Fizzlebert Stump and the Great Supermarket Showdown

CHAPTER FOUR

In which a boy carries some bags and into which some rain falls

Fizzlebert Stump sighed wearily under the weight of the great weights he sighed wearily under the weight of. Each of his two small hands held the straining handle of a bulging bag filled with frozen chickens and cans of soup and heads of broccoli and bottles of fizzy pop (among other things). The plastic was stretching, becoming sharp and thin, and was cutting off the blood supply to his fingers which were growing numb. They were turning white, and heading towards a shade of blue that fingers weren’t ever intended to be.

He heaved and –

Hang on …

I’ve not done the introductions yet, have I?

Here we are at the very beginning of the book and I’ve just plunged straight in without even saying, ‘Hello,’ and without explaining what’s going on or what the plan is.

Sorry about that.

My mistake.

Let me start again …

Hello, I’m the author of this book. I’m the person who’s going to be talking to you, inside your head, through your eyes, for the next two hundred and eighty-seven pages. (Unless, of course, you throw the book away right now (and who could blame you after I messed the beginning up so royally?).)

This isn’t the first book I’ve written about Fizzlebert Stump and his various ‘mildly amusing adventures’ (The Lascaux Echo), but perhaps it’s the first one you’ve read, so for the sake of any new readers I’d best start with a few Key Facts:

(1) Fizzlebert Stump is a boy who lives in a travelling circus.

(2) A travelling circus is a circus that goes from place to place.

(3) A plaice is a sort of fish.

(4) Fish is one of Fizz’s friends in the circus.

(5) Fish is a sea lion.

(6) Fish likes fish.

(7) A plaice is an example of a sort of fish that Fish likes.

(8) Once upon a time Fizz (which is what we call Fizzlebert Stump most of the time in order to save on ink, because we’re environmentally minded like that) put his head inside a lion’s mouth (and took it out again) to wow the audiences, but nowadays (since the lion retired) he does a strongman act with his father, Mr Stump.

(9) Mr Stump, Fizz’s dad, is a strongman.

(10) Mrs Stump, Fizz’s mum, is a clown. When she’s got her make-up on she’s called The Fumbling Gloriosus, but when she doesn’t she’s just called Gloria.

‘Aha!’ you might be saying to yourself, waving your finger in the air as if you’ve just had a brilliant idea. ‘The reason Fizz was sighing under the weight of the heavy bags mentioned by accident at the very beginning is because he’s practising for the strongman act. It’s obvious!’

‘Well,’ I’d say back to you, ‘you’re wrong. You couldn’t be more wronger.’

‘Aha!’ you might say. ‘There’s no such word as wronger.’

To which I’d reply, ‘You couldn’t be more wrongerer about that, but we’re not here to discuss vocabulary, so let’s get on with the story.’

Fizzlebert Stump sighed wearily under the weight of the great weights he sighed wearily under the weight of. Each of his two small hands held a straining handle of a bulging bag filled with frozen peas and cans of rice pudding and bundles of carrots and bottles of orange squash (among other things). The plastic was stretching, becoming sharp and thin, and was cutting off the blood supply to his fingers which were becoming numb. They were turning white, and heading towards a shade of blue that fingers weren’t ever intended to be.

He heaved and hefted the bags into the open boot of the old lady’s car.

‘Good,’ she said, as Fizz rubbed life back into his stinging hands.

She climbed into the car and drove away, leaving him stood in the middle of the car park.

It was beginning to rain.

Fizz’s uniform itched.

His hands hurt.

He sighed, deeply.

‘Stump!’ a voice shouted from somewhere over in the direction of that big white building you hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t mentioned it yet. ‘Stop dawdling! Get back here! Now!’

Still rubbing his fingers Fizz trudged grudgingly back across the car park, avoiding the cars (most of which were parked, but one or two of which were moving), and grumbling grumpily to himself.

‘How did it ever come to this?’ he asked.

The world answered him with a distant rumble of thunder and a dribble of raindrops down the back of his neck, which wasn’t really much of an answer, if you think about it.

As he reached the big white building I mentioned earlier he was met by a short, pointy-faced man with a clipboard, a pen, a frown, two sideburns and a gaggle of elderly women hanging round him.

‘You need to be faster, Stump. Mrs Jones here’s been waiting five minutes. She’s in parking space ninety-seven. These six bags.’

He pointed at six bags of shopping sat neatly at the feet of a particularly unpleasant-looking old lady.

She smiled toothlessly at the man with the clipboard and said, ‘Fank you, darlin’.’

‘Get on with it, Stump.’

Parking space ninety-seven was right over the other side of the car park. Fizz looked at the six bags. It wasn’t that they were too heavy for him, but the plastic they were made from was so cheap he was afraid his fingers would sooner or later be chopped off, or that it would break and spill the old lady’s shopping all over the tarmac, and that would be almost as bad.

‘Shall I use one of the trolleys?’ he asked.

Even the rain fell silent.

The old ladies looked at the man with the clipboard.

The man with the clipboard’s clipboard twitched.

‘A trolley?’ the man with the clipboard said. ‘A,’ he really dragged out the pause, ‘trolley?’

He was doing that thing that people with clipboards often do, which was shouting, but really quietly. He was angry, that was clear from the fact that his face had just turned red, and he said the two words (‘a’ and ‘trolley’) with a smear of venom and unpleasantness that made the quietness of his voice feel like a force ten gale.

But then, all of a sudden, he smiled, the rain splashed and the old ladies rippled a little laughter out of their tiny tight mouths as he said, ‘But, Stump, it’s raining. I can’t risk the trolleys getting rusty. That’s why we’ve got you.’

There was nothing for it. Fizz shifted uncomfortably in the scratchy supermarket uniform, slipped his hands into the handle-holes of the plastic bags, and, three on each side, began walking towards parking space ninety-seven.

‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted the man with the clipboard.

Fizz stopped.

‘Oi! Mr Surprise!’ the man with the clipboard shouted. ‘Umbrella for Mrs Liversmell. Quick! Quick!’

Fizz heard the old lady say, ‘Oh, darlin’, yer too kind.’

‘It’s nothing,’ the man with the clipboard said, oilily.

Fizz trudged off through the rain, droplets dribbling down his nose, the thin plastic cutting into his fingers, as an old woman hobbled along at his side, smelling of lavender and newt, with the tall figure of Dr Surprise walking beside her, holding an umbrella over her head.

Dr Surprise was dressed, like Fizz, in a supermarket uniform.

He stared straight ahead, as if hypnotised. Except he wasn’t hypnotised because he was unhypnotisable, being the circus’s hypnotist (and magician, mind reader and illusionist). He was just miserable, itchy and cold.

He edged the umbrella over to one side so that half of it was covering Fizz as well as Mrs Liversmell.

‘Surprise!’ yelled the clipboarded gentleman. ‘Umbrellas are for customers’ use only!’

‘Sorry, Fizz,’ the doctor said, shifting it back over the old lady.

They trudged, at the pace of an old woman, across the car park.

Now, even the newest readers of this book, the ones who’ve never met Fizz before, and who only know what I told you in the list of Key Facts a little earlier, will be saying to themselves, ‘What the juggling gerbil’s going on here? You told me this was a book about a circus and all we’ve got is some nonsense about customer service in a supermarket car park. This isn’t what I expected a Fizzlebert Stump book to be about. Where do I get my money back?’

Well, let me say just two things.

Firstly: be patient and everything will make sense and be explained and so on, soon.

And secondly: refunds are nothing to do with me.

(If you really want your money back you’ll need to take the book back to where you bought it, with the receipt, and it’ll need to be looking as good as new. Were your hands clean? Did you drop it in the bath? Or in the mud? I hope not, for your sake.)

*    *    *

For the rest of us, the story will continue in the next chapter. In fact, we’ll be going back in time in order to understand what just happened. OK, so hang on tight for Chapter One.

CHAPTER ONE

In which a man makes an announcement and in which a boy does not have a haddock in his pocket

I am taking you back half an hour to before the rain and then back slightly further (another three weeks, two days and four hours) to the fateful morning when the Ringmaster summoned the whole circus together in the Mess Tent.

Breakfast was over.

Cook was grumbling because there was washing-up to do.

Fizz, and his mum and dad (who had had breakfast in their caravan (toffee apple surprise (the surprise being it had actually been cornflakes and jam))), strolled in and sat on a bench at the back, not expecting anything untoward to be about to unfold.

It was quite normal for the Ringmaster to call everyone together now and then. It’s the easiest way to