Agatha Parrot and the Mushroom Boy (6 page)

‘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.

A
fter 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).

Suddenly . . .

‘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.

W
hen the raffle was finished, Mrs Twelvetrees moved over to the cake. ‘Oh by golly, hasn't Mr Parrot made us a super cake?' she said. ‘Is he here?'

I'm not sure how she missed him actually as Dad was hopping
around over by Motley clutching his shoes and socks and waiting for his toenails to dry. Instead Mrs T spotted us and did that big lipsticky smile which made Mum instinctively grab a tight hold of her purse. But Mrs T only wanted to ask what flavour it was.

‘I haven't the
remote
-est idea,' I said giving James a big poke in the ribs and he went bright red
ha ha!

Miss Pingle lifted the cake down
off the stool and put it on one side of the scales. They were the old-fashioned sort of balance scales like a see-saw where you put what you're weighing on one side and then put different weights on the other side until it balances. Miss Pingle opened a smart little box. In it was a set of shiny weights of different sizes and all looking very important. First she took out some of the biggest weights and put them on the scales one at a
time. ‘That's a thousand grams, now I'm adding an extra hundred . . . and now another hundred . . .'