You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! - Andy Stanton Mr Gum

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how amazing it was:

      Think of a number between one and ten.

      Multiply that number by five.

      Add on three hundred and fifty.

      Take away eleven.

      Throw all those numbers away.

      Now think of an amazing garden.

      Whatever number you started with, you should now be thinking of an amazing garden. And that’s how amazing Mr Gum’s garden was. In spring it was bursting with crocuses and daffodils. In summer there were roses, sunflowers, and those little blue ones, what are they called again? You know, those blue ones, they look a bit like dinosaurs – anyway, there were tons of them. In autumn the leaves from the big oak tree covered the lawn, turning it gold like a gigantic leafy robot. In winter, it was winter.

      No one in town could understand how Mr Gum’s garden could be so pretty, greeny, flowery and gardeny when his house was such a filthy tip.

      ‘Maybe he just likes gardening,’ said Jonathan Ripples, the fattest man in town.

      ‘Perhaps he’s trying to win a garden contest,’ said a little girl called Peter.

      ‘I reckon he just quite likes gardening,’ said Martin Launderette, who ran the launderette.

      ‘Oy, that was my idea!’ said Jonathan Ripples.

      ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Martin Launderette. ‘You can’t prove it, fatso.’

      In fact, they were all wrong. The real reason was this: Mr Gum had to keep the garden tidy because otherwise an angry fairy would appear in his bathtub and start whacking him with a frying pan. (You see, there is always a simple explanation for things.) Mr Gum hated the fairy but he couldn’t work out how to get rid of it, so his only choice was to do the gardening or it was pan-whacks.

      And so life went on in the peaceful town of Lamonic Bibber. Everyone got on with their business and Mr Gum snoozed the days away in his dirty house and did lots of gardening he didn’t want to do. And nothing much ever happened, and the sun went down over the mountains.

       (Sorry, I nearly forgot. Something did happen once, that’s what this story’s about. I do apologise. Right, what was it?

       Um…

       Oh, of course! How could I be so stupid? It was that massive whopper of a dog. How on earth could I forget about him? Right, then.)

      One day a massive whopper of a dog –

       (Actually, I think we’d better have a new chapter. Sorry about all this, everyone.)

       Chapter 2 A Massive Whopper of a Dog

      One day a massive whopper of a dog came to live on the outskirts of town. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. What strange things had he seen? Nobody knows. What was his name? Everybody knows. It was Jake the dog.

      He was a furry wobbler and friendly as toast and he soon made himself very popular. He would often come into town to play with the children and give them rides on his enormous broad back. No matter how many children wanted a laugh on him he never grew tired. He was just that sort of dog. If he had been a person he probably would have been a king, or at the very least a racing car driver with a cool helmet.

      Or perhaps he would have been a gardener because Jake the dog loved nothing more than playing in gardens. He enjoyed rolling his big doggy body around on a springy green lawn to see what it felt like (generally it felt like a lawn) and chomping up the flowers in his big doggy mouth to see what they tasted like (generally they tasted like flowers). He looked so happy that nobody really minded his messy visits.

      In fact, a rumour began that if Jake the dog visited your garden it meant you were in for some good luck, and if he left a ‘little gift’ on the lawn you were in for double good luck and maybe even a telegram from the Queen.

      So the townsfolk started to leave pies and bones out on their lawns, hoping to tempt Jake into their gardens. Sometimes it worked and sometimes not. Mostly he played where he liked and when he liked. He was a free spirit, like Robin Hood or The Man in the Moon or something, I dunno – he was just a dog, after all. All summer long Jake played, and everything was fine until the fateful day he discovered a garden he’d never played in before. It was the prettiest, greeniest, floweriest, gardeniest garden in the whole of Lamonic Bibber.

      On that fateful day Mr Gum was snoozing away in his unmade bed. (I told you he was a lazer and that’s what lazers do.) He was dreaming his favourite dream, the one where he was a giant terrorising the townsfolk. His enormous bloodshot eyes flashed evilly like flying saucers high up in the clouds as he snatched the roofs off houses to steal the toys from the children’s bedrooms. Nobody could stop him. He was the biggest and the best, he was –

       WHACK!!!

      For a moment Mr Gum did not know what was happening. Where were the tiny houses? Where were the frightened people? Where were the – WHACK!!! ‘Ow!’ yelled Mr Gum, rubbing his head and looking around in terror. ‘Oh, no!’ he rasped. The angry fairy was hovering over him, frying pan at the ready.

      ‘Sort out the garden, you lazy snorer!’ yelled the fairy, and down came the frying pan.

      Mr Gum was too fast this time and shot out of bed like a guilty onion. PFFF! went the frying pan as it hit the bedcovers, sending up a little cloud of dust and ants.

      Mr Gum legged it out of the bedroom and went hurtling down the stairs. He stepped on an old slice of pizza lying in the hall and skidded into the kitchen, riding it like a cheese and tomato surfboard. He could hear the fairy right behind him, shrieking with fury.

      ‘I ’aven’t done nothin’ wrong! I kept the flippin’ garden TIDY!’ shouted Mr Gum as he flung open the back door and ran outside. He started to say something else but when he saw the garden the words got stuck in his throat. They tasted horrible.

      The garden was not tidy. The garden was a total wreck. The lawn was tufted up and torn. The flowerbeds were trampled and chewed. Rose petals and sunflower heads lay scattered all over the place like rose petals and sunflower heads. There was something lying under the oak tree that Mr Gum did not even want to think about. And in the centre of the wreckage played the most monstrous dog Mr Gum had ever seen.

      It was Jake, of course. The beast was rolling around for his own fun, his golden-brown fur matted with grass, his happy eyes squinting into the sunshine. Before Mr Gum’s disbelieving eyes, nine moles popped out of their holes and joined the party.

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