Monster Island by Freddie Alexander

Author:Freddie Alexander [Alexander, Freddie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-08-09T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

12

The next day was Saturday (my favourite day after bin day).

Sam’s class had arranged to meet at the lighthouse for their first progress report. They had decided to meet late, after their parents had all gone to bed and to avoid any awkward questions. But they were careful to wear jam, and to laugh a lot, and to use nicknames to avoid splochers, and serpentails, and (as best they could) silentraps.

Given the nature of the meeting, Grandad had no issue whatsoever with their gatherings taking place in his house: ‘Reminds me of the olden days,’ he said as he tossed a piece of wood into the fire.

He had again smeared jam onto his face. Not that he needed to (because, as an elderly man, he would taste like burnt toast to a splocher) but he liked to be involved.

‘How so, Grandad?’ asked Sam.

‘It brings it all back,’ replied Grandad, now rubbing jam onto Myrtle’s face, making her look like a real warrior. ‘Fighting splochers and serpentails always made me feel alive.’

There came a cautious knock at the door.

Sam squished and squelched her way through the jam to open it.

‘Nickname?’ she called.

‘Jammy Sod,’ replied Horace.

Sam opened the door to find most of her classmates huddled together like penguins. It was dark out and the rain was whipping left, right and centre, so the small lighthouse was a warm and cosy refuge. The classmates quickly announced their passwords and bundled inside. You don’t need to know all the nicknames, Reader. Suffice to say, they were all sharp and witty, each as chucklesome as the last. (And besides, if I had to go through each one, they’d catch their death out there.)

By this stage, Horace, Ivy and Wesley were well used to the sounds and smells of jam inside the lighthouse, but it took the others a moment to get used to it. They grinned at the different types of jam dripping from the ceiling and the walls and glooping on the floor and the furniture.

The room was filled with light thanks to the blazing fire and the hundred or so candles Grandad had lit ‘to keep serpentails away and toe-stubbing at bay’. The sheer volume of jam was mesmerizing: it sparkled in the candlelight and glistened like treasure.

‘Come on in,’ said Sam. ‘Grab a seat wherever you can.’

Cheeseman immediately went for the cheese board on the kitchen table (addiction is a terrible thing) which was, of course, completely covered in jam. ‘Is that’ – he took a taste – ‘cheddar cheese jam?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Sam.

‘That’s definitely blue cheese jam!’ he exclaimed, nodding approvingly, and dipping a finger into a bluey, cheesy blob.

‘Where’s Weaver?’ asked Sam.

‘’ee is aways la’e,’ said Fisher, his mouth already full of pickled herring jam.

With that, there came a worried-sounding knock at the door. How could a knock sound worried, you ask? Well, Weaver had a knack. And a knock.

The nervous boy fell in through the door, out of breath and drenched to the skin.

‘Sorry … I’m … late,’ he breathed heavily, taking a hit of his asthma inhaler through his helmet of braces.

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