A very short chapter in which we see that a chunk of cheese can be used in place of the number eight
‘Wake up!’ yelled Blimp, poking Olive in the face, tugging at her ear. ‘Look! Look! Lookety-look-look!’
Olive rubbed her eyes and peeped out above the pink quilt. ‘My clock!’ she cried, sitting bolt upright. ‘You’ve fixed my alarm clock!’
There it was, in pride of place on the bedside table. Wordsworth stood to the left, wiping his paws on a greasy rag. Chester stood to the right, polishing the bell to a shine. Both were looking terribly pleased with themselves.
‘We stayed up all night fixing it for you,’ said Blimp.
‘We wanted to cheer you up,’ said Chester, ‘because you were feeling blue.’
‘From chewing on the crayon,’ said Blimp.
‘We didn’t even have a repair manual,’ explained Wordsworth. ‘Although I have read Frankenstein. I knew that making a clock would be a little more tricky than making a person, but I said to myself, “Wordsworth, you are a clever and resourceful rat. You can do this!”’
‘Amazing!’ said Olive, then added, ‘Astonishing!’
The newly assembled alarm clock was a truly unique piece of engineering. One would expect the absent glass cover (shattered) and the three dints in the silver body. What one didn’t expect were the hands that moved backwards in an anticlockwise direction, the thimble that replaced one of the alarm bells, or the chunk of cheese that sat where the number eight used to be. There was also an interesting pile of cogs, coils and screws that lay on the bedside table in front of the clock, rather than taking their rightful place inside the mechanical workings.
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock . . . tick-tock-tick-tock . . . BOING! A spring flew out from the rear of the clock, ricocheted off the bedhead and bounced across the floor.
‘Perfect!’ cried Wordsworth. ‘The alarm even works!’