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And somewhere in the middle of it I taught myself how to write by reading as many books as I could carry home from the library.
So turn the page and read the stories that I wrote as a teenager, mostly as they were first printed, although the grown-up me has tinkered just a little with a few fine details—the odd tweak here, a pinch there, and a little note at the bottom where needed, and all because the younger me wasn’t as clever back then as he turned out to be.
“I’ve won. You’ve fallen over first.
(*That’s how it went in those days: the first knight to fall over lost the fight. I bet you all knew that.)
(*No self-respecting wizard would be seen in public without a pointy hat. But it could make going through low doorways a bit tricky, so they often developed bad knees in later life due to all that crouching down.)
So they gathered around, and since Fossfiddle knew a bit about magic and Fortnight knew a bit about boots and Ralph knew a bit about walking, they soon had the boots working again.
The dragon was about the size of a small kettle; it was green and had very large feet. It looked up at them, sniffed a bit, and began to cry.
“Oh—well, I don’t know. Leaving faucets running and slamming doors, I suppose.”
You can’t go and kill something that’s just said good morning to you.
Dragons were really quite peaceful, and these had been living in some caves down by the river, bothering no one except the fish, which they ate.
And he tried to get his head around so that he could see his shell, because tortoises have rings on their shells and grow one for every year. Yes, there it was, the new ring, and Hercules felt ready to face the outside world.
The wind was from the south, and Hercules felt the wanderlust of all tortoises in his blood!
“I’m Extremely Sorry,” Hercules mumbled. “I’m a Tortoise. I do Apologize.”
“Why do you use so many capital letters?” Pod asked as they moved on.
It was a glorious adventure There and Back Again, and when his travels were over, he settled down to live in the field, digging himself a hole to sleep in during the winter and going on his travels again in the summer.
Now, Great Speck had been at peace for—oh, at least half an hour, but that is not to say that either country would be above pulling a fast one on the other if it got the chance.
“I’ve got to give him a medal before he takes off (I don’t expect there’ll be a chance afterward).”
(*But he could be heard. For the toilets nearby had been occupied for a Very Long Time, and a lot of flushing noises were coming out of there.)
Suddenly the crowd rushed up and gave it a jolly good push. They didn’t care—anything for a laugh was their motto.
“You told me not to worry, Your Majesty.”
Soon the king was flying the Anybody and enjoying himself tremendously.
“I can’t help thinking Their Majesties are getting worked up about nothing.” “What are we going to do about it?”
(*It’s a rule of the known universe that every kitchen in the world anywhere has a jar of glazed cherries hiding somewhere in it. No one knows why.)
“Oh, they might get put in prison for a little while, but I daresay the people will swap them. Though one duke’s as good as another, if you ask me.”
“No one is quite sure what the Snorry looks like, so we’ll be able to tell them when we find it.
People they met said yes, this was just the sort of place you caught a Snorry in, and then those people went away and laughed quietly to themselves.
Harris had suffered a particularly nasty shock too when he trod on an alligator. Even worse, the alligator could not understand a single French verb when he tried to talk to it.
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the youngest child coughing on some soup that had gone down the wrong way.
(Glurk’s eldest son; he had twenty-nine—it seems like a lot, but there you are)
“I have been following you for inches.”
No one ever found him cursing and flapping his ears in amazement.
“We outnumber them two to two thousand as it is.*” (*Most people would have preferred it the other way round.)
Snibril gave one last swish with his sword, so that the closest soldier backed into someone else’s spear again, and ran for the end of the bridge.
But be prepared to fight a bit more. Worthwhile things aren’t just there for the taking, you know.”
(*But not much. Unless you are a tone-deaf snarg.)
Then he fell into the river.
Being inventive was all very well, but not when it stuck thorns into you.
Nothing ever quite went right, ever since he had invented language when he accidentally dropped a very heavy stone on his foot. And then there was the time when he’d stuck a seed into a hole in the ground, patted the earth around it, and invented farming. A wild horse had come along and eaten the first plant.
“I declare the Stone Age at an end. History will start tomorrow!”
(*Give somebody a gold medallion and a big floppy hat and suddenly every speech becomes twice as long. It happens to principals too, I believe.)
(*Most people made steam by burning coal in a fire to heat water in a boiler, just like boiling a kettle and not letting it turn itself off. But pretty much anything could make a good fire, and the smoke from a fire made from a pair of old socks somehow managed to add its own special flavor to a toasted marshmallow.)
(*Literally, in one case, since the man had filed his teeth into nasty points.)
(You know that policemen have “POLICE” painted in large letters on their cars? Well, the crooks’ car had “CROOKS” on it in bright red letters—just so as not to confuse people.)
Once upon a time there was a king who had three sons—kings generally do. And the youngest one, instead of being good and kind and brave, was worse than you could hope to meet in a month of Mondays.
(*His favorite, however, began: Old McWotnot had a Farm, Ee-yore, Ee-yore, Eee.)
(*Hence proving that Unbreakable isn’t the same as Unboreable.)
“Actually, I was a frog,” admitted Pigsqueak. “Before that I was a toad, and before that I was a tree, and before that I was a handsome prince. I always seem to be falling foul of witches.”
It was rather an effort, but a few minutes later they dropped the baron into the moat (which was mainly mud).
Princess Keja turned out to be almost as boring as Edwo: she could talk the hind legs off a donkey when she got going.* They didn’t live completely happily ever after—there was the time Edwo got muddy footprints all over the palace carpets, and the time the roof leaked—but they were at least as happy as they wanted to be.
(*When this story was written, a British bus had a conductor to take your money and—if you were lucky—help you get off at the right stop. Or the wrong one, if you were rude to him or her.)
