Fizzlebert Stump and the Great Supermarket Showdown

  For Kate Paice, without whom …

  SOME THINGS PEOPLE SAID ABOUT THE FIZZLEBERT STUMP BOOKS

  Wonderfully told, fabulously eccentric, and certain to leave everyone in the family wearing a broad smile.

  – Jeremy Strong

  Fantastically funny.

  – Primary Teacher

  Walks a high-wire of daft ideas and deft storytelling, ringmastered by a narrator who intrudes on the action with hilariously incongruous asides. Top fun at the Big Top.

  – Financial Times

  One of the funniest books I’ve ever read!

  – Amy, 10, Girl Talk

  If you like funny, exciting and entertaining books, read about Fizzlebert Stump. The author keeps the reader gripped by the way he ends each chapter, making you want to read on to find out what happens next. Even my mum enjoyed this book and I had to keep telling her what was happening!

  – Freya Hudson, 10, Lovereading4kids

  CONTENTS

  Chapter Four

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which a boy carries some bags and into which some rain falls

  Fizzlebert Stump sighed wearily under the weight of the great weights he sighed wearily under the weight of. Each of his two small hands held the straining handle of a bulging bag filled with frozen chickens and cans of soup and heads of broccoli and bottles of fizzy pop (among other things). The plastic was stretching, becoming sharp and thin, and was cutting off the blood supply to his fingers which were growing numb. They were turning white, and heading towards a shade of blue that fingers weren’t ever intended to be.

  He heaved and –

  Hang on …

  I’ve not done the introductions yet, have I?

  Here we are at the very beginning of the book and I’ve just plunged straight in without even saying, ‘Hello,’ and without explaining what’s going on or what the plan is.

  Sorry about that.

  My mistake.

  Let me start again …

  Hello, I’m the author of this book. I’m the person who’s going to be talking to you, inside your head, through your eyes, for the next two hundred and eighty-seven pages. (Unless, of course, you throw the book away right now (and who could blame you after I messed the beginning up so royally?).)

  This isn’t the first book I’ve written about Fizzlebert Stump and his various ‘mildly amusing adventures’ (The Lascaux Echo), but perhaps it’s the first one you’ve read, so for the sake of any new readers I’d best start with a few Key Facts:

  (1) Fizzlebert Stump is a boy who lives in a travelling circus.

  (2) A travelling circus is a circus that goes from place to place.

  (3) A plaice is a sort of fish.

  (4) Fish is one of Fizz’s friends in the circus.

  (5) Fish is a sea lion.

  (6) Fish likes fish.

  (7) A plaice is an example of a sort of fish that Fish likes.

  (8) Once upon a time Fizz (which is what we call Fizzlebert Stump most of the time in order to save on ink, because we’re environmentally minded like that) put his head inside a lion’s mouth (and took it out again) to wow the audiences, but nowadays (since the lion retired) he does a strongman act with his father, Mr Stump.

  (9) Mr Stump, Fizz’s dad, is a strongman.

  (10) Mrs Stump, Fizz’s mum, is a clown. When she’s got her make-up on she’s called The Fumbling Gloriosus, but when she doesn’t she’s just called Gloria.

  ‘Aha!’ you might be saying to yourself, waving your finger in the air as if you’ve just had a brilliant idea. ‘The reason Fizz was sighing under the weight of the heavy bags mentioned by accident at the very beginning is because he’s practising for the strongman act. It’s obvious!’

  ‘Well,’ I’d say back to you, ‘you’re wrong. You couldn’t be more wronger.’

  ‘Aha!’ you might say. ‘There’s no such word as “wronger”.’

  To which I’d reply, ‘You couldn’t be more wrongerer about that, but we’re not here to discuss vocabulary, so let’s get on with the story.’

  Fizzlebert Stump sighed wearily under the weight of the great weights he sighed wearily under the weight of. Each of his two small hands held a straining handle of a bulging bag filled with frozen peas and cans of rice pudding and bundles of carrots and bottles of orange squash (among other things). The plastic was stretching, becoming sharp and thin, and was cutting off the blood supply to his fingers which were becoming numb. They were turning white, and heading towards a shade of blue that fingers weren’t ever intended to be.

  He heaved and hefted the bags into the open boot of the old lady’s car.

  ‘Good,’ she said, as Fizz rubbed life back into his stinging hands.

  She climbed into the car and drove away, leaving him stood in the middle of the car park.

  It was beginning to rain.

  Fizz’s uniform itched.

  His hands hurt.

  He sighed, deeply.

  ‘Stump!’ a voice shouted from somewhere over in the direction of that big white building you hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t mentioned it yet. ‘Stop dawdling! Get back here! Now!’

  Still rubbing his fingers Fizz trudged grudgingly back across the car park, avoiding the cars (most of which were parked, but one or two of which were moving), and grumbling grumpily to himself.

  ‘How did it ever come to this?’ he asked.

  The world answered him with a distant rumble of thunder and a dribble of raindrops down the back of his neck, which wasn’t really much of an answer, if you think about it.

  As he reached the big white building I mentioned earlier he was met by a short, pointy-faced man with a clipboard, a pen, a frown, two sideburns and a gaggle of elderly women hanging round him.

  ‘You need to be faster, Stump. Mrs Jones here’s been waiting five minutes. She’s in parking space ninety-seven. These six bags.’

  He pointed at six bags of shopping sat neatly at the feet of a particularly unpleasant-looking old lady.

  She smiled toothlessly at the man with the clipboard and said, ‘Fank you, darlin’.’

  ‘Get on with it, Stump.’

  Parking space ninety-seven was right over the other side of the car park. Fizz looked at the six bags. It wasn’t that they were too heavy for him, but the plastic they were made from was so cheap he was afraid his fingers would sooner or later be chopped off, or that it would break and spill the old lady’s shopping all over the tarmac, and that would be almost as bad.

  ‘Shall I use one of the trolleys?’ he asked.

  Even the rain fell silent.

  The old ladies looked at the man with the clipboard.

  The man with the clipboard’s clipboard twitched.

  ‘A trolley?’ the man with the clipboard said. ‘A,’ he really dragged out the pause, ‘trolley?’

  He was doing that thing that people with clipboards often do, which was shouting, but really quietly. He was angry, that was clear from the fact that his face had just turned red, and he said the two words (‘a’ and ‘trolley’) with a smear of venom and unpleasantness that made the quietness of his voice feel like a force ten gale.

  But then, all of a sudden, he smiled, the rain splashed and the old ladies rippled a little laughter out of their tiny tight mouths as he said, ‘But, Stump, it’s raining. I c
an’t risk the trolleys getting rusty. That’s why we’ve got you.’

  There was nothing for it. Fizz shifted uncomfortably in the scratchy supermarket uniform, slipped his hands into the handle-holes of the plastic bags, and, three on each side, began walking towards parking space ninety-seven.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted the man with the clipboard.

  Fizz stopped.

  ‘Oi! Mr Surprise!’ the man with the clipboard shouted. ‘Umbrella for Mrs Liversmell. Quick! Quick!’

  Fizz heard the old lady say, ‘Oh, darlin’, yer too kind.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ the man with the clipboard said, oilily.

  Fizz trudged off through the rain, droplets dribbling down his nose, the thin plastic cutting into his fingers, as an old woman hobbled along at his side, smelling of lavender and newt, with the tall figure of Dr Surprise walking beside her, holding an umbrella over her head.

  Dr Surprise was dressed, like Fizz, in a supermarket uniform.

  He stared straight ahead, as if hypnotised. Except he wasn’t hypnotised because he was unhypnotisable, being the circus’s hypnotist (and magician, mind reader and illusionist). He was just miserable, itchy and cold.

  He edged the umbrella over to one side so that half of it was covering Fizz as well as Mrs Liversmell.

  ‘Surprise!’ yelled the clipboarded gentleman. ‘Umbrellas are for customers’ use only!’

  ‘Sorry, Fizz,’ the doctor said, shifting it back over the old lady.

  They trudged, at the pace of an old woman, across the car park.

  Now, even the newest readers of this book, the ones who’ve never met Fizz before, and who only know what I told you in the list of Key Facts a little earlier, will be saying to themselves, ‘What the juggling gerbil’s going on here? You told me this was a book about a circus and all we’ve got is some nonsense about customer service in a supermarket car park. This isn’t what I expected a Fizzlebert Stump book to be about. Where do I get my money back?’

  Well, let me say just two things.

  Firstly: be patient and everything will make sense and be explained and so on, soon.

  And secondly: refunds are nothing to do with me.

  (If you really want your money back you’ll need to take the book back to where you bought it, with the receipt, and it’ll need to be looking as good as new. Were your hands clean? Did you drop it in the bath? Or in the mud? I hope not, for your sake.)

  * * *

  For the rest of us, the story will continue in the next chapter. In fact, we’ll be going back in time in order to understand what just happened. OK, so hang on tight for Chapter One.

  CHAPTER ONE

  In which a man makes an announcement and in which a boy does not have a haddock in his pocket

  I am taking you back half an hour to before the rain and then back slightly further (another three weeks, two days and four hours) to the fateful morning when the Ringmaster summoned the whole circus together in the Mess Tent.

  Breakfast was over.

  Cook was grumbling because there was washing-up to do.

  Fizz, and his mum and dad (who had had breakfast in their caravan (toffee apple surprise (the surprise being it had actually been cornflakes and jam))), strolled in and sat on a bench at the back, not expecting anything untoward to be about to unfold.

  It was quite normal for the Ringmaster to call everyone together now and then. It’s the easiest way to share news. (At school you have assembly, at work people have staff meetings, in the middle of a lake you have six thousand flamingos. It’s the same thing, really.)

  But then the Ringmaster spoke and everything went weird.

  Clowns held their breaths.

  Captain Fox-Dingle, the animal trainer, held his breath.

  Mary and Maureen Twitchery, the acrobatic sisters, held their breaths.

  Don Pedro Alfonso Zaragoza de Manchester-Sur-le-Mer, the famous botanist, apologised and left, since he wasn’t a member of the circus and had merely wandered into the Mess Tent on the trail of a type of grass that looked almost different to all other types of grass, but not quite. Still, he held his breath as he did so.

  ‘My friends,’ the Ringmaster began. ‘My many friends. My many good friends. My good many friends. I have news, and there’s no easy way to tell you the news that I have to tell you. What I could do is make a joke and play the ukulele and sing a little song about why custard is yellow and why birds are feathery, but that would just be me dodging the difficult matter of my telling you the news.’

  There was some uncomfortable murmuring at the possibility of the Ringmaster singing, but as soon as he didn’t people relaxed.

  ‘I’ve sold the circus,’ he said.

  People stopped relaxing.

  (A stilt-walker stopped relaxing so suddenly he fell off his stilts and landed on one of Apology Cheesemutter’s ‘mice’ (which were actually dogs dressed as mice, although no one ever mentioned this). Fortunately it was only a small stilt-walker and quite a large ‘mouse’ so there were no injuries, although the barking did drown out the Ringmaster’s explanation.)

  He began again.

  ‘Calm down, everyone,’ he said, in his most authoritatively Ringmasterish tone. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’re still a circus, it’s just we’re a circus now that belongs to Pinkbottle’s Supermarket. Think of it as … sponsorship.’

  ‘Um, Ringmaster,’ asked Miss Tremble, the woman who trained a dozen white horses with feathery headdresses to parade around in circles doing marvellous trotting tricks while she rode on their backs in a sequined costume doing tricks and turns and tumbles of her own, ‘why have you sold the circus? Were we … in trouble?’

  ‘Well,’ the Ringmaster began, and stopped.

  He took his top hat off and dusted the top with his sleeve.

  ‘Um,’ he said, starting but not going on.

  He put his top hat back on his head and dusted his sleeve with his hand.

  ‘Any other questions?’ he asked.

  Bongo Bongoton, the circus’s finest mime, made some movements with his hands and body, while a saddish look crossed his face.

  (‘What’s the most miserable vegetable in the world?’ asked Unnecessary Sid.

  When no one replied he pointed at Bongo’s face and said, ‘A saddish.’)

  ‘Now, that’s not fair, Bongo,’ the Ringmaster said, watching the mime’s mime and blushing red. ‘I have been promised by Mr Pinkbottle himself that there will be no top down reorganisation of the circus. I expect we’ll probably just have to wear Pinkbottle Supermarket badges on our costumes and print Pinkbottle Supermarket adverts in our programmes. For the rest of it, it’ll be the same. You’ll still get paid every week.’

  Naturally this set everyone’s minds at ease. Who could you trust if not your Ringmaster? A Ringmaster is to a circus what Father Christmas is to North Pole Elves: he or she is the person in charge who can be trusted to make the right decisions while you just get on with doing your job (making toys or doing backflips).

  Every week the Ringmaster gives you a little envelope with your wages in, carefully counted out and countersigned by Barry Numbers (the circus accountant who won a surprise holiday to Acapulco a fortnight before this chapter began in a competition he didn’t remember entering) and you put some of it in your bottom drawer (for savings) and a little in your pocket for pocket money and you were happy thinking about lifting up heavy things or dodging custard or dressing your horses up with feathery headdresses (and so on).

  So, as you can imagine, hearing that the new circus owner, Mr Pinkbottle of Pinkbottle’s Supermarket fame, would continue to pay them as normal made the Ringmaster’s worrying announcement seem less worrying. People breathed easily and went about the rest of their day rehearsing their acts as if it were a normal Tuesday.

  But it wasn’t a normal Tuesday.

  It was Monday.

  (Now, I know we’ve not had very much Fizzlebert Stump in this chapter so far, but he was there, at the back with h
is mum and dad, who held their breaths and then let them go again along with everyone else. The reason I’ve not paid much attention to him is because what the Ringmaster was saying was more important than knowing that Fizz was mostly just being nose-nudged by Fish, the circus sea lion, who refused to believe that the boy didn’t have a haddock in his pocket.)

  OK, now I’ve shown you that scene, I ought to let you know that nothing else very interesting happened that day. After that evening’s show the circus packed itself away and trundled through the night to the next town they were due to visit and it was there, the following morning that the next chapter happened.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In which a boy overhears a plot and in which contracts are discussed

  Fizzlebert Stump unbuckled himself from his bed and sat up.

  Outside he could hear birds singing and the sound of folk at work. (These were the riggers, who put the Big Top up and tie the guy ropes down and all that sort of physical stuff.) Somewhere in the distance he could hear Captain Fox-Dingle doing his exercises and Dr Surprise plucking fresh clover for Flopples (his rabbit).

  (It can be hard to hear clover plucking, but fortunately Dr Surprise gave a little cry every time he found a good bit and shrilly shouted, ‘Oh! Clover! Clover! Lovely leafy little clover!’ which helped.)

  The sun was shining through the curtains and it looked like it was a beautiful day.

  Fizz loved waking up in a new town because it was like starting reading a new book: you never quite knew what you were in for, although it was probably going to be pretty good since you’re a circus strongboy living, as they say, the dream.

  ‘Breakfast, Fizz,’ his mum said, putting a plate on the table in front of him.

  Fizz yawned, stretched and lifted his spoon.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said, looking down at his bowl of Spam cake and bran flake. (The clownish part of her brain insisted that rhyming foods were funny, even when she didn’t have her make-up on. Fizz had eaten some odd combinations in his time, but this one was new.)