Emu at War , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Merv Lambert

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

29 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In these further adventures of M, the invisible computer-generated emu, read how the Smogg family get their come- uppance, M and Colin the librarian visit Sherwood Forest, the gang get transported to France during World War 2 and how an arrogant RAF officer is thwarted. As expected, in every story in which he appears M never misses a chance to produce his own brand of comical antics.

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	01 novembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782344117
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Title Page
AN EMU AT WAR
By
Merv Lambert

Publisher Information
An Emu at War
Published in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © 2012 Merv Lambert
The right of Merv Lambert to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Haunting by Numbers
Billy and Jilly were intrigued. M had never seemed vain, but there he was standing in front of a mirror and staring at his reflection. Today he kept raising and lowering his head, and also turning it to the left and then to the right. This was because he was undecided. Which wig suited him best? Since the episode in which he had helped Auntie Flo defeat the treacherous Mr. Trench, she had rewarded their emu by buying him a set of six different fancy-dress wigs. At the moment he was admiring himself in an auburn one that hung in straight tresses all the way down his long neck.
Jilly laughed. “What does it matter? It’s keeping him amused.”
“Yeah,” laughed her brother Billy. “He’ll soon tire of it, won’t he?”
Little did they know that M’s current craze would soon prove very useful to them and most of their neighbours. A small minority, however, wouldn’t like what happened at all.
It had really begun two weeks ago. No. 60 was just an ordinary detached house on an ordinary street. The family, who moved in, were far from ordinary though. The Smoggs took extreme delight in annoying other people. They looked ordinary enough, except that they always seemed to have a mocking look on their faces. Donny Smogg was not a big man, but he was lean and mean with a thin pencil moustache and dark, scary eyes. He liked to inspire fear, and saw himself as ‘the Intimidator’. His wife was even more scary. She was large, very large. She called herself Ronnie, which was short for Veronica. Her mean, squinty little eyes were hidden behind large, black-framed glasses. The youngest member of the family was Conrad. He was known as Connie to make sure all the names rhymed. He was the one, who liked deliberately breaking things, other people’s things. On his first day at his new school he had smashed nine window-panes. He claimed the breaking of each one was accidental, but the head-teacher told him that, if all the damage had simply been to one window, it could be true, but since the nine broken panes were in nine different windows, it was impossible. Connie had just laughed. His father Donny had just laughed too, when he was asked to pay for the repairs. Of course he promised to, but he knew he never would. His family always got away with things, didn’t they? They had a certain knack of slipping off before trouble struck.
In those two weeks the residents of the street, where Billy and Jilly lived, became gradually more and more annoyed by the family now living at no. 60. First of all in several back gardens around no. 60 things were found upturned or broken. A wheelbarrow suddenly had a bent wheel. An expensive fancy china flower-planter or pot was left chipped and cracked. Plants were uprooted. Flower-heads were broken off, and petals were strewn on paths and lawns. It was as if a mini-tornado had hit. All this damage must have occurred overnight, for no one had seen or heard the culprits. Soon people began to suspect the Smoggs, but they couldn’t prove anything. The clue, however, was that the garden of no. 60 was untouched. Donny Smogg was most annoying, as he strolled with a satisfied grin on his face down to the betting shop on Medlar Road. Yes he felt very pleased with himself and his family, for his Plan A had worked well. They were beginning to settle in well here, beginning to annoy the neighbours just nicely. Those neighbours were all so smug, thought Smogg. They were so proud of their neat houses and gardens. He hated these people. He hated people in general. It was time to set in motion Plan B. Of course it wouldn’t make him any money, but he would have a good laugh.
Consequently he set Plan B in motion that very night. It was 2.30 a.m., and in most of the houses in the street the people were fast asleep. Suddenly a lot of them were not. What was that noise? It was a very loud burglar-alarm wailing. Some people got out of bed to peer through their bedroom curtains. A light was flashing high up just below the roof of no. 60. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the noise stopped. In his house Donny Smogg grinned. Now he could get some kip.
The next night nothing happened, except that the side of a shed in a garden across the road from no.60 had been sprayed with graffiti. Ronnie and Donny watched as a police-car pulled up across the road. They laughed. They knew the police would have nothing to go on, no leads, nothing. All they would do would be to give the house owners a crime number, and tell them to report anything suspicious. Although the police had been informed of the destruction earlier in the week in the surrounding gardens, Little Connie had left no muddy footprints leading here. Ronnie took great pleasure in seeing how happy her husband and son were at upsetting other people. It was not surprising they had no friends. They didn’t need them, did they? Other people were so nasty and selfish, weren’t they? You couldn’t trust anybody else, only family. She didn’t mind moving house every so often. She thought, ‘Relocation, relocation, relocation! There were always plenty of new people to annoy. The police in many towns had fat files of complaints made against them, the Smoggs, but nothing could ever be proved. They were also quite adept at changing their names. They had been Snug, Snook, Smithers and Smythe, and Wayne, Jayne, and Shayne. Yes, it was quite fun really. Little did she know that things would very shortly not be much fun for them again, and that a certain emu was about to have a lot of fun of his own at their expense.
Of course once again the Smoggs set off their burglar-alarm in the middle of the night, and of course once again it brought angry reactions from the neighbours. Although the alarm switched off abruptly, two men came and hammered on the door of no. 60. They started forcibly to make their point to Donny Smogg, but he smiled disarmingly, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Sorry. I’m trying to get it fixed. For some reason it seems to keep going off of its own accord. It won’t happen again.”
But of course it did! That week Billy and Jilly and their parents were woken up twice more in the middle of the night by the Smoggs’ alarm.
“Everybody’s complaining about them,” said Mrs. Burton. “Did you hear what they did to old Mrs. Barker yesterday? You know it rained all day, and she was just walking home, when they drove by fast straight through a big puddle at the side of the road. She had her umbrella up to keep off the rain, but her legs got absolutely soaked. She says all three of them threw their hands in the air, and laughed. Disgraceful I call it!”
“Aye, they’re a flaming nuisance,” agreed her husband.
In a corner of the kitchen M perked up, and started to take notice. A flaming nuisance? Perhaps he could put out the flames.
Mr. Burton added, “Me and Joe are on the neighbourhood watch patrol tonight. Going to catch the blighters vandalising the gardens. Anyway Friday night. No work tomorrow.”
Already M had gone up to Billy’s room, and was deciding which wig he would wear. No. 1? No. 5? No. 6? He decided he would probably use them all.
That night Connie made his first mistake in vandalising the gardens. As he crept about dressed in dark clothes and with mud daubed on his face to imitate the camouflage worn by soldiers in films, he did not know that he was being stalked by an invisible emu. M watched, as the boy tore up some flowers, dumped them on the path, and headed for the ornamental pond in Mrs. Walker’s garden at no. 68. He was looking round for something to throw into it, when unexpectedly his feet left the ground. He seemed to be suspended horizontally in the air for about three or four seconds, and then he descended with a huge splash into the water of the shallow pond. M had timed it perfectly.
“Hey, what was that?” said Joe.
“I think it came from Mrs. Walker’s garden,” replied Mr. Burton.
They unlocked the side gate with a key that Mrs. Walker had given them, and were just in time to see a small dripping figure scrambling out of the pond.
“Gotcha!” exclaimed Joe, clamping a large hand onto the back of the boy’s hoodie.
“Let me go!” screeched Connie. “Or...or...”
“You’ll what, sonny?” asked Joe grimly.
“I’ll get my dad on you!”
“Oo, we are frightened,” mocked Joe.
“Yes, he just rescued you from that pond,” added Mr. Burton. “I saw him quite clearly.”
It was quite dark, but Connie was too stupid to think of that as counter argument.
The two men marched the boy to no. 60, and hammered on the front door. When Donny Smogg opened it, M, who had been watching with an amused gleam in his eye, nipped inside to inspect the interior of the house, but first he listened to what was going on on the front doorstep.
“Well?” barked Donny Smogg aggressively. “What do you want?”
Joe began, “We found something of yours in Mrs. Walker’s garden.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yes,” said Mr. Burton, and still gripping the back of Connie’s hoodie, Joe pushed the dripping, squirming,