Floods 6

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Imprint Page

The Floods' Family Tree

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Footnotes

The Floods Series

Random House

How To Live Forever

The Floods 7: Top Gear

For those of you who haven't already read ANY of the FIVE earlier books:

Blah, di blah, di blah, di blah and blah and lah, di da, di blah, di blah di blah. Blah, di blah, di blah, di blah and blah and lah, di da, di blah, di blah di blah. Blah, di blah, di blah, di blah and blah and lah, di da, di blah, di blah di blah. Blah, di blah, di blah, di blah and blah and lah, di da, di blah, di blah di blah. Blah, di blah, di blah, di blah and blah and lah, di da, di blah, di blah di blah. Blah, di blah, di blah, di blah and blah and lah, di da, di blah, di blah di blah.

What, you think I'm going to waste pages and pages writing a summary of, like, five whole books? Just go and get them yourself and read them…

If you have already read the other books, you are very clever and welcome back.

After months of surfing the net, looking at hundreds of magazines and watching dozens of TV travel shows, the Floods had finally booked to go on holiday.

Although Mordonna and Nerlin had sailed around the world when they had eloped from Transylvania Waters, they had never been to the seaside in the way you go to the seaside on holiday, to swim and make sandcastles and lie around getting sunburnt.

When the idea of a holiday had first been suggested, Winchflat Flood had said they should
probably rent a nice remote house somewhere so no one would bother them.

‘What you mean,' said Betty, ‘is so we don't bother anyone else.'

‘Well, yes, I suppose so,' Winchflat admitted. ‘I mean, we don't exactly look like your average human family, do we?'

‘It's true,' said Mordonna. ‘People do tend to cross the road when we approach and small babies and dogs cry a lot when they see us.'

Mordonna was preparing the dinner as she spoke. She was knitting several very long worms together to make Wizard Wraps, which were then stuffed with Hot 'N' Spicy Chilli Warts that she herself had collected from the armpits of a family of hippos at the local zoo.
¹

‘So we should look for a quiet house all on its own next to a nice beach,' said Nerlin, who was meant to be peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink
but kept peeling the ends of his fingers.

‘No,' said Mordonna. ‘I want to stay in a posh hotel where someone opens the door for you and they iron your socks and put chocolates on your pillow every night when they turn down your bed.'

‘But I put chocolates on your bed every night already,' said Nerlin.

‘I know, but you always give me the hard ones with the toffee because
you
eat all the nice ones,' said Mordonna. ‘No, I want to stay in a big posh seaside hotel with a big posh name like the Grande or the Splendide, where we won't have to do the washing up and there aren't spiders living under the beds.'

‘You mean we'll have to take our own spiders?' said one of the twins.
²

Morbid and Silent were sitting under the kitchen table catching the worms that kept wriggling off Mordonna's chopping board. For
every five they caught they gave four back to their mother and took it in turns eating the fifth one.

‘I doubt it,' said Satanella. ‘I expect really posh hotels have a choice of spiders. They might even have scorpions and cockroaches.'

‘They don't mention them on their websites,' said Winchflat. ‘And humans are frightened of spiders.'

‘Frightened of spiders?' said Satanella, picking another one out of the family snack bowl that lived
next to the toaster.
³
‘How can anyone be frightened of spiders? They're delicious.'

‘It's just another one of those things that make humans so weird,' said Mordonna.

Mordonna and Nerlin Flood and their seven children were not going on holiday on their own. Their friends, the Hulberts, who lived three doors away at number 19 Acacia Avenue, were going with them. The Hulberts were most definitely not witches or wizards. They were very, very ordinary, extra-normal human beings. There was Mr and Mrs Hulbert, their daughter, Ffiona, who was Betty's best friend, and Ffiona's little brother, Claude, who was in love with Satanella and still at the age where eating earth seemed like a really good idea.
⁴

The Floods thought that surely the Hulberts, being human, would know all about the sort of things you do on holiday and be able to explain what was so good about sitting on a beach getting sand in all your cracks and creases.

But Mr and Mrs Hulbert, who were both forty-seven, had never once been to the seaside, not even for a day out as children. Trips to the seaside were fun, and neither Mr nor Mrs Hulbert's parents did that sort of thing. To them fun was a sin that always ended in tears. They thought that looking at postcards of the seaside could make the blood rush to your head. They had never even stayed in a hotel.

‘Those sort of places are not for the likes of us,' Mrs Hulbert's father had said when his daughter had asked about them.

‘Of course not,' said Mrs Hulbert's mother. ‘They are places of sin and wickedness. Now eat your cabbage soup and go and polish your shoes and make sure all your hair pins are pointing in the same direction. Oh dear, but it's rude to point – I
meant to say make sure they're
lying
in the same direction … but then it's wrong to lie, too. So, I mean, well, you know perfectly well what I mean, my girl.'

Mr Hulbert's parents had been the same, so it was hardly surprising that the two of them had grown up very timid and old-fashioned. However, since they had met the Floods their lives had changed. Most people would be scared of a family of wizards, but with Mordonna and Betty's guidance and encouragement, plus some added magic, the Hulberts had realised that they too could have a life.

Gradually they had become more laid-back. Mrs Hulbert often took the twenty-four hair pins out of her long brown hair and let it hang down over her shoulders, and in the past month Mr Hulbert had spent one hundred and ninety-three hours not wearing a tie.
⁵

So they weren't a lot of help when it came to
finding out about going away on holiday.

‘I saw a programme about holidays on the television,' said Mrs Hulbert. ‘There was lots of sunshine and people talking in foreign languages and people who were wearing really tiny clothes and lying down in the middle of the day on flat bits of sand by water and then eating strange-looking food in loud noisy places at night.'

‘Bikinis, mother,' said Ffiona. ‘They're called bikinis.'

‘Well, I don't care what they're called, I don't think
I
want to eat any.'

‘No, no,' Ffiona started to explain. ‘Oh, never mind.'

‘I like the sound of the strange-looking food,' said Satanella. ‘Was there gristle and moving bits?'

‘Maybe we could get a book,' Winchflat suggested. ‘Something like
Going On Holiday for Dummies
.'

But they could not find a single book about how to go on holiday.

‘I suppose humans are born with the
information inside their brains, like birds migrating to warm places for the winter,' said Nerlin.

‘We weren't,' said Ffiona.

‘Well, that's probably because we already live in a warm place,' said Betty.

So in the end they decided they would have a rehearsal. They looked through magazines and holiday brochures and watched a TV series about hotels called
Fawlty Towers
. Then they made some of the cellars under 11 Acacia Avenue look like the inside of a hotel and they took it in turns to work in the hotel and be the guests. Of course, they hadn't realised that
Fawlty Towers
was a comedy series and that most hotels are not run by people who are crazy.

‘Are you sure you want to go on holiday?' said Nerlin after a week where they had all taken it in turns being rude to each other and eating yesterday's leftovers with carrots that had been boiled to mush.

Then they went down to the deepest cellars and made a fake seaside with a beach and waves and
deckchairs and sandcastles, but because they were almost forty metres below ground level, no amount of magic could make the sun shine and they all turned blue and got nasty colds. This meant they had to take spoonfuls of Old Retchup's Cure-All, which was actually far worse than any illness it was meant to cure.
⁶

‘I think we're probably not doing this holiday thing right,' said Mrs Hulbert. ‘I'm sure you're supposed to enjoy yourself. I think that's why people have holidays.'

‘Yes, and also, you know what they say,' Mr Hulbert added, ‘a change is as good as a rest.'

‘Oh, I don't agree with that,' said Nerlin. ‘I changed into a toad once and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as having a nice lie-down.'

‘Yes, but don't forget the time you changed into a feather duster,' said Mordonna. ‘You enjoyed that, didn't you? I know I did.'

‘True.'

‘No, no,' said Mrs Hulbert. ‘I think it means a change of scene is as good as a rest.'

‘Seen? Seen what?' said Nerlin.

‘I think I'll go on that internet thing and just book us all a holiday somewhere nice,' said Mordonna.