‘Oh dear!’ gasped Olive as she walked into the dining room for breakfast the next morning. ‘How terribly jolly and . . . chaotic!’
‘Indeed!’ agreed Wordsworth, smiling over the top of his Little Blue Book of Wise and Witty Sayings. ‘When the cat’s away, the mice will play.’
Helga the hippo botty-skated by on a wave of sudsy dishwater she had syphoned from the kitchen sink. Scruffy the dog ran along the tabletops on stilts, juggling bran muffins and bright red balls.
And Fumble, dear short-sighted Fumble, waltzed by on hooves as light as unicorn sighs. ‘Oh, Olive!’ he crooned to the coat rack in his arms. ‘You dance like a princess!’ He twirled and swirled, sweeping glasses off tables, bowls off buffets and pictures off walls until he lost his way and fell out the window. He spent the next five minutes apologising profusely to the coat rack and the following five minutes sucking his hoof and weeping because the coat rack would not reply – a certain sign that he was not forgiven and a beautiful friendship now lay in tatters. Olive hung out the window and tried to convince him that it was only a couple of raincoats that lay in tatters, but the poor moose bellowed with such passion that he could not hear. Olive shrugged and pulled her head back inside.
‘Where’s Thistlebloom?’ asked Olive.
Mrs Groves looked up from the international space station she was building out of toast and steamed carrots. ‘Thistlebloom?’ she gasped and went all to pieces. ‘Oh deary, deary me. I had forgotten all about her.’
She blushed, tossed a steamed carrot over her shoulder and dropped to the floor. Three peppermints, a ball of wool and a letter fell out of her pocket, but she did not stop to retrieve them. She commando-crawled beneath the table, across the dining room, out the door, through the entrance hall and down the stairs into the basement.
Olive picked up the letter. Although it is terribly rude to read someone else’s mail, she could not help but notice that it was from the Inspector of Schools. And on trying even harder not to read the letter, she saw that it contained a rather long description about the immense pleasure the Inspector would take in closing down Mrs Groves’ Boarding School if the Queen’s visit turned out to be a shemozzle.
‘How dreadfully nasty!’ cried Olive. ‘Especially the part where he calls Mrs Groves a bumbling, incompetent nincompoop with a brain the size of an amoeba . . . and the three paragraphs where he compares our school to a zoo in which all of the animals have contracted a double dose of rabies!’
I know! I know! Obviously, our heroine had glanced at the letter a little longer than was strictly polite. But her snooping was driven by pure intentions. Namely, the desire to save her school, her headmistress and her beloved friends from disaster.
Olive folded the letter, popped it into her pocket and sat down with Num-Num and her fellow acrobats.
Splash Gordon yelled down from the rafters. ‘Watch this, Olive. I’m going to dive straight into your glass of kale juice!’ He missed, and belly-flopped onto Num-Num’s plate.
The dinosaur grinned from ear to ear. ‘Num-Num lub fresh meat!’ She tucked a serviette beneath her chin, doused Splash Gordon with tomato sauce and began to gnaw on his leg. ‘Num-num-num-num-num-num-num!’
Olive took one look at her carrot and broccoli muesli and decided that she wasn’t so hungry after all. She sat back and watched Sparky Burns, who was trying to make toast by breathing fire all over his bread. So far, however, he had only succeeded in toasting the tablecloth, the table and Anastasia’s bottom.
While it was heartening to see her friends so happy and uninhibited, this was not really preparing them for the Queen’s visit. The visit that simply must be a success. The visit that was now just one sleep away! Olive began to feel a little anxious.
‘Where is Thistlebloom?’ she asked as Steve and George scuttled by wearing egg cups.
A banana peel skimmed past her nose and plopped onto the floor.
‘Oh dear,’ sobbed Boffo. ‘I’ll pick it up! Anything to get away from this cauliflower yoghurt.’ He stepped back from his chair and onto the banana peel. So very predictable, but clowns will be clowns! Skidding across the floor, arms flailing, he collided with Carlos just as he was launching Bullet from his cannon.
‘Three, two, one, oomph!’
The barrel was knocked askew.
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Olive.
KABOOM!
Bullet Barnes shot from the cannon, his cape flapping, his boots smouldering. He flew over the dining tables, across the entrance hall and through the office door, where he collided with Thistlebloom’s head.
‘Whoopsy-daisy!’ cried Olive, and she ran to help.
‘I was aiming for the portrait of the Queen by the front door,’ explained Bullet, climbing down off the desk. ‘A sort of practice . . . for when I meet the real Queen tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to mess it up – do anything embarrassing . . . or inappropriate.’
Olive was about to launch into a gentle but useful explanation about physics and human anatomy and the risk of causing great bodily harm to Her Majesty if one should fly at her from a cannon. Thistlebloom, however, held up her hand. ‘Hush!’ She sniffed, flicked a piece of imaginary dust from her shoulder and expelled Bullet Barnes. Then, pressing two fingers to her newly battered forehead, she fluttered her eyes, opened her mouth and fainted.
Again!