The Heroic Truths of Neil Peel , livre ebook

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd - Ben Dixon

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90 pages

English

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“Neil Peel. What the hell?” snarled Ottilie. “Of all the sad sacks in this school, I get stuck sitting at a desk next to the saddest of them all…again!”
Neil Peel is about to start his first year at Titfield School, and this is his welcome.
Best friends Stephen and Grub will be at his sides as he faces bullies, takes part in a football match for the uncoordinated, tries to survive a visit from a devilish cousin who’s determined to ruin his Christmas, and even faces a brush with crime.
At least Neil’s evil genius older sister Lemony is on hand to trip him up and kick him when he’s down.
Approaching adolescence is not easy for anyone, but life can be even harder when you always tell the truth. At least everybody knows where they stand with Neil, but will his honesty turn out to be a blessing or a curse?

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Date de parution	10 décembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781786938282
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Extrait

T he H eroic T ruths o f N eil P eel
Ben Dixon
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-12-10
The Heroic Truths of Neil Peel About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1: How I Became Honest Chapter 2: The End of Summer Chapter 3: A New Term Starts Chapter 4: Visiting My Grandparents Chapter 5: Incidents with Bullies Chapter 6: Half Term Chapter 7: Lesson in Love Chapter 8: The Football Match Chapter 9: Christmas Shopping Chapter 10: A Family Christmas Chapter 11: Haircut Chapter 12: Steinberged Chapter 13: Dad’s Phone Call Disaster Chapter 14: What We Heard in the Woods Chapter 15: Formulating Tactics Chapter 16: Convincing My Parents Chapter 17: Training Day Chapter 18: The Stakeout Chapter 19: The Truth Will Set You Free Chapter 20: The Beginning of Summer
About the Author
Ben Dixon is a father of four children, teacher of French and the author behind the world of Neil Peel. He grew up in Yorkshire, grew up a bit more in Leicestershire before moving to settle in Surrey. The Heroic Truths of Neil Peel is his first novel. He lives in Guildford with his wife, Sarah, and children, Sophie, Isabelle, Max and Kiera.
Dedication
For Sophie, Isabelle and Max.
Copyright Information ©
Copyright © Ben Dixon (2020)
The right of Ben Dixon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781786937988 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781786938282 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my children, Sophie, Isabelle and Max, for their wit and inspiration, their crazy suggestions and patience in reading the chapters. Neil and Lemony are only partly based on you!
My parents, Robin and Pat Dixon, have always supported my endeavours and believed in my creativity.
Thanks to my brother-in-law, Simon Green, for bringing my characters to life with his drawings.
My brothers, Rob and Jon Dixon, along with my best friends, Chas and Nev Last, lived many of the shenanigans in this story with me in our youth. Who’d have ever thought that such silliness would make it onto the printed page? It’s hard to believe that such things happened in real life.
Rose-Anne Manning, Mark Halstead, Stephen Froggatt, Daniel Dixon and George Beevers, all read the book and provided helpful tips.
Finally, I’d like to thank my wife, Sarah, for putting up with this bonkers project.
Chapter 1

How I Became Honest
“Come on, Neil. Own up. Honesty is the best policy.”
I well remember the significant words my mum said to me when I was five years old. My sister, Lemony, stood just behind her, smirking at me from underneath her straight-cut brown fringe before adopting a genuinely upset look as Mum turned to look at her.
“You can’t blame Lemony when you’ve done something wrong,” she continued. “You’ve just got to admit it.”
At the time, I thought this was all rather unfair. After all, I had been happily playing with my Playmobil pirates and had set up the ship just how I liked it so that pirate Sid and his gang, the Salty Seamen, were about to board the sturdy Fishgutter. Dad had previously tried to persuade me to call Sid’s gang the Salty Seadogs, but I’d explained that that would be nonsense as they were men and not dogs. He had chuckled for some reason and left me to it.
I sang to myself while playing:
One, two, three, four, five
Once I ate a fish alive
Why did you let it go?
Six, seven, eight and nine and ten
Then I let it go again
Because it bit off all my toes
Why did the fish finger?
Six, seven, eight and nine and ten.
The octopus, Inky Bubbles, was biding his time behind the rocks, ready to soak Sid’s crew with his squirter before inevitably dragging pirate Barnacles away to eat for his tea. All of a sudden, a little white cotton sock appeared in my vision and punted Barnacles onto the sofa.
“Oh dear,” mocked Lemony. “I think you’ve got a deserter.”
“Hey!” I cried as I darted to fetch the prostrate Barnacles and reattach his cutlass; his grip had become a bit limp recently, and he was always in danger of letting the Seamen down by dropping his weapon at the crucial moment.
Turning back to the ocean scene, I saw Lemony tossing Sid over her shoulder towards the mantelpiece. I watched his trajectory in slow-motion; I could see that he was heading straight for the wedding photograph of Nanna and Grandad in its delicate little wooden frame. In case you’re wondering, it wasn’t actually slow-motion. I haven’t got superpowers like that guy in X-Men ; it just seemed like a long time.
I scrambled towards the mantelpiece, knocking the Fishgutter over in my wake but to no avail. Of course, the photograph fell, and the glass broke with a tinkle in the hearth below, just as Lemony tiptoed back up the stairs and into her bedroom.
“Neil! What was that noise?” came Mum’s voice from the kitchen. You can guess what happened next, of course. Mum blamed me. I said it was Lemony. Mum called Lemony downstairs, and she appeared, looking like an angel who had descended from heaven, offering to help.
“No, Mum. I was just tidying my bedroom, and I was concentrating so hard on arranging my reading books that I didn’t hear any commotion. What happened?”
Frustration mounted in me, but I fought back the tears, and instead of crying, I sat myself down facing the wall, cross-legged and arms folded with a very grumpy look on my face.
“If that’s how it’s going to be, then you can stay there until you’re ready to tell the truth,” ordered Mum. Saint Lemony even had the gall to offer help with clearing up my pirates while Mum swept up the broken glass. I let out a harrumph of disgust at how low my sister could sink.
*
I should digress and let you know that Lemony isn’t my sister’s real name; it’s Melanie. The reason why she’s known as Lemony has become clouded over time. My mum thinks it’s because she used to wear a lemon-yellow dress when she started school. Dad thinks it’s because I couldn’t pronounce Melanie properly when I’d just started to talk. Her best friend, Ella, thinks it’s because our surname is Peel, but I find that the most fitting reason is that she’s just plain sour. She seems to take pleasure in ruining anything sweet, and that’s the only time the sneer disappears from her face: when she’s up to mischief. More recently, since she became an adolescent, my best friend, Stephen, has started to call her Melon-y for two main reasons, but I try to change the subject pretty quickly on such occasions.
*
Back to my five-year-old strop (that’s the strop when I was five rather than a strop that lasted five years; I’m stubborn but even I may have caved in before that long). I faced that wall for the rest of the afternoon and all evening too. Mum had to explain what I was doing when Dad got back from work and also when I refused to move at dinner time. I was not going to admit to something I hadn’t done, and I accepted that I’d go to bed hungry because I also knew that my parents would back down long before I would. Mum even described me as “a faffing pain in the giant backside of doom” when she thought I was out of earshot, which was as close to swearing as I’d heard from my mother.
Just as the clock struck nine and I’d committed the exact details of my particular patch of lounge wallpaper to long-term memory, Dad scooped me up in his arms and carried me upstairs to bed, whispering that we’d all forget this incident in the morning and move on.
However, I wasn’t going to forget this day at all. My decision was that Mum was right about one thing; honesty is the best policy, and from that day onwards, I was going to tell the truth, regardless of the consequences.
Chapter 2

The End of Summer
Of course, I didn’t bear a grudge against Mum for not believing me. After all, it was lying Lemony who had fooled her. However, I’ve made good on my promise for six years now and have always told the truth since that day, and my parents have come to realise that I won’t lie. The truth has become instinctive to me.
Dad won’t let me speak to our neighbour, Mr Bush, in case I tell him that we’ve been piggybacking his Wi-Fi since Dad copied his password at Christmas drinks last year. It’s not that we’re poor, but Dad had a comparatively humble upbringing, and he’s not one to forget his roots. Also, he says that some of the nibbles the Bushes served them had Nasturtium leaves as a garnish, and anyone who gives his guests flowers to eat is a ponce and deserves whatever’s coming to him.
*
August was coming to an end, and I was going to be starting at Titfield School in a week’s time. Most of my friends from our village primary school, Prince Albert of Lower Piercing, were joining with me, but that was a small school, so there would be a lot of new pupils to meet. I was certainly nervous about a new beginning. My manner had been similar to many children at first, but as most others learned to use white lies to get out of uncomfortable situations or to protect friends, I continued with the truth, and my teachers had been used to me. How would new people react to my