Floods 8 (12 page)

1
Just read the earlier books, for goodness sake.

2
Shivers that scare the willies out of humans.

3
Actually, everyone on
Australian Idol
gets called a legend, but then you don't have to end up fifteenth to be a loser. Everyone is.

4
This is because, to wizards and witches, Dead Sewer Slugs and Gravy is the same as chocolate is to humans. If they think about it, smell it or see it, they just have to eat some right away.

5
Scraping mud off the bottom of things was an old Flautists of Glackenstein tradition. They had been doing it since 1233 and their Castle – Castle Glackenstein – had dozens of rooms of mud samples that today form the basis of the internationally renowned Courtauld Collection Of Mud Scraped Off The Bottom Of Things. The collection is still growing to this day, at such an alarming rate that many of the jars have exploded.

6
See the back of this book
for a prospectus.

7
Iron Pyrite – look it up on Google.

8
Except Auntie Mould, who spent the night in the same cardboard box she had slept in for the past very long time.

9
Actually, Betty was not totally out of the Countess's reach as some little drops of spit landed in her hair.

10
One of the under-cooks had once spent a week in hospital after the Countess had forced several not-small-enough brussels sprouts up her nose, and almost everyone had nasty bruises from being walloped with a frying pan.

11
Not many people realise this, but if a spell is used a lot it can actually get worn out.

12
This is in here because it has now become illegal in Australia to write or speak for more than five minutes without calling someone a Legend. This is because no one knows the proper meaning of the word and there are lots of stupid people about. Of course, twenty-five per cent of these stupid people are also called Legends. By the year 2020 anyone who can stand up unaided for more than one minute will qualify as a Legend.

13
We will actually find out just who is behind the Cabbage Curse a bit later on.

14
Not surprising as George had never felt really, truly happy EVER.

15
Achilles Heels are not super-cool running shoes. Just check it out on Google.

16
See
The Floods 5: Prime Suspect
and
The Floods 6: The Great Outdoors
.

17
When I was in Cambodia this year I ate some tarantula spider and it tasted EXACTLY the same as the Hearse Whisperer – kind of bacon-flavoured plastic.

18
Originally called the Miss Transylvania Waters Beauty Pageant, the name had been changed after protests from several contestants who were Misters. Then there were protests from entrants who were neither Miss nor Mister, and more complaints from people who were none of the above. In the end the word ‘Miss' was changed to ‘Being' as it was felt that covered everyone. There are currently complaints from entities who claim to be ‘Non-Beings' and that the title discriminates against things that don't exist. So far no one has actually thought of not having any word at the beginning, as that would be much too easy.

19
Actually, anyone coming to Transylvania Waters has to cross the highest mountains anyway.

20
We all know that blind people have an extra well-developed sense of touch, but I would like you to imagine what it would feel like to run your hands over someone who had just won a gold medal for the size and leakiness of their giant mega-zits. That's why if you have had your eyes poked out by a secret agent, it is probably a good idea to keep away from Transylvania Waters.

21
Several contestants in the past have been disqualified by the Tasting Judges for adding cement or grit to their oozings.

22
Not something you want to do if you live down a sewer as Nerlin had been.

23
As long as you only lived for three more years.

24
This was not very complicated as there was usually only one fortune – you will get eaten.

25
For all timid parents, teachers and booksellers, this is NOT rude because Maldegard with no clothes on is about as exciting and appealing as a very wrinkly tree trunk. Also, it was very dark in Maldegard's room, much too dark to see any naughty bits. Some people have asked why on earth would she want everyone to take off their clothes and if she looked so scary why she didn't cover herself up completely. It's because fortune-telling is about uncovering things and Maldegard Ankle just uncovered a bit more than all the other fortune tellers.

26
New word – similar to ‘forefathers', but not so sexist
.

27
See various Floods novels and the Floods picture book,
The Floods Family Files,
where you will see a picture of Winchflat's creation – the strange yet mysteriously delightful Igorina.

28
Not surprising really with Princess Mordonna for a mother and Merlin's descendant Nerlin, the rightful King of Transylvania Waters, for a father. All the Floods children were princes or princesses. Merlinmary, of course, was both.

29
‘Good thing too,' said the publisher, parents, teachers and booksellers. ‘Though we are still not happy about the nudity even if they are both unconscious.'

30
When I was about 25 years old, I lived in Mallorca for a while and became friends with Robert Graves (the VERY famous English Poet) and his family. We used to play Animal Scrabble, which had been invented by Robert's wife Beryl. Any animal got you a double score. A few years later I was living in the Outer Hebrides, where we used to play Meat Scrabble.

31
Because they were all the sort of girls who never go ANYWHERE without a mirror.

32
History is full of great romantic stories like this. A humble boy, usually the son of a wood-chopper, sees a princess riding by and falls in love with her. Of course, she is quite unaware that he even exists. Meanwhile, a string of nerdy or arrogant or stupid – usually all three – fabulously wealthy princes come from far-off kingdoms and attempt to win the princess's hand and heart. The princess always rejects the princes and eventually meets the wood-chopper's son. They fall in love in spite of the king's objections, marry and live happily ever after, a bit like Mordonna and Nerlin did. Sometimes it even turns out that the wood-chopper's son is not really his son, but an abandoned baby the wood-chopper found in the forest who actually turns out to be a totally awesome genuine prince with staggering amounts of charm, good looks, CDs, PlayStations and money. The kitchen boy and Betty, of course, knew all about these stories.

33
Like paperclips but for bits of skin instead of paper.

34
Yes they do. My cousin Crawford looks exactly like one of those short fat gnomes in a red waistcoat holding a fishing rod. In fact he may well have been the model for the very first one they made. I also have a second-cousin Marie who looks like a very comfortable armchair.

35
NOT ‘knitting for' so much as ‘knitting with'. There were no sheep in Transylvania Waters.

36
It also burnt her stubborn moustache, which made her look just as ugly as before but less hairy.

37
Not even his parents, who had tried to sell him on eBay when every single charity shop in Bavaria-Battenberg had refused to take him.

38
This has led to a lot of cockroaches having conversations with themselves in mirrors, and one species of cockroach that has become extinct because it kept marrying its own reflection.

39
Which, due to its very small size, should be, but isn't, an abbreviation for
Not Much Rockatall
and, even though it really does exist over 460 kilometres off the coast of Scotland, it is so small and useless it isn't even on Google Earth!

40
The most prized gift was a pair of underpants actually woven out of pressed flowers.

41
Millions of humans are born with this spell.

42
This ignores the fact that in Transylvania Waters no one ever has coffee mornings due to the fact there is no coffee in the country. Nor is there any tea. In fact all there is to drink is green cloudy water. Green Cloudy Water Mornings never caught on.

43
If they had actually been in a boat, life would have been a lot better. Without the grease worms that lived in the drains everyone's socks would have lasted a lot longer if they had been in a boat.

44
Strangely, being much too old is exactly what is required to be the King and Queen in lots of countries.

45
Everyone who has NOT read any of the earlier books, even though they are seriously pathetic (the non-readers, that is, not the books, which are totally brilliant) will also know this now.

46
Just in case you are thinking, ‘Aha, chickens, so they must have had eggs in Transylvania Waters as well as cabbage!' you are wrong. The Cabbage Curse was so powerful that the chickens all laid brussels sprouts.

47
There was no need for a Post Office in Transylvania Waters because every family had at least one person who could do telepathy and send messages to their friends by thought waves. A Post Office would still have been useful as it is very difficult to send parcels by thought waves. People have tried. There were the famous telekinesis experiments of 1935 where they tried to transport a fruit cake from one end of the country to the other just by using thought waves. The experiment never quite worked properly. The sender would concentrate and the fruit cake would vanish OK, but when it materialised at its destination it was not so much a fruit cake any more as bucket of wet fish. This coincided with a mysterious storm in Belgium where it rained huge amounts of fruit cake.

48
The scientists on this planet are hoping to invent the paper bag once they work out how to make paper. This will not be easy as the entire surface of the planet in under two metres of water.

49
Because he was so clever he had skipped the first six heavens and gone straight to the seventh one. Actually, since he met Maldegard Ankle he has been in fourteenth heaven, though seven of them belong to Maldegard.

50
TV rights for this show are currently under negotiation to be sold to Belgium and Australia. England turned it down because they thought it was too intellectual. Maybe this explains why The Floods books are being published in lots and lots of countries none of which are England. They are just too clever for them.

51
This what happened to my cousin Crawford. One minute he was a snivelling whinging toddler and the next a wonderfully silent garden gnome fishing by a goldfish pond.

52
Actually you need two cardboard boxes, some sticky tape and a dead person.

53
Lucy Axton, aged 11, just emailed me to tell me that every single primary school child in Belgium has to learn the harmonica. Unfortunately I've discovered that this is actually an urban myth, but we are both going to pretend that it is true, because it's brilliant and only goes to show that the truth is quite often not nearly as good as made-up stuff.

54
The full list of what the people of Transylvania Waters were missing is three hundred pages long and is printed in letters that are much smaller than these.

55
Actually, luck and timing had nothing to do with it. Nerlin simply performed a spell, but kept quiet about it.

56
See the back of this book
for details.

57
See the picture book,
The Floods Family Files.

58
So far there are seven families driving round and round this rubbish dump unable to find the exit.

59
Meaning they wound round a lot, not that the wind blew down them a lot.