Batpants! Read online

  This is Batpants the orang-utan…

  She lives with Tilly and her brothers, Finn and Zak.

  When they’re together things can go a little bit ape!

  Jeremy Strong once worked in a bakery, putting the jam into three thousand doughnuts every night. Now he puts the jam in stories instead, which he finds much more exciting. At the age of three, he fell out of a first-floor bedroom window and landed on his head. His mother says that this damaged him for the rest of his life and refuses to take any responsibility. He loves writing stories because he says it is ‘the only time you alone have complete control and can make anything happen’. His ambition is to make you laugh (or at least snuffle). Jeremy Strong lives near Bath with his wife, Gillie, four cats and a flying cow.

  Are you feeling silly enough to read more?

  THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS

  (A Cosmic Pyjamas Adventure)

  THE BEAK SPEAKS

  BEWARE! KILLER TOMATOES

  CHICKEN SCHOOL

  DINOSAUR POX

  GIANT JIM AND THE HURRICANE

  THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  KRAZY COW SAVES THE WORLD – WELL, ALMOST

  LOST! THE HUNDRED-MILE-AN-HOUR DOG

  MY BROTHER’S FAMOUS BOTTOM

  MY BROTHER’S HOT CROSS BOTTOM

  THERE’S A PHARAOH IN OUR BATH!

  JEREMY STRONG’S LAUGH-YOUR-SOCKS-OFF JOKE BOOK

  Illustrated by Rowan Clifford

  PUFFIN

  Special thanks to stuntwoman extraordinaire Sarah Franzl, whose help and advice was both entertaining and indispensable

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2010

  Text copyright © Jeremy Strong, 2010

  Illustrations copyright © Rowan Clifford, 2010

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193057-2

  This is for Rosa and Izzy, who have never ever had a book dedicated to them before.

  They aren’t the least like orang-utans either, even though their mother has suspiciously longer-than-average arms.

  Contents

  1. Batpants and Other Family Members

  2. Escaped Bushes and Major Hair Accidents

  3. Fantasti-bubbly-crumbo!

  4. The Greatest Stuntwoman in the World?

  5. Strange Behaviour from a Pair of Mammals

  6. Rats!

  7. What Happened Next

  8. Rhubarb Jelly Fish La La Belly-buttons

  9. Anyone Like a Tomato?

  10. Today is Gorilla Day

  11. Go, Batpants, Go!

  11 and a bit. The Disgusting End

  1 Batpants and Other

  Family Members

  I live in a tree house. You may wonder why. Could it be:

  1. because my parents don’t have a proper house?

  2. because my parents didn’t like to have us kids in their house because we’re too noisy and messy?

  3. because a gigantic strawberry cheesecake had fallen out of the sky, landed on our house and smashed it to bits and we had to live somewhere?

  4. because Dad was very clever and thought that Finn and Zak and I would really, really, really LIKE to live in a tree house, so he built one for us?

  Guess what the answer is? Of course. It’s 4.

  The tree house is connected to the main home by a wooden walkway that wiggles across to the upstairs hallway. We have a dangly rope hanging down to the ground. (There are wooden stairs too, but the rope is a lot more fun.)

  Finn is seven and a small pain. Zak is thirteen, and a big pain. Then there’s me, Tilly – I’m ten. (And definitely no pain at all.) Oh, and I mustn’t forget our orang-utan.

  Dad trains animals for films and TV. You remember the advert where a tiger sits in a car and seems to drive it? Well, the tiger was trained to do that by our dad, and it was Dad who brought our orang-utan over from Borneo. He’d been filming there. She was just a baby then, and an orphan too.

  Dad looked after her. He couldn’t bear to leave her behind when filming finished so he got permission and brought her home to us. We fell in love with her at once. She was so cute! Even when she tiddled on your lap. It wasn’t her fault – even human babies do that.

  Mind you, it did help when Mum got some disposable nappies for her. She looked so funny, waddling about the house like some incredibly hairy little old man who’d been put in a washing machine and come out all shrunken. And with very long arms. And wearing a nappy.

  Do you know what the most difficult thing about having an orang-utan in the house is? I’ll tell you – trying to think up a good name for her.

  ‘Gingernut,’ said Zak.

  ‘Mabel,’ I offered.

  ‘Hairybum,’ Finn suggested, and went into squeals of laughter. (He was only five at the time.)

  ‘Floretta,’ said Mum, which mystified us. She held up her hands and explained. ‘I had a great-aunt called Floretta and she was rather similar to an orang-utan.’

  ‘But Floretta makes her sound like a bit of broccoli,’ I complained.

  ‘Anyway, how did your great-aunt look like an orang-utan?’ asked Zak.

  ‘She was rather hairy,’ Mum told us, stroking her chin, which sent Finn into more squeals.

  Then Dad came up with his suggestion. ‘Lady Henrietta Withering Gas-Trumpett,’ he announced. We looked at him in despair. And we still couldn’t think of a good name.

  One day Finn was playing at being Batman. He didn’t have a proper costume, but I gave him a pair of my old tights.

  Finn pulled on his grey school jumper and a pair of wellingtons for his bat-boots. His cloak was a black bin liner. Batman’s pants were a problem, though. Finn didn’t have any black pants, so we found a pair of Dad’s Y-fronts. Gross. Don’t worry, they were clean, but totally uncool.

  ‘Just don’t poo in them,’ I warned.

  ‘I’m not TWO and Batman does not poo his pants!’ shouted Finn.

  The orang-utan came in to see what all the noise was about and my brain just about burst with the best idea ever.

  ‘Why don’t we dress her as Batman!’

  Quick as a flash the tights came off Finn and went on the ape. So did the school jumper. We decided the boots wouldn’t work. Instead, we draped her in Batman’s cloak. That just left the pants.

  I don’t think orang-utans like wearing pants. Ou
rs snatched the Y-fronts from me and stuck them on her head, pulling the sides right down over her face. Her nose and one eye peeped out from a leg hole. An ear poked through the other.

  The ape stood there, gazing at us with the one bewildered eye. This was the superhero who was supposed to SAVE THE WORLD! With pants on her head!

  It was just too funny. Finn and I fell about. That was when the ape set off at high speed, zooming round the house. She whizzed upstairs, downstairs and through all the rooms, hooting like crazy. ‘Hoo hoo whaaaa!’

  She only came to a halt when she went hurtling straight into Zak, almost knocking him over.

  Zak looked down at the sprawling animal, busily wrestling a pair of Y-fronts on her head. ‘WHO or WHAT is THAT?’ he asked.

  ‘Batman,’ I said. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Bat-MAN?’ snorted Zak. ‘If you ask me, she looks more like Bat-PANTS!’

  Finn and I looked at each other.

  It was the perfect name.

  2 Escaped Bushes and

  Major Hair Accidents

  Batpants has small ears, big eyes and an even bigger mouth, which she loves to fill. She likes apple crumble, roast chicken and small tomatoes.

  She eats the apple crumble and chicken, but she doesn’t eat the tomatoes. Instead she likes to load them into her mouth. Then she purses her lips and blows the tomatoes back out at high speed, like a machine gun.

  RATTA – SPLATTA –

  SPLATTA!

  Mum and Dad have banned Batpants from shooting people with tomatoes, but Finn and I still smuggle her some when we can. We usually eat in the big kitchen so you can probably guess that the walls are a bit messy now. There’s a very interesting tomato-pippy effect splattered across them. Visitors often spend hours staring at the walls, trying to work out how it was done. We don’t tell them.

  Batpants managed to hit Zak once, right in the middle of his forehead. SPLAPP! Finn and I thought that was the most brilliant thing EVER.

  You may think that it’s odd to have a pet orang-utan who machine-guns people with tomatoes, but in fact they are very brainy beasts. They’re clever with their hands and feet too. They could pick their noses with their toes if they felt like it. Luckily, they don’t often feel like it.

  Besides, for us, Batpants was just another of the animals we have around the place. We have three cats – Cookie, Crumpet and Teacake.

  Then there’s Horse the donkey (Zak’s joke), and Twiglet the giant stick insect (Dad’s joke). We also have a bearded dragon lizard known as Betty, and some frogspawn called – guess what – frogspawn.

  As if that’s not enough, there is also Finn’s private collection of interesting creatures. He collects things like earwigs, beetles, worms, woodlice, spiders, caterpillars and anything that’s small enough and slow enough for him to capture. (Yes, I know, he’s VERY strange, but he’s my little bro so I just have to put up with it.) He mostly keeps them in boxes, but he’s not much good at remembering where he’s put them. The earwigs might turn up on top of the television. The worms could be enjoying the bathtub.

  This gets Finn into trouble, especially with Zak, who doesn’t like discovering unexpected caterpillars in his coat pocket. It doesn’t suit his rock-star image. If you ever meet Zak he will soon tell you that he is going to be HUGE on the music scene. His guitar playing is certainly loud enough. Dad says it makes his teeth rattle. Zak’s got his own band – The Non-Organic Vegetables.

  ‘Why “non-organic”?’ asked Mum.

  ‘It’s more threatening,’ Zak answered threateningly.

  Zak has long, straight purple and black hair that he keeps having to flick back otherwise he can’t see. He walked into his bedroom door once. BANG! OW! Almost everything he wears is black and his T-shirt says ‘DEATH’ in big letters on the front. Because of Zak’s loud guitar playing Dad reckons it’s a spelling mistake and it’s supposed to say ‘DEAF’.

  Then there’s Zak’s famous black coat. It comes right down to his boots and flows behind him like a dark cloud. Finally, he has a silver stud through his left eyebrow. (Ouch!) It kind of upset Mum and Dad.

  ‘Oh, Zak,’ moaned Mum. ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘It’s cool,’ Zak said.

  ‘It’s ugly,’ Dad corrected.

  ‘Ugly is the new cool,’ answered Zak.

  I’m not like either of my brothers, thank goodness. I’m ten and I’m really into eco-stuff like saving whales. I’d like to adopt one and have it at home, but the pond’s not big enough. I like to feel that I’m at one with Nature, you know? So I paint my face in earth and leaf colours. I don’t like itty-pretty necklaces and stuff so I decorate myself with plants and feathers instead.

  Zak once told me I looked like an escaped bush.

  ‘So?’ I snapped back. ‘You look like a Major Hair Accident, but don’t worry – I’ll call an ambulance and they can take you to the Emergency Hair Hospital.’ Ha ha! That shut him up.

  Anyhow, that’s way too much about us. I want to tell you about our life with exploding buildings and karate penguins, not to mention when Mum almost got squeezed to a squodge.

  3 Fantasti-bubbly-crumbo!

  Emma Lovehart – that’s my mum – used to be a brilliant gymnast. She’s got a whole shelf full of trophies she’s won in competitions. She’s also a great swimmer and can swim forty metres underwater. That means WITHOUT BREATHING! Plus, she knows how to make the best chocolate cake EVER. Yummy crumby!

  Mum’s small and pretty, with big kind hazel eyes. No wonder Dad married her! Dad’s from Turkey and he’s called Aslan. That means lion in Turkish. Obviously, he’s not a real lion, but he does look like one. He’s got a big mane of swept-back hair. He also has a largish nose and silver-rimmed spectacles. Lions have large noses too, but they don’t wear spectacles and if they did they would have to be wrap-around, mirror-lens sunglasses or they’d just look stupid.

  When I started junior school a few kids teased me because my dad was Turkish. It’s the sort of dumb thing kids say when they don’t know any better. I said everyone had to come from somewhere. Obviously.

  ‘Yes, but yours comes from Turkey,’ Evie sniped. She’s bossy like that.

  ‘So where does your dad come from?’ I asked, and when Evie said ‘Pratts Bottom’ the whole class fell about laughing. We didn’t even believe it until my friend Sandeep found it on a map. Evie didn’t tease me after that.

  Anyhow, back to Mum. She’s a stuntwoman in films and television. Stuntwomen (and men) do all sorts of dangerous things like jumping out of aeroplanes and falling down stairs. So Mum isn’t a mega-zonic big-screen star like Victoria Sponge or Tiara Tingletop, but when they have to do something dangerous Mum does the dangerous bit for them. Three cheers for my mum!

  Suppose Victoria Sponge is making a movie where she goes hurtling over a thunderous waterfall in a tiny canoe. Victoria doesn’t do that herself – it’s far too dangerous. A stunt actor does it instead. Stunt actors do special training so they can carry out these things without getting hurt.

  Mum dresses up to look like Victoria and she goes hurtling over the waterfall instead. She’s always doing extraordinary things like that. She had to fight six penguins once, and they weren’t ordinary penguins. Dad had trained them all to do karate. Picture the scene – black belt karate penguins! How scary is that? This scary – AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGGH!

  So one morning at breakfast Mum came into the kitchen and said, ‘I’m working on a new film.’

  We stopped eating, food halfway to our mouths, not knowing what to expect. Did that mean she was going to be away from home for weeks again? (Groan groan.)

  ‘It’s OK. I don’t have to stay in America this time. I’ll be filming over here and –’ She paused for effect, knowing we were hanging on her every word.

  ‘What?’ shouted Finn.

  ‘What?’ I repeated impatiently.

  Zak tossed back his hair. ‘Spit it out, Mum,’ he muttered.

  ‘Well, since you’re on holiday fro
m school I thought you could come with me.’ She smiled and handed Batpants a slice of toast. Toast and jam is another favourite.

  ‘Result!’ Zak relaxed back into his seat.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ I said.

  Zak gave me an evil glance. ‘The only unbelievable thing in this kitchen, Tilly, is your head. Why do you have half a bird’s nest in your hair?’

  ‘Obviously, so the birds will know I don’t mean them any harm,’ I declared.

  Zak looked at the others. ‘She’s out of her tree,’ he muttered. ‘And so is that nest.’

  ‘Taisez-vous,’ I snapped back. That’s French, that is. Very cool. This is how you say it – tayzay voo. Guess what it means? Shut up! Very useful. We had a French student staying with us last year. Zak fell in love with her, of course. He’s always falling in love. I think there’s something wrong with him, like his brain, or his eyes, or both.

  Anyhow, Zak would look at her and murmur, ‘Marie,’ because that was her name, obviously. Marie kept telling him to ‘Taisez-vous!’ Now I use it on Zak and Finn all the time.

  ‘WHAT ABOUT THE FILM?’ yelled Finn, almost bouncing off his chair. ‘Can we be in it?’

  Mum shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like, Finn. That would be great, but it’s not up to me. There’s the film director, Alana, who would have to decide. Still, you’ll get to be on location at Murkley Abbey.’

  She put some more jam on a knife and handed it to Batpants. The ape carefully spread the jam on to her toast, then shoved the whole lot in her mouth in one go.

  ‘Is it another Colorado Kate movie?’ asked Finn.

  ‘Of course. Colorado Kate and the Curse of the Crimson Chameleon. Just for once the crew will be filming over here.’