebly, trying to ignore the rolls of raffle tickets being waved right under her nose. Tilly was staring up at her crossly.
‘I’m sure you’d want her to get a few more lines next time, wouldn’t you?’ said Mrs Twelvetrees. Tilly started hopping up and down excitedly. Mrs T did her killer lipsticky smile. ‘Tickets are five for a pound – oh thank you! – and who knows, maybe one day Tilly might get to sing a whole song . . .’
KUD-DINK. Before Mum even knew it, she’d dropped some money into the cake tin and Mrs T had whizzed off to trap her next victim. ‘YOO-HOO! HELLO! I just wanted to say how jolly sorry I am that we didn’t have space to include Henry in the lunchtime ping-pong group this term . . .’
Good for Mrs Twelvetrees. She needs to grab all the money she can to keep the staffroom emergency biscuit cupboard topped up or the teachers will start rioting. And that’s true.
So anyway, Mum had bought a measly five tickets. That meant it was one for her, one each for James, Tilly and Dad (wherever he’d got to) and OH YIPPEE WHAT A TREAT one whole ticket for me. It was number 610. Whoopee.
Once Mrs T had worked out that she’d hoovered up every single bit of spare cash in the place, she rang her handbell CLANG DANG BLANG. ‘Action stations gang!’ she called out. ‘We’ll weigh the cake in a minute, but first we’ll draw the raffle. There’s lots of super-dooper prizes so good luck everybody!’
‘WOOO!’ Everybody gave a big cheer for the super-dooper prizes.
Martha was getting all excited. She was desperate to win a great big green peppermint milkshake thing somebody had made up. YUK! But that’s Martha for you. (The important thing is that the milkshake had a long stripy straw sticking out of it which you’ve got to remember. It turns up later on.)
‘Now then chaps,’ said Mrs T. ‘Who would like to come and pull some numbers out of the bucket and pass them to me?’
Ellie Slippin’s little brothers immediately ran forwards and then couldn’t stop so they both banged their heads on the bucket donk donk! They shoved their hands in and threw bundles of scrunched up tickets at Mrs Twelvetrees. Gosh if me and Ivy had done that we’d be DEAD, but a couple of the dads started laughing, so the Slippin twins went on to have a full-on ticket snowball fight which was brilliant, especially when all the other little tiddly tots joined in.
I expect headteachers are supposed to get a bit ratty when this happens, but Mrs Twelvetrees had her cake tin full of dosh so she was too happy to care. She just picked a few tickets out of the kids’ hair and shouted out the numbers.
Soon the playground was rocking to the sound of parents cheering and whooping as they won super-dooper prizes like a tin of peas or a little basket of fizzy bath salts. Tilly charged to the front when she heard her number, and came back proudly clutching a bag of instant cat food. Shame we haven’t got a cat. Well, not one that’s still alive anyway.
Eventually the only thing left was the peppermint milkshake, and about the only person still paying any attention was Martha. Mrs T held up one last ticket.
‘And finally number 19,’ she said.
Martha looked really sad. She hadn’t got number 19, but nobody else was claiming the milkshake either.
‘We can’t wait all day!’ said Mrs T. ‘I’ll pick another . . .’
‘Wait,’ I shouted. ‘It’s ME!’
I went up, showed my ticket and came back with the glass of green gunk.
‘You’re soooo lucky!’ sulked Martha.
‘Don’t be like that,’ I said. ‘I got it for you.’
‘Oh WOW thanks, are you sure?’ gasped Martha, but she’d already grabbed it in case I changed my mind. She shoved the straw in her mouth and was about to take a slurp but then she stopped. ‘Hang on . . . the number was 19. Your ticket was 610!’
‘Hmmm, yes . . . technically it was. But if you show 610 to somebody quickly, and it’s upside down with your thumb over the zero . . .’
SLURRRRP! went Martha who was already not listening.
