Birthday Boy. David Baddiel

CHAPTER 11

       HODGEPODGE

      When Sam got to his class, Mr Barrington, who was also his form teacher, said:

      “Right! OK!”

      He used his usual schoolmasterly tone, but then found himself saying – almost against his will, it seemed: it was like someone else was making him say it – something not very schoolmasterly.

      “So. Right. Well … because it’s Sam’s birthday again today” – he glanced at Sam, who was sitting at the front of the class – “he is going to choose what subjects we do!”

      “Really?” said Sam.

      “Yes,” said Mr Barrington, although he looked as surprised as everyone else about it. “Ahem. I suppose. I seem to have said so now, anyway. So. What would you like? English? Maths? History? DT?”

      Sam thought about it for a moment. He was beginning to realise something about the way this worked. Something powerful.

      “Silly Words!” he said.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “Silly Words!” said Sam. “A lesson on which words and phrases are the silliest!”

      A noise came up from the rest of the class. One that sounded like a combination of “Yes!”, “Definitely!”, “That sounds fun!” and “Let’s do that!”

      Sam wasn’t sure where that idea had come from, although if he had to pin it down it was probably something to do with Grandpa Sam and his funny swearing.

      “No, no. I meant … you know … the usual subjects …” said Mr Barrington.

      Sam raised his eyebrows and said what he was now starting to realise were the magic words.

      “But, sir: it’s my birthday.”

      “Bottom!” said Morris. For the fifth time.

      “I’ve told you, Morris, we’re not allowing rude words.”

      “Bottom isn’t a rude word, Mr Barrington!” said Fred.

      “Well, it can be …”

      Mr Barrington held his magic marker up to the whiteboard. The way the lesson worked was this: members of 6B put their hands up, said a silly word and, if the general response was that the word was silly enough, Mr Barrington wrote it down on the board. In no particular order, although there was a sense that at the end of the lesson there would be a vote on the silliest. Word, that is.

      So far, written up, were the words:

      stickleback

      portion

      muckle

      knickers (just got under the rude bar, apparently)

      ballyhoo

      stinky

      nosehole

      flappy

      blubber

      hodgepodge

      shrub

      “Lukas?” said Mr Barrington, in response to a hand going up.

      “Fart?”

      “Definitely rude,” said Mr Barrington. “Ellie?”

      “Puddleduck?”

      “Hmm. That’s a name.”

      “Of a duck, sir.”

      “Yes. But still. A name. A surname, in fact. Are we allowed proper nouns, Sam?”

      “Sir,” said Sam, “it’s your lesson. I just suggested the topic …”

      Mr Barrington considered for a moment. A part of him seemed pleased that, at least, in amongst all the silly wordage, there had been a moment of grammar.

      “I think … not,” he said. “Any more for any more?”

      “BOTTOM!”

      “That’s it, Morris! Detention!”

      

       CHAPTER 12

       A PACKET OF WERTHER’S ORIGINALS, SOME SHOELACES AND A JAR OF DURAGLIT

      A few days later, Sam was walking home with Ruby, who was at the same school, in Year Three.

      “So … you’re enjoying it?” said Ruby. “Y’know. Having your birthday every day …?”

      “Of course!”

      Sam thought this was a weird question. He’d told Ruby about the Silly Words lesson. Today, they’d done a whole class on Who Can Blow The Loudest Raspberry (strangely enough, Mr Barrington, as it turned out). And then a final session on the Stupidest Food (a tie between Cheese Bananas and Cat-food Crumble).

      “It’s not getting at all … boring …?”

      “No!” said Sam.

      “Because when we get home Mum and Dad will have made a cake and party food and stuff. And they’ll have organised some treat, like they did yesterday and the day before … What did they do again …?”

      “Oh! It was great!” said Sam. “They …” He paused. “We …”

      That was weird. He couldn’t remember.

      “… had pizza!” he said. “We went out and had pizza, and then we went to the late-night showing at the Planetarium. It was fun!”

      Ruby shook her head. “No, actually, Sam. That was three days ago. Yesterday we went to the zoo!”

      She gave him a look as she said it. A look Sam didn’t like one bit.

      “What are you saying?” said Sam.

      “Nothing,” said Ruby.

      “You are. You’re trying to spoil everything. Which is a horrible thing to do … on my birthday!”

      Ruby nodded, and seemed to sigh. “OK. Sorry!” she said, and skipped off ahead.

      Despite Sam’s refusal to think about what Ruby was saying – he knew it was something troubling, but he couldn’t quite say what it was – he did make an unusual decision as he walked home behind his skipping sister. Which was, a few minutes later, not to go straight home. He suggested to Ruby, because it was on their way home, that instead they should pop in to where their grandparents lived.

      His grandparents lived in a place called Abbey Court, which was a building that provided something called “sheltered accommodation”. This meant that it was a place where old people could live and have some help, but not actually an old-age home. It wasn’t, to be honest, somewhere that Sam usually wanted to go, but – apart from wanting to make it clear to Ruby that she wasn’t always the good one – something about what she’d said had made him not want to rush home and get the cake and the party food and the treat straight away, like he normally would. Something about it had made him want to put off the next birthday moment for a little while.