BILLY PLONKA AND THE GROT LABORATORY Page 2

  Bleep, bleep, bleep!

  Marley rubbed his eyes, noses and ears and looked at the message. It read,

  “Look out of your window!”

  Marley looked at the message again. It still said the same thing and still Marley didn’t understand it. He yawned, burped, dragged on his dressing gown and shuffled over to the window. When he looked out of the window all he saw was everyone else in the town looking out of their windows. Hundreds of sleepy faces all of whom had been woken with the same mysterious text message. But what were they meant to see? People yawned, people scratched, people rubbed their noses, rustled their hair and continued to look out of their windows.

  And just as everyone was starting to get fed up of looking out of their windows and were wondering what to have for breakfast an odd sight came into view. High above the Grot Laboratory appeared a hot air balloon. A big, black, slightly over-inflated hot air balloon with grey patches and brown stains. Dangling below it was a rather tatty wicker basket. Inside it was a figure nobody could make out but whoever it was they were wearing a top hat. The hot air balloon rose higher and higher above the town and every eye in every head followed it.

  People started texting each other.

  “What is it?”

  “Who is it?”

  “What’s for breakfast?”

  “How did you get my number?”

  But no one knew the answer. Then without warning a huge wodge of leaflets was released from the basket and fluttered and flapped earthward. Thousands and thousands of pieces of paper flopped through the air like a flock of seagulls who’d forgotten how to fly.

  Within seconds pyjama-wearing townsfolk were scuttling about the streets snatching leaflets from privet hedges and lampposts. Whatever could it be? The answer was clear and very, very exciting. The leaflet read -

  “Attention People!

  It is with great excitement and delight I, Billy Plonka of Grot Laboratory fame, announce a Grand Opening!2

  I, Billy Plonka, have chosen to invite just 53 guests to my Grand Opening Ceremony who will be shown around by me,

  Billy Plonka.

  All you have to do to win your place on the Grand Opening Tour is buy a Plonka™ Scratch Card and scratch it off. If it emits a hideous stench like a skunk with a poorly tummy - you are a winner!

  Yours grottily,

  Billy Plonka

  Plonka™ Scratch Cards are available at all good outlets and online. Terms and conditions apply. No refunds. Please dispose of this paper thoughtlessly.

  It caused a global phenomenon!!!

  Within nano-seconds the world’s media was buzzing with the announcement, wi-fi connections were pinging emails across the interweb, the Global eCloud was bursting with the news and views, chatrooms chatted about nothing else. Twitface was stuffed with status updates about it and Plonka was trending higher on Witter than anything had ever done in the history of the world. Ever.

  Presidents called Presidents.

  Queens called Queens.

  Prime Ministers called Prime Ministers.

  Film stars called their agents.

  It was Mega-Big News!!

  Every single person on the planet joined the hunt for a winning Plonka™ Scratch Card.

  Marley clicked off his ePhone and thought to himself, “I’m going to get one of those!”

  * * *

  1 Backstory - what’s happened before the story starts probably. I’m sure you could have looked that up yourself without me having to write a footnote for you.

  2 ‘Grand Opening’ was written in five different colours and six different fonts. It looked awful.

  3 ‘5’ had little stars printed around it. Tacky.

  ORSON PLOOP

  The little village of Splatten Pimplepop sat on the side of an Austrian Alp quietly minding its own business, which it had been quietly minding for nearly three hundred years. As I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, Splatten Pimplepop is famous throughout the world for kazoos. Any decent kazoo tooted anywhere in the world is made in Splatten Pimplepop.

  The Ploop Blaster was their best-selling kazoo and nearly one billion of them are being tooted somewhere in the world at any one time. If you stick your head out of the window right now and hear a kazoo being tooted I bet you it’s a Ploop Blaster. Every kazoo made money and a lot of kazoos make a lot of money. And where does all that money go, you’re probably asking. To Orson. Who is Orson, you’re probably asking. Orson Ploop. Who is Orson Ploop, you’re probably asking. The great-grandson of Felix Ploop and heir to the huge kazoo fortune, and he is a very important part of our story.

  Outside the huge kazoo factory on Toot Street a gaggle of clambering reporters, photographers, bloggers, satellite news teams and a couple of confused ducks crowded around the revolving door waiting for Orson Ploop. And why are they waiting for Orson Ploop, you’re probably asking, because Orson Ploop had found the very first Plonka™ Scratch Card!! See that was worth a couple of exclamation marks, wasn’t it?

  Suddenly the door started to revolve and cameras started to flash, reporters started to report and ducks started to quack. Orson Ploop had arrived. He was a small boy of about ten years old with blond hair and a dickie-bow both very well washed, and he stood beneath the grand picture of his great-grandfather that dominated the front of the factory, and like his great-grandfather never missed an opportunity to advertise the Ploop Blaster. As soon as the flashes started flashing and pens started penning, Orson produced his kazoo and struck a series of poses holding his kazoo in a lot of interesting and delightful ways. But the reporters, photographers and ducks were not interested in the kazoo.

  “Tell us, Orson, what’s it like to be the first winner of a Scratch Card?” asked a reporter, poking a microphone in Orson’s face like he was about to fight a sword duel.

  Orson smiled broadly put the kazoo to his lips and …

  “Toooooooot!”

  “I mean, are you excited?”

  “Toooooooot!!”

  “What are you looking forward to at the laboratory?”

  “Tooooooooot!!!”

  “Quack!”

  “Tooooooot - ouch!”

  From behind Orson a very round older lady slapped him around the head, snatched his kazoo, popped it in her pocket and said, “Answer the nice people’s question, Orson. Otherwise I snap the kazoo.”

  Orson patted his blond hair, adjusted his dickie-bow as his mother said and said softly, “It’ll be very…..”

  The anxious crowd of reporters hung on his words. This was one of the biggest events on the planet and this boy’s words were gold dust.

  “…. nice!” he finished.

  The reporters shrugged and grunted. They’d come all the way to Splatten Pimplepop for one word. They all wrote down the word, “Nice.”

  But then Orson slipped the Plonka™ Scratch Card from his pocket and waved it like a flag. The crowd exploded in another outbreak of flashes and questions and quacks once more. There, however, we must leave our winner as there is a lot more yet to tell.

  ~~~

  Across the world people were besotted with the Plonka™ Scratch Cards. People bought and bargained, nicked and knocked-off, nabbed and grabbed, grasped and grappled, tussled and scuffled, stumbled and fumbled all in an attempt to lay their hands on one single Plonka™ Scratch Card.

  The world was ablaze with eager card hunters.

  ~~~

  In Britain, a bowler hat-wearing scientist named Professor Aubrey Wellington-Fitzbaddley had developed the Whiff App which could spot a genuine winning card within nanoseconds. It powered-up the iScratcher Drone, a strange flying object with pokey claws, which would locate the Scratch Card and scratch it off.

  So excited was everyone in Britain by this invention he was even invited to Buckingham Palace. The professor (who was not only sniffing out Scratch Cards but also sniffing the chance of a knighthood, an OBE or, at least, something nice from the gift shop) was about to embark on a very dull, very long, very tedious
explanation of the Whiff App when Her Majesty the Queen, who was used to avoiding dull, long and tedious speeches, said, “Can’t you just show us how it works then we can have tea with the corgis?”

  Professor Aubrey closed his ePad, whipped out his ePhone, opened his Whiff App and pressed it. The phone bleeped painfully, growled darkly and made a noise not entirely unlike a burping moose. The Queen looked at her equerry, the equerry looked at a tea pot and tried to pretend nothing was happening.

  Suddenly, the iScratcher hummed in its box, Professor Aubrey said, “Oh, dear…” and, with a growling howl, the iScratcher launched into flight with its pokey claws grasping the air looking for prey.

  The Queen clapped politely and said, “Now for tea!”

  But all was not over, the Whiff App had mistaken HRH’s very expensive and very exclusive perfume, Queenie, for the whiff of a Plonka™ Scratch Card. The iScratcher swooped down on the Head of the Commonwealth and Supreme Governor of the Church of England and attempted to give her a good scratching. Her Majesty whooped in a very unregal way, but luckily she was a sprightly monarch and ran four times around the room pursued by the iScratcher whooping some more as she went. She dodged the drone three times, skipped over a seventeenth century hand-carved crown-stand and hid behind an original Victorian Sneezing screen, behind which her ancestors used to hide whenever they needed to sneeze, then she shrieked, “Make it stop, Roderick, make it stop!”

  Roderick, the equerry, grabbed a nearby mop and swatted the million pound invention to the ground with a crunch and a crash. There was a swirl of smoke, a few pathetic little sparks and the iScratcher fell silent.

  “I’ve wasted my life,” thought Sir Aubrey sadly to himself as he was thrown out of the doors of Buckingham Palace and fell in an unBritish heap on the pavement.

  These Scratch Cards were driving people mad!

  VICTORIA SCABB

  As the Queen watched Sir Aubrey dust down his bowler hat and scuttle off into the streets of London, she helped herself to a toffee and wondered what was for tea. Probably kippers again, she thought with a sigh. The one thing she wasn't thinking about was the person who was two hundred and fifty-ninth in line to her throne, but we’re going to think about them now because they are the next bit of our story.

  ~~~

  Mr J.D. Scabb B.A. (Ed) scowled down at the massed faces of the assembled children in the echoing hall of St Jitters School for Posh People. He snorted and shouted, “Silence!”

  He didn’t really need to shout for silence as silence was already there. The most silent silence you could possibly imagine. Imagine a silence now then make it a bit quieter. That’s how silent it was.

  “Did I hear a pin drop?” snarled Mr Scabb, scanning the scared faces of his pupils who shook their heads furiously. No one dared upset Mr Scabb. He was the most fearsome and feared head teacher ever and he was at his worst at assembly and it was assembly right now.

  “Robinson!” he bellowed at a small child who looked like a confused clam, “Are you breathing?”

  Robinson nodded his head.

  “Three thousand lines, Robinson!”

  Every other child in the room immediately inhaled deeply and held their breath. No one wanted to be caught breathing again.

  “Listen, very carefully, you snotty, grotty bunch of hopeless nincompoops.1”

  Mr Scabb strutted back and forth across the front of the stage. If he had still been allowed a cane he would have swished it dramatically at this point. He stabbed his finger in the air dramatically instead. It made his point, only it made it shorter.

  “Today is a very special day. Today you will be tested!”

  A moan spread through the pupils like a herd of disgruntled cows who’ve lost the key to their barn on a particularly chilly night.

  “Stop moaning!” He bellowed so loudly even the paintings of previous head teachers seemed to wince.

  He strutted some more. He liked the strutting part of being a head teacher. Not as much as he liked the cane swishing part, though.

  “Each person take a desk and chair and sit at it forthwith2!”

  Nobody knew what forthwith meant and nobody wanted to say that nobody knew what forthwith meant. They all exchanged worried glances during which Mr Scabb did a little more strutting.

  “Barkworth! Define ‘forthwith’, forthwith!”

  Barkworth, gulped and mumbled, “Can I Gurgle3 it, sir?”

  Mr Scabb snarled, “We do not Gurgle in this school, Barkworth. Neither do we Yippee, Snort, Twitface or Pong. Use your brain, Barkworth!” He tapped the side of his head to indicate where brains were kept.

  Barkworth gulped some more. He had used his brain before and always found it a let-down.

  “Oh, very well, Barkworth,” sighed Mr Scabb, “Use Timpson’s brain!”

  Timpson and Barkworth whispered as quietly as they could.

  “It means straight away, sir!” announced Barkworth, with a pleased smile.

  Mr Scabb peered down at the faces below him. It suddenly reminded him of looking into a fishmonger’s window. He shook the image from his mind and bellowed, “Get on with it.” And on with it they got.

  Mr Scabb leapt from the stage to supervise strutting up and down the aisles shouting things like, “Is that your heart beating, Worthington? Three thousand lines!”

  Before long three hundred desks were lined up with military precision in the hall and behind each desk was a chair and on each chair was a pupil. A very worried pupil.

  “And here, children, is the test…”

  “Beep, beep, beep, beep!”

  Three hundred pairs of eyes turned towards the fire exit and saw a large tip-up truck coming towards them in reverse.

  Was it going to come into the hall, they thought. Whatever was going on in Scabb’s mind, they all thought.

  “I’ll tell you what is going on in my mind!” snarled Mr Scabb as a smile slithered across his lips, “This truck contains one quarter of a million Plonka™ Scratch Cards. As you know, a boy called Orson Ploop has found the first one, you lot…” he scanned their anxious faces, “… are going to find the second.”

  The vehicle pressed up against the fire exit, hissed loudly, belched rudely, blasted some carbon monoxide into the room and hissed again. The doors were flung open and the tip-up tipped up scattering one quarter of million Plonka™ Scratch Cards across the shiny hall floor.

  Mr Scabb, up to his knees in Plonka™ Scratch Cards, shouted, “The first person to find a winning card is the winner! Grab a handful and start scratching!”

  They looked at him.

  He looked at them.

  They looked at him some more.

  He bellowed, “Forthwith!” and the assembled pupils pounced on the pile of cards like very peckish chickens.

  ~~~

  The school clock clanged four o’clock and usually on the “c” of the very first clang pupils would be scurrying and scuttling from the school with books and pens falling from their bags, but today there was no scurrying or scuttling, all there was was scratching. Lots and lots of scratching.

  ~~~

  Two hours later half the Plonka™ Scratch Cards had been scratched and nothing had been found. Absolutely nothing. The pupils were getting weary. Their scratching hands were getting sore and they had had no tea apart from the sandwiches Mr Scabb had allowed parents to poke through the window. One mother had even managed to funnel some soup through the letter box. Mr Scabb snarled and hissed. He wanted that Scratch Card.

  Two hours later all that was left was a pile of curled-up cards and a heap of shavings, some bored and yawning pupils and a very frustrated head teacher. It was never going to be found. Never.

  ~~~

  There was nudging and poking amongst the pupils and one put up their hand.

  “Yes, Robinson?” sighed Mr Scabb.

  “That’s it, sir. There are no more scratch cards, sir.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure you’re sure? Have you checked? Have you double check
ed? Are you sure you’re sure you’ve double checked?”

  The tired pupils nodded their heads to every question. There were simply no more scratch cards.

  Mr Scabb inhaled deeply, exhaled loudly and, if he had been allowed a cane, would have snapped it in two.

  “School dismissed!”

  The sleepy pupils dragged themselves from the desks and started to wander towards the school gates.

  Then Mr Scabb saw something.

  He blinked.

  He blinked again.

  Then he shouted, “Robinson, what’s that on your foot?”

  Robinson turned around, looked at his foot and said, “It’s a shoe, sir.”

  “Nincompoop! I mean under your shoe!”

  Robinson tried to look at the underside of his shoe but toppled over face first into a clump of scratch cards and a cloud of shavings.

  Barkworth grabbed Robinson’s foot and stared at it. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “It’s an unscratched scratch card, sir!” he announced peeling it from Robinson shoe.

  “Then scratch it, boy, scratch it. You could be a winner!”

  Barkworth slid out his ruler and started to scratch and scratch and scratch.

  Suddenly there a loud puff, a louder pop and the most rancid, foul, putrid and repugnant stench filled the room. It was the smell of bad alligator eggs, curdled badger’s milk and bacon yoghurt three years past its sell-by date.

  Barkworth held the whiffy card in the air, covered his nose and eyes and yelled, “I’m a winner!”

  “You are, indeed, Barkworth and here is your pound!” He snatched the scratched scratch card from Barkworth’s confused fingers and replaced it with a shiny new pound coin. “Well done!”

  Barkworth stared at the coin and, for the first time in his school life, answered back.

  “But I found that, sir, you said whoever found it was a winner!”

  “You are a winner, Barkworth, you won a pound. Don’t spend it all at once! This…” He waved the scratched card before the faces of the bewildered pupils wafting the stench victoriously, “...is mine!”