8. I Meet the King and Queen – and Hartlepool

Mum’s been busy sewing all morning. It’s not something she does often so it’s taken her a while. She’s been making royal cloaks for Mr and Mrs Wibbly to wear when they get crowned king and queen of our street.

Mum had to get the sewing machine working first. She stared at it for several minutes wondering what to do. Dad didn’t help. He walked past with the twins in tow, saw her gazing at it and asked if she was trying to find where to put the petrol in.

‘No, Ron. It’s a sewing machine, not a car. Why don’t you do something useful with the twins? That would be helpful. We need to make some food for the street party and I’m running behind. They could help you make some sausage rolls.’

Dad tugged his beard thoughtfully. ‘Hmmm, how do you make a sausage roll?’ he asked.

‘Take it to the top of a hill and let go?’ I suggested.

‘Boom-Boom!’ cried Dad, and Cheese giggled madly.

‘Silly sausage roll moo cow!’ He wriggled about on the floor, kicking his legs. I think it was meant to be an impression of a sausage rolling down a hill. (It was almost as good as Tomato’s fish-finger impression!)

‘I live in a mad-house,’ muttered Mum, still fiddling with the sewing machine.

‘OK, come on, you two terrors. Let’s help Mummy and hit the kitchen,’ said Dad, and off they went.

I turned to Mum. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to let Dad AND the twins loose in the kitchen?’

‘I don’t have any choice,’ she answered. ‘I must get these cloaks finished. Maybe you could help too and make sure they don’t get carried away?’

As it happened, Dad had decided not to make sausage rolls. He thought making mini pizzas would be easier.

‘Because they can make their own toppings for the pizzas,’ he explained.

‘I’m going to put cheese on mine!’ shouted Cheese, jumping up and down.

‘And I’m going to put strawberry jam and salami on mine,’ said Tomato.

‘I don’t think strawberry jam and salami will go together very well,’ I told her.

‘All right, I’ll do salami and blackberry jam.’

Dad cleared the kitchen table and got out the flour and some water and yeast to make the pizza dough. The twins stood on chairs and Dad showed them what to do and they began work.

Before you could say ‘Get me out of here!’ the kitchen was BURSTING with clouds of flour dust. Flour was everywhere. It was a flour tornado. I mean, the twins are small and there are only two of them. How could they possibly make so much mess?

‘I can’t see a thing!’ cried Dad, peering through the flour fog.

‘This is fun!’ Cheese shouted, patting his pizza dough hard and making even more flour fly up in the air. ‘Look, I’ve made a face!’ He held up his uncooked pizza. He had poked two eye holes and a big mouth hole in it.

‘Jumping jellyfish, it looks just like Mr Tugg,’ said Dad. And it did too.

Between us we managed to make THIRTY mini pizzas. Dad and I made most of them so they had decent toppings like ham and pineapple or red pepper, bacon and mozzarella. However, there were quite a few strange ones from the twins, like salami and chocolate, salami and crisps and salami and peanut butter. They seemed to like salami. I think it was because the word sounded funny.

After that the twins made gingerbread biscuits. Dad got out the pastry cutters and Tomato loved those, but Cheese wanted to make his own shapes. They turned out rather strange, but Cheese knew what they were if you asked.

‘That’s a shark and that one’s a tree and there’s a man with a gun hiding in it, and that one is a car crashing into another car and that one’s a toilet.’

‘Do you think people will want to eat a gingerbread toilet?’ I asked him.

‘No! It’s a funny shape for laughing. Not to eat!’ He obviously thought I was bonkers to even think anyone would want to eat it.

So we got all the pizzas and the gingerbread shapes made and they smelled lovely. The only problem was that the kitchen now looked as if a large troop of chimpanzees had come in and gone bananas all over it, and I suppose that wasn’t that far from the truth.

By this time, Mum had finished sewing the cloaks and she asked me if I’d like to go with her to Mr and Mrs Wibbly’s house to see if they liked them and to make sure they fitted.

I had seen the Wibblys before but I had never paid them any attention. I just thought they were ever so old. Now I knew a bit more about them, thanks to Granny, so I looked at them quite carefully.

Mrs Wibbly was hardly any taller than me. She was quite frail too. It was hard to imagine her winning a gold medal. I told her what Granny had said about the medal and Mrs Wibbly gave me a lovely smile.

‘It was a long time ago, dear,’ she said. ‘But it did happen, and there’s the medal. Up on that wall there, see?’

‘That’s amazing,’ I said, looking at the glittering medal and the photograph next to it. They were framed and behind glass. ‘You were a champion!’

‘She’s still a champion,’ said Mr Wibbly, putting an arm round his wife’s shoulders.

Mum held up the two capes. ‘Would you like to try them?’

‘You sit down while we do this,’ suggested Mrs Wibbly to me so I went and sat in one of the armchairs.

At least I tried to sit in an armchair, which had a big cushion plumped up on it, but as soon as I leaned back the cushion gave a surprised howl and leaped up. It was a cat! A big HUGELY fluffy grey cat.

‘Don’t mind Hartlepool,’ said Mr Wibbly. ‘He’s always getting in the way.’

‘That’s an odd name for a cat,’ said Mum as she put Mrs Wibbly’s cape round the old lady’s shoulders.

‘It’s the name of the town where I was born,’ said Mr Wibbly. ‘It always seemed a rather grey place to me as a child – the sea there was the same colour as Hartlepool’s fur. He’s very friendly.’

Hartlepool had recovered from the shock of me trying sit on him. We had a good cuddle and the cat lay across my lap purring like a helicopter while Mum made a few adjustments to the capes to get the length right.

‘Are you looking forward to tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘To tell you the truth, Nicholas, I feel a bit embarrassed,’ Mr Wibbly confessed.

‘Why?’

‘You see, my wife here has something special she’s done. She’s an Olympic champion, but I’ve never done anything. I’ve worked most of my life, of course, but I’ve never done anything special. I feel as if I shouldn’t really be there.’

‘Listen to him talking nonsense!’ cried Mrs Wibbly. ‘He used to be a teacher!’

‘But teaching is hugely important,’ Mum declared. ‘If there weren’t any teachers the rest of us would be ignorant savages, wouldn’t we, Nicholas?’

I just nodded, because what I was thinking was that if there weren’t any teachers there’d be no school. And if there was no school I could play all the time and that would be – BRILLIANT! But I knew Mum was right. If I hadn’t been taught I wouldn’t be able to read or write or do maths or, well, ANYTHING! (Except possibly eat and breathe.)

‘Being able to teach is a wonderful gift,’ Mum said to Mr Wibbly.

‘There,’ Mrs Wibbly nodded. ‘See? I’ve been telling him that for years. My gold medal hasn’t done anything useful, but you’ve given children the chance to make something of themselves. Now put that cape on and stop moaning!’

I liked Mr and Mrs Wibbly – and Hartlepool. We took the capes home so Mum could make the final alterations. That was when Mum discovered the kitchen.

Oh dear. She threw Dad out into the back garden and told him he was such a pig he should go and live with the other farm animals. She wouldn’t let him back indoors until she’d finished cleaning, and I had to help.

‘Look at this mess! I’ve never seen the like of it. And what’s this meant to be?’ Mum held up one of Cheese’s gingerbread shapes.

‘I think that one is meant to be a duck carrying a suitcase because it’s going on holiday,’ I explained, while Mum shook her head in disbelief.

‘It’s the last time I let any of you lot loose in the kitchen to help with the cooking,’ she growled.

But I knew it wouldn’t be. I knew that, come the next day, Mum would be laughing about what had happened and it would all become a big joke. That’s what our house is like, you see? A big joke. Well, most of the time, anyhow.