Paddington Bear
Olga da Polga
Monsieur Pamplemousse
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This edition published 2016
Text copyright © Michael Bond, 2016
Illustrations copyright © Joel Stewart, 2016
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–448–19526–8
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RHCP Digital
Penguin Random House Children’s
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To the original Harry,
dearly loved despite everything.
Most leading characters in works of fiction are modelled on real people, and in committing that fact to paper the author usually goes to endless trouble to make sure their personal details remain hidden from view so that no one will recognize them. While I was writing this book I was able to enjoy the luxury of making sure the reverse was true. In short, what you read says it all. There is nothing added and nothing taken away. It is simply Harry all the way.
‘FANCY HARRY SAYING you can recognize his grandfather from a mile away because he has lots of white hair with a hole in the middle!’
Hearing Dad’s voice coming from the next room, I pricked up my ears – Harry being the key word, of course, because it happens to be my name.
‘It was only an essay,’ said Mum.
‘Only an essay!’ Dad gave a loud snort. ‘Well, it’s your father. But you know who to blame if everyone starts pointing him out next time he goes to a school concert; like they did with me when he concocted that story about my being in the fire brigade.
‘“How very interesting, Mr Manners . . .”’ Dad went into his ‘Miss Spooner the Headmistress’ routine. ‘“You must come and give a talk to the fifth form one of these days. We would all love to hear what it’s like. Do you spend much of your time up a ladder?”’
‘I really don’t know what made him do it,’ admitted Mum. ‘I suppose he must have been reading something about them at the time. Anyway, it’s not his fault he happens to be blessed with a vivid imagination.’
I’ll say this for Mum. She always sticks up for me.
‘Remember that parents’ evening when the geography teacher told us that Harry had been keeping the whole class enthralled with the story of how we’d been rescued by a helicopter during a snowstorm on the Cairngorms?’ said Dad. ‘We’ve never been within a hundred miles of the Cairngorms. The trouble is, we have to suffer. I shall never hear the last of it if they get to know about it in the office.’
‘I think it’s all wrong,’ said Mum, ‘getting children to write an essay about their home life. I suppose the teachers do it so that they can get to know them better.’
‘Find out about things that are none of their business, more like.’ Dad sounded a bit disgruntled. He’s a funny person, my dad. I don’t mean funny laugh-out-loud – I mean funny peculiar. Once he gets his teeth into something, he goes on and on about it. Meal times are the worst. There’s no escape then. He says things like: ‘If we’d been meant to eat peas with a knife, they’d have made them with dents on the blade.’
I think eating’s boring – especially when it’s peas. It makes it more interesting if you try to see how many you can balance on a knife at one go. I once got up to thirty-two before Dad noticed, and that was only because he shouted and it made me jump so much, they all rolled off onto the floor! Even then I only found twenty-seven. The rest got trampled into the carpet.
Breakfast time is the worst; especially when I’m in a hurry to get to school. Or, to put it another way, when I’m late for school and Mum keeps telling me to get a move on.
Dad comes out with things like: ‘Must you use your hand as a shovel? Why can’t you use a spoon like any normal child?’
I bet he was just as bad when he was small. ‘I was thinking only the other day at breakfast, “cornflakes” is a funny name for a food – it sounds like something that’s come away from your foot.’
‘Must you?’ said my Big Sister, pretending to throw up.
That did it. I’d had enough. My Big Sister’s right about one thing. She says listeners never hear any good about themselves, and at times like that it’s best to be alone in your room.
That’s one of the good things about having an untidy bedroom. People don’t come in and start poking around. With mine they usually open the door, say something like ‘Ugh!’ then go away again.
Having made myself comfortable, I went back to my Max Masters.
There’s nothing like a good book. They make pictures in your head. At least, they do in mine. I remember reading one written by someone called Ray Bradbury. It was about a machine that could take you on a trip back in time. The only trouble was, you weren’t allowed to touch anything. In the story someone accidentally killed a butterfly, and when the passengers returned home, they found the whole world had changed. I could picture it all.
Max Masters’s book features a boy about the same age as me, whose mother sends him out to buy some chips.
He comes across a shop called Chips with Everything. What he doesn’t realize is that they aren’t the sort of chips you eat with fish; they are computer chips.
There are some 486s and a whole host of 283s, which are now so old I don’t even have one in my tablet. But best of all, there are a lot of Pentium chips. Imagine, all that for tenpence! The man in the shop says they fell off the back of a lorry that very morning.
It made me laugh because in the story the boy couldn’t help trying one to see what it tasted like and it stuck in his throat. After which he began saying all kinds of weird things like: ‘Did you know that if the average man was freeze dried and then vacuum packed, he would only be a third of his normal weight?’
He wouldn’t be much use to anyone, of course, but I think it’s interesting all the same.
What I like most about Max Masters’s books is that they’re full of facts and figures. The sort of things that stick in your mind; not like the ones they try and teach you at school. I bet people remember King Alfred because he burned the cakes long after they’ve forgotten what date it was.
However, it started me thinking. I mean, suppose someone who didn’t know anything about computers ate a whole packet of Pentium chips by mistake. And then, supposing, just supposing, they all joined up inside and made one ginormous computer. Think of all the problems he would be able to solve. Imagine being able to walk in the front door one day and say something like: ‘What’s two thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four multiplied by two million, five hundred and thirty-two?’ and come up with the right answer.
I know what my dad would say. ‘Go and wash your mouth out,’ or ‘Do be quiet. It’s Arsenal playing.’
My Big Sister’s lips would go all pursed. Especially if Dad came running in with a pencil and paper, having woken up to the fact that I’d got the answer right after all.
That would set Mum off. First of all she would take my temperature and then she would send for the doctor – just in case I was sickening for something.
Lying back on my bed, I closed my eyes so that I could picture it better. I bet they would soon be sorry they’d grumbled at me. I imagined the doctor telling me to say ‘Aaah’ like he always does. Dad says it’s so that he can check up in his Home Doctor while you’re not looking, but my Big Sister reckons it’s to stop me talking. She would!
Anyway, that’s when I showed him. Instead of saying ‘Aaah’, I came out with Einstein’s formula for relativity.
‘Would you mind repeating that?’ said the doctor.
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I’ll go through it backwards if you like.’ I wouldn’t mind betting the same sort of thing happened to Einstein himself. That’s how things get discovered. I think a lot of things get discovered by accident.
Mrs Einstein probably called out, ‘Dinner’s ready, Albert . . . Don’t let yours get cold.’ And he came out with his formula without thinking. Mum often says that if I’d been born a few years earlier, I would most likely have discovered penicillin. I’m not sure what she means by that.
‘I think I may have got pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,’ I said to the doctor.
Well, you could have heard a pin drop. (I first came across the word when I was looking up how to spell pneumatic. It had taken me half the morning. I’d been looking through the ‘n’s. Well, how was I to know it started with a ‘p’? I think they should have special dictionaries showing words the way they look as though should be spelled. Otherwise how are you supposed to look them up?)
The doctor gave me a hard look, then turned to Dad. ‘I’ll write out a prescription for some tablets,’ he said. ‘Tell him to take them three times a day before meals. If it doesn’t go away in three days, call me again.’
From that moment on a sort of chain reaction set in. I think he must have told some of his other patients about it while he was doing his rounds, because the news spread like wildfire.
The very next day there was a phone call from a newspaper. And before you could say ‘om-bom-stiggy-woggles’ or, as my sister would say, ‘awesome’, there I was, all over the front page of the Sun.
Mum had palpitations and Dad couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘I’ve fathered a genius!’ he said, taking the credit.