CHILDREN’S
PAGE
CHILD
THE
NEVERENDING SONG - BUT NOT ALL OF IT.
‘Over the mountains and under the dales
I sailed a tall ship till I came across Wales
And I planted a tree on the top of a hill
And watered it daily in case it grew ill.
So I settled there gladly and married my wife.
She bore me 3 daughters and ran for her life.
My daughters left home in the fullness of time
And that, my dear friends, is the end of my rhyme.
Now as I was saying, my daughters left home
And they sailed a tall ship till they came across Rome
And that was the last that I heard of all three
And that was the last that they heard of all me.
Now many years later when I was a lad…’
BERNARD
BRAIN
AND
THE INCREDIBLE EXPLODING HEADS
Bernard
Brain had a secret.
A secret so dark, so explosive, So SECRET, even HE didn’t
know what it was.
But he did know one thing. All Bernard Brain wanted was to
be left in peace to enjoy the magnificent workings of his
giant brain. A brain so ENORMOUS he had to leave most of it
in a bank vault for safe keeping.
It was either that or drag it round after him on a trolley.
But were people ready for that? Could they cope? It might,
for instance, have left him open to ridicule by the wrong
type of person. Maybe not. Difficult to say. But it wasn’t
worth the risk of finding out.
Bernard was particularly keen on
Finding the biggest number EVER and adding twelve.
Discovering a planet called Bernard.
Knowing the meanings of big words - like
HUGE
Not that
he had much time for this sort of stuff at school. No. At
school he had to do boring things like everyone else.
Sitting still. Doing what he was told. Not doing what he
wasn’t told. Even worse, he had to sit beside the school
bully, Veronica Vanity Bloom. Veronica Vanity Bloom was,
whisper it softly, just as intelligent as Bernard Brain.
But she hid it very well. And her bullying technique was
chilling but brilliant.
She didn’t sit on Bernard’s head in the playground and
scrunch his face into the gravel like a
normal bully
would. Too obvious. No. She would simply lean over and
whisper ‘I spect we’ll probly get married soon, Bernard,’
in a sweet and luscious voice. With the merest hint of a
lisp. Which she probably put on a bit. ‘I spect we’ll
probly get married soon, Bernard.’ These words chilled
Bernard Brain to the very marrow of his being.
Especially the married bit. Oh, and
soon. Maybe,
thought Bernard, he’d get married at seventy. When he was
too old for anything else. Or a hundred and twelve. But
soon? Soon was FAR too soon.
-
Chapter One