LITMIR.BIZ

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usually wake up in the opposite order to the way we go to sleep. Lyndz is always awake first and once she’s awake, everyone’s awake. She’s the noisiest person alive. She was sleeping on the camp bed and every time she moved, it squeaked. And when she leant over to reach for her sleepover bag, the camp bed collapsed at one end and catapulted her out on the floor.

      So she woke us all up squealing and giggling. The next thing, she’d got the hiccups. When Lyndz gets hiccups, she really gets hiccups. She could get in the Guinness Book of Records for hiccups.

      We’ve tried all sorts of ways of curing her of them: a cold key down her back, giving her a fright, standing on her head – No, not us standing on her head! – wet flannels, pinching her nose, making her sing “God Save the Queen” backwards. But best of all is pressing down hard with your thumbs on the palm of her hand, while she holds her breath.

      But the minute you wake up in the morning is not a time when your brain is working well. So it took a bit longer than usual, and the longer the hiccups went on, the pinker Lyndz’s face got and the more she hiccuped. In the end I managed it with my magic thumbs, but some people are never grateful.

      “That really hurt,” she complained, rubbing her hand.

      “Oh, tell me about it,” I said. I thought my thumbs would never recover. Then I tripped over the camp bed, which folded under me, so I ended up on the floor too.

      Lyndz made the mistake of laughing. OK, I thought, payback time! And I picked up Stanley, who is my toughest bear.

      Teddy fights are one of our favourite things. Sometimes we use pillows, but the best fights are with squishy-poos. A squishy-poo is a sleeping bag filled with clothes and things, which you whack each other with while balancing on a bed. That’s one of our International Gladiator events. But you need plenty of room for that.

      When it’s a teddy fight, Stanley always wins because he’s stuffed really hard and he’s quite big. You can see the other bears tremble when they see him coming. Stanley is unbeatable.

      I could see Rosie watching us again, thinking definitely weird. But she’ll get used to us in time. Then my dad came in, so we had to stop.

      “When you’ve quite finished the demolition job, it’s time for breakfast,” he said.

      While we were getting ready, Rosie said, “Now tell me who Dishy Dave is.”

      “You know, he’s the new caretaker at school,” said Fliss, butting in before I could speak. “Dave’s great.”

      He is great. He used to drive a mobile library van before he came to our school. He’s quite young and we all like him because he doesn’t tell us off. He’s really nice to the infants. Sometimes, if they offer him a cup of tea, he sits down in the home corner with a crown on his head and pretends to be Prince Charles. He’s a good laugh.

      “Isn’t he married?”

      “I don’t think so,” said Fliss. “Why?”

      “He could go out with Brown Owl,” Rosie suggested.

      “What a brilliant idea!” said Fliss “Why didn’t I think of that?”

      “Probably because I thought of it first,” I said.

      “It was my idea,” Kenny muttered.

      “Rosie thought of it, actually,” said Fliss.

      “How would you know?” I said. “You were asleep, actually!”

      Things could have got difficult. Me and Fliss often get into arguments about who thought of something first, but then my mum called us for breakfast so that was that.

      But whoever’s idea it was, it spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e. And we’d have been better off if nobody had thought of it. But you know Fliss, once she gets hold of an idea she won’t let go, especially if it’s got anything to do with weddings.

      “Just think,” she said, “they might fall in love and get married. I bet Brown Owl would be so grateful, she’d even let us be her bridesmaids.”

      “I doubt it,” I said.

      Kenny rolled her eyes. She doesn’t mind dressing up for a laugh, but she wouldn’t want to be a bridesmaid. Personally, I wouldn’t mind, if I could choose what I wore. I’m really into silver. I’ve got a pair of silver shoes and occasionally, at weekends, I’m allowed to wear silver nail varnish. The others sometimes call me Spaceman. But I couldn’t see Brown Owl wanting bridesmaids dressed in silver.

      I said, “Knowing Brown Owl, she’d probably make us wear our Brownie uniforms.”

      “But we’d still get to go to her wedding,” said Fliss.

      “I think it’s a great idea,” said Lyndz. “It’d be nice for both of them.”

      “Come on, let’s make a plan,” said Felicity.

      “I think we’d better find out if he’s already got a girlfriend first,” I said.

      “How will we do that?” said Rosie.

      “We’ll ask him,” said Kenny.

      “When?”

      “On Monday,” I said. “The sooner the better.”

      

      We all go to the same school. It’s called Cuddington County Primary and it’s a great school. Our teacher’s called Mrs Weaver and she’s great too, so’s the Head, Mrs Poole. She never shouts, she just looks disappointed with you, if you get sent to her. It’s not so bad, as long as you keep looking at your feet.

      There’s only one thing wrong with our school and that’s Mrs Pickett; she’s one of the dinner ladies. Mrs Pickernose, we call her. She does nothing but tell people off. She is bad news. But apart from her, we all like our school.

      Dishy Dave is what we call Mr Driver. That’s because he’s dead tall and good-looking, a bit like Brad Pitt. And he’s a good laugh. He calls us ‘guys’ and the boys ‘girls’. He kicks a football around with them sometimes and he plays the piano for us to dance to; he knows all sorts of tunes.

      Practising our dance routines is one of our best skives. We go into the studio and turn all the lights off, apart from one or two spots, and pretend we’re dancers with Oasis. Or sometimes we go in the hall to dance and Mr Driver plays the piano. If the M&Ms haven’t got there first, that is. The M&Ms are our biggest enemies – Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman, yuk! – but I’ll tell you about them another time.

      Mr Driver lives just down the road from school and he’s always in and out. The only time he’s too busy to talk to you is at home time, when he has to get on with the cleaning, but apart from that he never minds a good old chat.

      So, on Monday, we went looking for him at break time. We found him cleaning some graffiti off the side of one of the mobile classrooms. We sidled up to him and then hung around waiting for the right moment.

      “Uh-oh,” he said, “here comes trouble.” But he smiled and went on scrubbing. “This wasn’t your handiwork, I suppose?”

      “Nooo!” we said. “Certainly not!” And we all looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths, as my grandma says.

      After a bit I said, “Dave…” He doesn’t mind us calling him Dave.

      “Have you got a girlfriend?”

      He stopped scrubbing and started to grin. “No. But I think I’m a bit old for you, don’t you?”

      I went bright red. The others started to laugh as if it was so funny.

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