The Eddie Dickens Trilogy by Philip Ardagh

Author:Philip Ardagh [Philip Ardagh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571275120
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Wolfe Tablet had travelled to the area by hot-air balloon, and that balloon had now been impounded by the police ‘pending further investigations’ and was going nowhere. ‘Impounded’ actually means ‘held in legal custody’ but, in this case, it meant that the peelers had it tethered to the ground on a small patch of grass around the back of the police station (where they usually played football) and were taking it in turns to go up and down in it. One or two lost their hats, a few were airsick but, all in all, they agreed that it was great fun.

Mr Tablet himself, meanwhile, was back in his rooms at the Rancid Rat, recovering from his ordeal, and it was to the Rancid Rat that Eddie was now headed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Eddie didn’t get out much. When he wasn’t drawn into adventures that weren’t of his own making, he spent most of his time at home. And home was now Awful End. He wasn’t particularly familiar with the surrounding villages, towns or countryside. He didn’t have a bike. There wasn’t a local bus service, and there were no shopping malls or burger joints to hang out at with your friends back then. A trip to the ironmonger’s to buy a hook for the back of the loo door was an event, and a very rare one at that. So Eddie would have to ask how to get to the Rancid Rat.

The best person to have asked would have been Dawkins because, as long as he had enough tissue paper, he seemed happy with life and was good and practical at most things. But he was still busy trying to calm Eddie’s mother and Even Madder Aunt Maud. There was no point in asking Mad Uncle Jack for directions. He’d once started to draw Eddie a layout of the gardens, but it’d turned into a picture of a frog carrying a parasol, which he then proceeded to colour in with green crayon, cut out and pin to the wall of his study, with great pride – his original task completely forgotten!

Gibbering Jane was an ideal person to talk to if you had a query about knitting. What she didn’t know about knitting could probably be written on the head of a pin, and still leave plenty of room for the Lord’s Prayer and a list of your ten least favourite meals … but directions? Eddie wasn’t 100 per cent convinced she knew up from down, let alone left from right, or how to get to the Rancid Rat.

As for Mad Uncle Jack’s band of ex-soldiers … Eddie did another one of his sighs, and decided to set off and ask for directions from the people he met on the way … which is all fine and dandy, so long as you actually meet somebody.

An hour or so later, Eddie had to admit to himself what he’d been denying for the previous half-hour: he was well and truly lost.

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