Quick, Let's Get Out of Here Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here

  Michael Rosen was brought up in London. He originally tried to study medicine before starting to write poems and stories. His poems are about all kinds of things – but always important things – from chocolate cake to bathtime.

  michaelrosen.co.uk

  Quentin Blake is one of Britain’s most renowned illustrators. Born in the suburbs of London in 1932, he read English at Cambridge before becoming a full-time freelance illustrator. He began his career working for magazines such as The Spectator and Punch. For many years he taught at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration Department from 1978 to 1986. He became the very first Children’s Laureate in 1999 and was made a CBE in 2005.

  Books by Michael Rosen

  CENTRALLY HEATED KNICKERS

  MICHAEL ROSEN’S BOOK OF VERY

  SILLY POEMS (Ed)

  QUICK, LET’S GET OUT OF HERE

  YOU WAIT TILL I’M OLDER THAN YOU

  NO BREATHING IN CLASS

  (with Korky Paul)

  Michael ROSEN

  Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here

  Illustrated by

  Quentin BLAKE

  PUFFIN

  For Brian, Harold and remembering Connie

  For Susanna, Joe and Eddie

  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)

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  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

  penguin.com

  First published by Andre Deutsch Ltd 1983

  Published in Puffin Books 1985

  28

  Text copyright © Michael Rosen, 1983

  Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1983

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  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

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195706-7

  Once I was round a friend’s place

  and just as we were going out

  he went over to the table

  and picked a hard lump of chewed-up

  chewing gum with teeth marks in it

  off the table top

  and stuffed it in his mouth.

  His gran was there and she said,

  ‘You’re not taking that filthy thing

  with you, are you?’

  And he said to me,

  ‘Quick – let’s get out of here.’

  TRICKS

  Nearly every morning

  my brother would lie in bed,

  lift his hands up in the air

  full stretch

  then close his hands around an invisible bar.

  ‘Ah, my magic bar,’ he’d say.

  Then he’d heave on the bar,

  pull himself up,

  until he was sitting up in bed.

  Then he’d get up.

  I said,

  ‘You haven’t got a magic bar above your bed.’

  ‘I have,’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t believe me then,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t – don’t worry,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me

  if you do or you don’t,’ he said,

  and went out of the room.

  ‘Magic bar!’ I said.

  ‘Mad. He hasn’t got a magic bar.’

  I made sure he’d gone downstairs,

  then I walked over to his bed

  and waved my hand about in the air

  above his pillow.

  ‘I knew it,’ I said to myself.

  ‘Didn’t fool me for a moment.’

  WASHING UP

  On Sundays,

  my mum and dad said,

  ‘Right, we’ve cooked the dinner,

  you two can wash it up,’

  and then they went off to the front room.

  So then we began.

  First there was the row about who

  was to wash and who was to dry.

  My brother said, ‘You’re too slow at washing,

  I have to hang about waiting for you,’

  so I said,

  ‘You always wash, it’s not fair.’

  ‘Hard cheese,’ he says,

  ‘I’m doing it.’

  So that was that.

  ‘Whoever dries has to stack the dishes,’

  he says,

  so that’s me stacking the dishes

  while he’s getting the water ready.

  Now,

  quite often we used to have mustard

  with our Sunday dinner

  and we didn’t have it out of a tube,

  one of us used to make it with the powder

  in an eggcup

  and there was nearly always

  some left over.

  Anyway,

  my brother

  he’d be washing up by now

  and he’s standing there at the sink

  his hands in the water,

  I’m drying up,

  and suddenly he goes,

  ‘Quick, quick quick

  come over here

  quick, you’ll miss it

  quick, you’ll miss it.’

  ‘What?’ I say, ‘What?’

  ‘Quick, quick. In here,

  in the water.’

  I say,

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Give us your hand,’ he says

  and he grabs my hand

  then my finger,

  ‘What?’ I say,

  ‘That,’ he says,

  and he pulls my finger under the water

  and stuffs it into the eggcup

  with left-over blobs of old mustard

  stuck to the bottom.

  It’s all slimey.

  ‘Oh Horrible.’

  I was an idiot to have believed him.

  So I go on drying up.

  Suddenly

  I feel a little speck of water on my neck.

  I look up at the ceiling.

  Where’d that come from?

  I look at my brother

  he’s grinning all over his big face.

  ‘Oy, cut that out,’

  He grins again

  sticks his finger under the water

  in the bowl and

  flicks.

  Plip.

&nb
sp; ‘Oy, that got me right on my face.’

  ‘Did it? did it? did it?’

  He’s well pleased.

  So now it’s my turn

  I’ve got the drying up cloth, haven’t I?

  And I’ve been practising for ages

  on the kitchen door handle.

  Now he’s got his back to me

  washing up

  and

  out goes the cloth, like a whip, it goes

  right on the –

  ‘Ow – that hurt. I didn’t hurt you.’

  Now it’s me grinning.

  So he goes,

  ‘All right, let’s call it quits.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, ‘one-all. Fairy squarey.’

  So I go on drying up.

  What I don’t know is that

  he’s got the Fairy Liquid bottle under the

  water

  boop boop boop boop boop boop

  it’s filling up

  with dirty soapy water

  and next thing it’s out of the water

  and he’s gone sqeeeesh

  and squirted it right in my face.

  ‘Got you in the mush,’ he goes.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ I say,

  ‘I’ve had enough.’

  And I go upstairs and get

  this old bicycle cape I’ve got,

  one of those capes you can wear

  when you ride a bicycle in the rain.

  So I come down in that

  and I say,

  ‘OK I’m ready for anything you’ve got now.

  You can’t get me now, can you?’

  So next thing he’s got the little

  washing-up brush

  and it’s got little bits of meat fat

  and squashed peas stuck in it

  and he’s come up to me

  and he’s in, up, under the cape with it

  working it round and round

  under my jumper, and under my chin.

  So that makes me really wild

  and I make a grab for anything that’ll

  hold water; dip it in the sink

  and fling it at him.

  What I don’t know is that

  while I went upstairs to get the cape

  he’s got a secret weapon ready.

  It’s his bicycle pump,

  he’s loaded it with the dirty washing-up water

  by sucking it all in.

  He picks it up,

  and it’s squirt again.

  All over my hair.

  Suddenly the door opens.

  ‘Have you finished the…?’

  It’s Mum AND Dad.

  ‘Just look at this.

  Look at the pair of them.’

  And there’s water all over the floor

  all over the table

  and all we’ve washed up is

  two plates and the mustard pot.

  My dad says,

  ‘You can’t be trusted to do anything you’re asked,

  can you.’

  He always says that.

  Mind you, the floor was pretty clean

  after we had mopped it all up.

  I WAKE UP

  I wake up

  I am not me

  I am bodyless

  I am weightless

  I am legless

  I am armless

  I am in the sea of my mind

  I am in the middle of my brain

  I am afloat in a sea of nothing

  It lasts for one flicker

  of one eyelash

  and then

  once again

  I am my full heaviness

  I am my full headedness

  I am my full bodyness

  Here.

  Hallo.

  CHOCOLATE CAKE

  I love chocolate cake.

  And when I was a boy

  I loved it even more.

  Sometimes we used to have it for tea

  and Mum used to say,

  ‘If there’s any left over

  you can have it to take to school

  tomorrow to have at playtime.’

  And the next day I would take it to school

  wrapped up in tin foil

  open it up at playtime and sit in the

  corner of the playground

  eating it,

  you know how the icing on top

  is all shiny and it cracks as you

  bite into it

  and there’s that other kind of icing in

  the middle

  and it sticks to your hands and you

  can lick your fingers

  and lick your lips

  oh it’s lovely.

  yeah.

  Anyway,

  once we had this chocolate cake for tea

  and later I went to bed

  but while I was in bed

  I found myself waking up

  licking my lips

  and smiling.

  I woke up proper.

  ‘The chocolate cake.’

  It was the first thing

  I thought of.

  I could almost see it

  so I thought,

  what if I go downstairs

  and have a little nibble, yeah?

  It was all dark

  everyone was in bed

  so it must have been really late

  but I got out of bed,

  crept out of the door

  there’s always a creaky floorboard, isn’t there?

  Past Mum and Dad’s room,

  careful not to tread on bits of broken toys or bits of Lego

  you know what it’s like treading on Lego

  with your bare feet,

  yowwww

  shhhhhhh

  downstairs

  into the kitchen

  open the cupboard

  and there it is

  all shining.

  So I take it out of the cupboard

  put it on the table

  and I see that

  there’s a few crumbs lying about on the plate,

  so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs

  scooping them up

  and put them into my mouth.

  oooooooommmmmmmmm

  nice.

  Then

  I look again

  and on one side where it’s been cut,

  it’s all crumbly.

  So I take a knife

  I think I’ll just tidy that up a bit,

  cut off the crumbly bits

  scoop them all up

  and into the mouth

  oooooommm mmmm

  nice.

  Look at the cake again.

  That looks a bit funny now,

  one side doesn’t match the other

  I’ll just even it up a bit, eh?

  Take the knife

  and slice.

  This time the knife makes a little cracky noise

  as it goes through that hard icing on top.

  A whole slice this time,

  into the mouth.

  Oh the icing on top

  and the icing in the middle

  ohhhhhh oooo mmmmmm.

  But now

  I can’t stop myself.

  Knife –

  I just take any old slice at it

  and I’ve got this great big chunk

  and I’m cramming it in

  what a greedy pig

  but it’s so nice,

  and there’s another

  and another and I’m squealing and I’m smacking my lips

  and I’m stuffing myself with it

  and

  before I know

  I’ve eaten the lot.

  The whole lot.

  I look at the plate.

  It’s all gone.

  Oh no

  they’re bound to notice, aren’t they,

  a whole chocolate cake doesn’t just disappear

  does it?

  What shall I do?

 
I know. I’ll wash the plate up,

  and the knife

  and put them away and maybe no one

  will notice, eh?

  So I do that

  and creep creep creep

  back to bed

  into bed

  doze off

  licking my lips

  with a lovely feeling in my belly.

  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  In the morning I get up,

  downstairs,

  have breakfast,

  Mum’s saying,

  ‘Have you got your dinner money?’

  and I say,

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And don’t forget to take some chocolate cake with you.’

  I stopped breathing.

  ‘What’s the matter,’ she says,

  ‘you normally jump at chocolate cake?’

  I’m still not breathing,

  and she’s looking at me very closely now.

  She’s looking at me just below my mouth.

  ‘What’s that?’ she says.

  ‘What’s what?’ I say.

  ‘What’s that there?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There,’ she says, pointing at my chin.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘It looks like chocolate,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not chocolate cake is it?’

  No answer.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She goes to the cupboard

  looks in, up, top, middle, bottom,

  turns back to me.

  ‘It’s gone.

  It’s gone.

  You haven’t eaten it, have you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? You don’t know if you’ve eaten a whole

  chocolate cake or not?

  When? When did you eat it?’

  So I told her,

  and she said

  well what could she say?

  ‘That’s the last time I give you any cake to take

  to school.

  Now go. Get out

  no wait

  not before you’ve washed your dirty sticky face.’

  I went upstairs

  looked in the mirror

  and there it was,

  just below my mouth,

  a chocolate smudge.

  The give-away.

  Maybe she’ll forget about it by next week.

  BOY FRIENDS

  Christine Elkins said to me

  under the oak tree

  in the Memorial Park –

  ‘I’ve got boyfriends.’

  ‘?’ I said. ‘?’