Agatha Parrot and the Floating Head (3 page)

Most of the pots had labels with funny writing on them, so the only way to tell what was inside was by opening them up and having a look. The first one I tried turned out to be marmalade which isn't too bad on a pizza actually. I'd give it 6/10. Ivy found ham with red pepper bits (8/10), pineapple (10/10) and black cherries in syrup (2/10 but Ivy LOVES them because she's nuts).

We put loads of stuff on the pizzas. I made a spider pattern, Martha did a rainbow and Ivy did a face with lots of mad hair made from spaggetty. (Or is it spaggeti? Spaghety? Spahgetti . . . oh you know what I mean, it's that long stringy stuff you can eat with bollonays sauce. Bolonaiz. Bollonnaze . . . OH FORGET IT.) She said it was supposed to be me because my hair is a bit impossible like my mum's is.
At least it's better than having hair like my dad because he's as bald as a light bulb
ha ha!

We'd just about finished loading up the pizzas when Martha opened a jar of yellowy-pink stuff which smelt like James's football socks (0/10).

‘No way am I having THAT!' said Ivy.

‘Coward,' said Martha.

‘Then I dare you to put it on YOUR pizza,' said Ivy.

That got Martha thinking. ‘I've already got pineapple, beetroot, garlic sausage, dried banana, olives and raspberry jam. Anything else might ruin the taste.'

I had a look at the label on the jar.

The only bit I could understand was the ‘best before' date and it was ages away, so whatever it was should have been safe enough.

Ivy gave Martha a poke in the ribs. ‘Go on Martha, I dare you to eat all that for a million billion pounds.'

Ha!
Martha would eat her own head for 20p. So for a million billion pounds she slopped the whole jar of yellowy-pink stuff all over her pizza
(oh boy did it
STINK
or what?), and then her mum came in and shoved all the pizzas in the oven.

We had ten minutes to wait, so we got talking about the class trip that was coming up. There were only three days left before half-term and so far not one person in our class had had a single day off sick. As a special reward Miss Pingle had said that if we all made it to the last day, the whole class would go to see the Egyptian
mummy exhibition! Mummies are well cool because out of zombies, vampires and mummies, they are the only ones that are real. At least I think so. Gosh I hope so.
Eeky freak – scary!

‘I bet one of the boys goes off sick and ruins it,' said Martha crossly. ‘Remember the end of last term when Matty knocked himself out playing football?'

Hmmm . . . that wasn't how Ivy and I remembered it! Actually it was Martha who knocked Matty out. He'd kicked the football across the playground and hit Martha on the leg and messed her trousers up. All the boys had laughed so she kicked it back
HARD
and the next thing Matty knew he was sitting in reception with a bandage round his head.
Ha ha wicked!

‘It was still his fault,' said Martha. ‘So if he does it again I'll kill him. Well, not kill him, but you know what I mean.'

Soon the pizzas were out of the oven and being chopped up and then Ivy was owing Martha a million billion pounds because Martha had eaten the lot. Then Martha's mum came in and saw the strange jar was empty.

‘Aha!' she said, sounding a bit
surprised. ‘I see you've finished off that octopus paste.'

‘
Octopus paste
?' gasped Martha.

Ivy started giggling and doing a strange underwater dance round the kitchen. ‘Whoa! Does that mean Martha might grow eight arms?'

Gosh, what a thought.
Argh!
Mind you, if Martha really did get eight arms, she'd be scarier than mummies, vampires and zombies all put together!
Awesome.

N
ext day and it's lunchtime, and we're all sitting round in the school hall. Our hall gets used for everything like concerts and football practice and assemblies, so there's tons of stuff round the sides like ropes for climbing up and
folded tables and a plinky plonky piano and a projector thing that has a sign saying
CHILDREN MUST NOT TOUCH
but that's OK as it looks dead boring. It's not like it's a playstation or a chocolate bar machine or bubble blower is it?

There are also lots of piles of stacked up chairs. You're only meant to have five chairs stacked up at the most but Motley the caretaker likes to make things more exciting.

That morning he had made a giant wobbly pile of
NINE
chairs! I expect the world record for stacking chairs is something like twenty-two or maybe even twenty-three because if the pile got any higher then you'd need to have a hole in the ceiling. But nine is pretty good for Motley, it might even be his personal best so let's have a round of applause for Motley clap clap clap.

So anyway, me and Ivy were just quietly sandwiching away when
CRASH
. Rory Bloggs had been running and slipped on a biscuit wrapper and smashed his big head into Motley's nine stacking chairs which all fell on him ha ha. He was lying on the floor groaning and clutching his knee. Of course me and Ivy ignored him, but then something really bad happened. Miss Barking turned up.

Miss Barking has got short black hair and big glasses like telly screens and she always carries a thick folder full of boring leaflets and forms to fill in. We hardly ever see her in school because she's the deputy headteacher and she's always away learning about
issues.
Issues can be anything so long as it's boring and wastes time. Once she spent three days in a hotel learning about
nutritional issues
, then she came back to give us all a talk
about not eating crisps for breakfast. Honestly, she shouldn't go giving us ideas. The very next morning Martha swapped her cornflakes for a monster packet of cheese and onion crisps and said it was great, although you have to eat them fast before the milk makes them go floppy.

Miss Barking stared at Rory then she stared at the biscuit wrapper, and then what does she do? Does she get the first aid kit?
No. Does she call the ambulance? No. Does she have him stretchered off into a waiting helicopter like they do in films?
NO!
She opens her folder and starts hunting for a special biscuit-wrapper-accident form.

‘I
knew
this would happen one day,' she moaned at Rory, who was still on the floor making a big fuss. ‘I told Mrs Twelvetrees that all biscuit wrappers should be removed by trained members of staff in a secure
environment, but does she ever listen to me?'

That didn't get an answer. Partly because it was such a silly question but mainly because nobody was listening. She never learns.

Rory was just about to make an even bigger fuss but he was in our class, so Ivy and me realised we better do something. We pulled him up to his feet and held him by the arms.

‘He's fine,' I said.