Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure Read online

  Contents

  SECTION ONE

  SECTION TWO

  SECTION THREE

  SECTION FOUR

  SECTION FIVE

  SECTION SIX

  SECTION SEVEN

  SECTION EIGHT

  SECTION NINE

  SECTION TEN

  SECTION ELEVEN

  SECTION TWELVE

  SECTION THIRTEEN

  SECTION FOURTEEN

  SECTION FIFTEEN

  SECTION SIXTEEN

  SECTION SEVENTEEN

  SECTION EIGHTEEN

  SECTION NINETEEN

  UNCLE SHAWN AND BILL’S FAVOURITE JOKES

  For Honor and Xavier

  With Thanks

  SECTION ONE

  In which a brave and handsome young badger called Bill meets two extremely dreadful sisters and begins an adventure he may not survive. He also has a sore ear and remembers that he doesn’t like shorts, especially when he is wearing them.

  Badger Bill was having a very bad evening, maybe the worst of his whole life. He was stuck inside a bag. It was an extremely scratchy and horrible bag and it smelled as if someone who was also a badger had been crying inside it a few days earlier and then maybe after that had been sick. Bill was small and young but very clever, and he was able to guess that whoever had snatched him up when he wasn’t expecting it and put him in the bag was now carrying him somewhere. He was being bounced and banged about with no care at all, so whoever was carrying him horribly in the horrible sack was probably a horrible person. Badgers have a highly developed sense of smell and he could tell just in one sniff that whoever was carrying him had a heart full of nails and sand and nastiness.

  Bill guessed he was balanced over the horrible person’s shoulder. Every now and then what he thought might be their elbow banged him hard in the back of his neck. And he was definitely upside down. This all suggested that the horrible person and the horrible bag were heading for somewhere that would also turn out to be horrible. This made Bill worried. It would make anyone worried – even if they were clever and brave. Meanwhile, the big, horrible feet of the big, horrible person pounded onwards.

  Bill’s whiskers were all bent, his ears were dented and he felt miserable and bruised and very puzzled. “But I was just out for a stroll,” he thought to himself. “I was going to pick some sage and make tea with it when I got home. Only then I turned left instead of right and I got distracted by those squirrels talking about having seen some llamas. Everyone knows there aren’t any llamas anywhere near here. Llamas come from South America and we’re in Scotland. And after I had explained this for the eighth time – squirrels are so stupid – I couldn’t quite remember where I wanted to go and I … I sort of got lost…”

  Bill was embarrassed that he’d got lost, because he had always wanted to be a famous explorer when he was older. There were many great badger explorers – Horatio Badger, who canoed round the Himalayas, for example; or Matilda Badger, who ran with the buffalo on the Great Plains of America until she died of excitement at the age of 87.

  Bill was ashamed. “I got a little bit lost and then I thought I saw a weasel looking nastily at me from under a bush. It was just a weaselly shadow, but I ran away from it and that made me get really lost.” Which is often what happens when we’re tired and aren’t really sure where we are and then get scared as well. “And now I’m thirsty and lonely and whoever is carrying me smells of being unkind and I already know they’re unkind because they put me in a bag. Without asking. All I want to do is go home and sit in my little badger rocking chair and play my mouth organ until I feel happier, and then go to bed. And maybe have a hot chocolate and a lettuce sandwich first. And a biscuit. And then an apple.” He was a resourceful badger, but he felt much smaller than usual, and wobbly. “But I’m not at home. I’m in a bag! Why would anybody want a bag of badger?”

  Before he could be puzzled any more he suddenly smelled the smell of someone else horrible nearby and felt himself being swung downwards, shaken roughly and tipped out of the bag onto a cold stone floor. He landed all in a heap. “Ow!” he squealed. Then he tried to make himself sound more courageous by shouting, in as deep a voice as he could manage, “What are you doing with me? You, you…”

  Only then he stopped speaking, because standing over him were two of the hugest human beings he had ever seen. They were probably ladies, but they were each as wide as a wardrobe and seemed almost as high as a bus. Their hands were grubby and leathery and bigger than Bill’s head. Both women seemed to have no necks, just as if someone had dumped their huge meaty faces straight down onto the collars of their dirty pink cardigans. Or maybe their necks didn’t like them and had run away and left them. The humans had eyes that were tiny and cross-looking and the colour of bad-flavoured boiled sweets, and they were studying Badger Bill. He didn’t enjoy being studied. It made him feel like homework, or arithmetic. Or dinner.

  The woman with the meatiest head was wearing a yellow knitted hat with a purple flower in it, which didn’t suit her. It wouldn’t have suited anyone. She peered at Bill and growled, “Well, he’s got spirit. Where did you catch him, Sister Maude, my pet?” Her voice sounded like dropping something ugly down a well.

  Sister Maude hissed, “Found him wandering about near the river, Sssissster Ethel, my ssssweet. He’s not very big though, isss he?”

  Badger Bill thought that not many creatures would seem remotely big near either Ethel or Maude – apart from maybe a very inflatable hippo. Even so, he tried to stand up straight and bristle out his fur. “I’m big for my age. Everyone says so.”

  “Oooh.” Maude gave an extremely unpleasant hoot, as if she’d recently swallowed an owl alive, which Badger Bill suspected might be likely. “It can talk. That’sss unusssual in a badger.” She didn’t know that many of the animals she had met, poked with sticks, pinched and shouted at during her long and spiteful life could have talked to her if they’d wanted to. The thing was that none of them had wanted to. “We should take advantage of that and make him give resssitationssss. Or, then again – we could make piesss.”

  Ethel nodded nastily and tweaked Bill’s cheek between her great big dirty finger and her great big dirty thumb. “Indeed, Sister Maude. First we have the fight to prepare for. And afterwards … pies.”

  Bill didn’t like the way Ethel had winked at him when she’d said pies. Bill also really hoped that when they talked about a fight they meant that Ethel and Maude were going to fight each other. He definitely didn’t want them to fight him. He didn’t want to fight anyone – he was a very peaceful badger.

  Then Maude said something else worrying: “Yesss, I think the red shortsss will fit him.” Bill hated shorts. They made his legs look stumpy.

  Ethel kept staring at Bill with her eyes that were like old, bad eggs. It looked like she might be thinking and that thinking hurt her head, because it didn’t happen often. Then she spoke. “The red shorts with the white stripe and the red boots. No gloves, of course…” Ethel giggled with the sound of plumbing gone horribly wrong and Bill knew that seeming to have stumpy legs was going to be the least of his problems.

  Bill shuddered. “Ahm, you … er … lovely ladies wouldn’t be suggesting that I in any way should be involved in fisticuffs, would you? Me, myself, personally? Because I’m not a fighting kind of badger. I don’t even like shouting.”

  Ethel and Maude grinned at him with their thick, greasy, left-over-sausage kind of lips. This made his whole tummy go cold.

  “No, honestly. I’m allergic to shorts. And why no gloves, by the way? What if my hands get chilly, o
r I bang my knuckles against something hard?” Badger Bill swallowed and it felt as if he had a bit of unhappy sandwich stuck in his throat.

  Ethel sucked in air between her long, brown teeth. “Of course you’ll be good at fighting, dearie. Battling Badger Bob – that’s you.”

  “Bill. My name’s Bill,” corrected Badger Bill. “William J. Badger, actually, if I’m filling out a form or something important. The J is for January, because that’s when it’s my birthday.” The two women didn’t look as if they wanted to know when his birthday was. And he suspected that they wouldn’t be giving him a present – not even a single tiny present between the two of them.

  Ethel hit one of his soft, furry badger ears with the back of her hand. This stung him and made his head go twirly. “You’ll be called Battling Badger Bob from now on, dearie, and don’t you forget it.”

  Maude nodded. “The fight’sss on Sssaturday. Aren’t you the lucky badger, then?”

  Bill didn’t feel lucky at all. This was Thursday night, which meant that he only had Friday left … and then it would be bad, bad, bad Saturday. And he’d always liked Saturdays before this, so he thought it was a shame.

  Maude leaned close to Bill while she spoke. His whiskers twitched with nerves and his sensitive nose tried to ignore her snaky breath, which smelled like drains and very, very old sardines. “Come along now,” she said, and she picked him up by his back legs and started to carry him off upside down, his head swinging about beside her knees. “Time for bed. You’ll need your ressst. Don’t worry – we’ll help you with your training.”

  Badger Bill felt the blood rushing to his ears – especially the stinging one – and tried not to let his nose brush against the stained hem of Maude’s lime-green corduroy skirt. “Madam, this is undignified! I could just walk! Please. This is all a mistake!” he shouted up at her.

  But she only said, “Madam! Madam, indeed… Who doesss he think he isss, the Archbishop of Canterbury?” And she chuckled, which produced a noise like wet hens running into each other. And then she swung him back and forth a little bit harder.

  Badger Bill thought of all the times in his life when he had sat up at night and worried himself about horrifying things that had never happened. Now he wished that he had saved his energy for today, when something horrifying really was happening and he didn’t know what to do. He was a shy badger and hadn’t made many friends at school. Since then he had kept himself to himself. Bill realized this meant that nobody would miss him, or notice that he’d gone – not even if he never, never, never came back home. He needed rescuing, but he was the only person who knew it. Bill tried not to cry, because he guessed that making handsome young badgers cry was one of Maude’s favourite hobbies.

  For the first time ever, Badger Bill realized that he felt lonely in each of his paws and every one of his whiskers and all the way into his heart, which was a good heart and full of good things. He folded his paws around his long badger nose and held tight and wished that he knew what to do and that someone would help him.

  SECTION TWO

  In which we meet some unusual weather and four llamas who are already very sad and about to get much sadder. We also learn a little about the weather, llamas and poems about socks.

  Meanwhile, on the dark side of an incredibly rainy hill, four llamas were trying to find shelter. It was only raining on their hill and not on anywhere else. In fact, it seemed only to be raining right where they were standing. If they ran extremely fast, they could almost get out from under their personal rain-cloud, so that water drops might stop falling on the tips of their noses for a few strides. But then the weather would catch up with them again when they got tired and slowed down. They were drenched all the time and underneath their fur their skins had gone all wrinkly, as if they’d been in the bath too long.

  They could see that all around them the countryside was dry and sunny and flowers were nodding in light breezes. Several small greenish-yellowish birds called siskins were playing tig in and out of the warm tree-branches and wearing sunglasses, because it was so bright. If the llamas had been closer to the siskins, they would even have overheard the little birds talking about getting some ice cream later, before they got too hot. Then again, if the llamas had been closer to the siskins, the siskins would have been underneath the rain-cloud and wet and depressed.

  Above the llamas it wasn’t just raining now, it was pouring, and there might even be sleet and snow on the way. Their patch of sky was miserable and they were, too.

  Brian Llama sneezed. Then he shook his head and his shoulders, which made a long swirl of water come out of his coat and hit the others. “Oh,” he said, “my sore hoof aches.”

  Guinevere Llama sniffed. “It was a terrible idea to come here. All the way from Peru, for this. You’re an idiot.”

  “Yes, he is an idiot,” agreed Ginalolobrigida Llama. “But it did say in the advertisement that Scotland was always sunny and hot and that the McGloone Farm was the most marvellous farm anywhere on earth and that we would have as much lemonade as we could drink and hammocks to sleep in. And we believed it, so we are all idiots.” Ginalolobrigida Llama didn’t ever like to think she had done anything wrong. “But Brian is the biggest idiot.” Saying that made her feel a little bit better.

  They had all read the very lovely advertisement in The Lima Llama Informer which had shown them glossy photographs and used lots of long and impressive words. It had invited adventurous llamas to submit short poems about why socks were useful. The four llamas who wrote the best poems were promised a free holiday at what had seemed to be the wonderful McGloone Farm in Scotland. By now the llamas were pretty sure that the photographs had been of some other farm and that the holiday was going to last for ever and be dreadful.

  “That advertisement was a lie.” Brian sneezed again. “The McGloone Farm isn’t a nice farm and Farmer McGloone isn’t a nice man and his McGloone wife isn’t a nice wife and his five McGloone children are the nastiest children I’ve ever met. And his McGloone sisters are worse than that. They pick their noses and then wipe their fingers in my ears.”

  The sisters, Maude and Ethel, who were being so nasty to Bill were, of course, the McGloone sisters. They were McGloones so horrifying and grumpy that even the other McGloones didn’t want them around and they had to live in their own cottage full of failed knitting and cat bones and other terrible things. Of course, the sisters said they wouldn’t dream of living in the main farmhouse, because of how ugly, noisy and unbearable the rest of the McGloones were. The only thing all the McGloones could really agree on was how much fun it was to be cruel to everyone they met. Or everyone they tricked into visiting, or kidnapped and shoved into bags.

  Back in the field – out of sight of both the cottage and the farmhouse – Carlos Llama sighed. “Farmer McGloone has ruined my wool.”

  “He’s ruined all of our wool!” Brian couldn’t help shouting because he was so fed up with Farmer McGloone, and Mrs Myrtle McGloone – Farmer McGloone’s wife – coming by with the big, clanky shears and taking as much llama wool as they could from the llamas, until they were nearly bald and terribly cold.

  Brian Llama had had a particularly silky chocolate coat and Carlos and Guinevere had had very splendid chocolate and cream and fawn coats and Ginalolobrigida Llama had had a delightful pinky cream coat. They had been four of the proudest and handsomest and loveliest llamas in Peru. In fact, many of the other Peruvian llamas had been quite glad when they left, because being so wonderful had sometimes made the four of them boastful, and boring – as all boastful people are. Brian, Guinevere, Carlos and Ginalolobrigida Llama had thought all the llamas who came to wave them off when they got on the boat to sail away across the ocean were being friendly. In fact, quite a lot of them were actually there to make sure that they really did go away. Of course, our four llama chums were not boastful now. They would probably never boast again – or not until they felt better and were dry. There are few things sadder than a soaked and patchy llama.
r />   Brian snuffed and licked his poorly hoof. “Farmer McGloone promised us luxury llama sheds to sleep in and then we just got that rotten old tent that fell to bits the first night we arrived.”

  “That was because you sneezed in it,” said Ginalolobrigida Llama.

  “If it fell apart just because I sneezed, then it wasn’t a good tent!” shouted Brian. “I hate it here.”

  In the entire history of llamas there had never been four llamas who were more depressed, or more disappointed.

  SECTION THREE

  In which we meet the great and wonderful and peculiar man who is Uncle Shawn. Even though he is unusual and wears no socks, without Uncle Shawn we’re all in trouble. So here he is.

  Meanwhile, an extremely tall and quite thin person called Uncle Shawn was sitting near the river. His lanky arms were folded round his gangly, big legs at around about the height of his bony, big knees, which were tucked up under his chin. He was wearing no socks because he had given half his last pair to a young squirrel who wanted to play at camping and use it as a sleeping bag. The squirrel had never brought it back. Uncle Shawn knew that wearing just one sock would have made him lopsided – so he wasn’t wearing any. His trousers had very many holes and tears in them, which he didn’t sew up because he thought they made him look as if he had adventures. And there was a mother mole dozing in one of his trouser pockets. His other pocket was full of toasted cheese fingers, in case he got hungry. His eyes were blue as two pieces of sky on a good Bank Holiday Monday by the sea with extra crisps and ice cream. If you looked at him quickly, you could tell he was someone very fond of fun, and if you looked at him more carefully, you could tell that he was much more clever than he often pretended to be. And on Uncle Shawn’s head was Uncle Shawn’s gingery-browny hair, which stood up in spikes and waves and knots.