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    Ratburger Salad
    Ratburger Salad
    Ratburger Salad
    Ebook155 pages2 hours

    Ratburger Salad

    By David Elvar

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    About this ebook

    They’re not going to learn Cookery at school, no way are they going to learn Cookery at school. They need to get themselves kicked out of the class, and they have the perfect plan that will allow just that to happen. Unfortunately, there’s just one small obstacle to them carrying it out...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Elvar
    Release dateDec 20, 2009
    ISBN9781452362748
    Ratburger Salad
    Author

    David Elvar

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      Book preview

      Ratburger Salad - David Elvar

      RATBURGER SALAD

      David Elvar

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2009 David Elvar

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ~oOo~

      ONE

      ‘…and keep whipping it until you end up with a light, fluffy mixture.’

      ‘You mean like this, Miss?’

      She looked across at his mixing bowl. What she saw did not surprise her.

      ‘No, Jonathan Handley, I do not mean like that,’ she said wearily. ‘What have you done, boy? Put too much sugar in it, I suppose.’

      ‘No, Miss! Honest, Miss!’

      ‘That’s right, Miss! I saw him, Miss!’ said another voice.

      ‘Me too, Miss!’

      ‘And me, Miss!’

      They were doing it again, closing up in a barrage of voices designed to defend and defeat. They usually succeeded, too.

      ‘Thank you!’ she said firmly. ‘I think Mr. Handley can speak for himself!’

      The barrage ceased, stilled into its familiar wary silence. She looked down at them, at all four of them and their mixing bowls. The rest of the class looked on, as they always did when this sort of thing happened in this lesson, and this sort of thing often did happen in this lesson. They’d warned her at Teacher Training College there would be days like this, classes like this. An awkward age group you’ve chosen to specialise in, they’d said, stuck in a kind of limbo, no longer willing to be treated like children yet not ready to act like adults. Good luck. You’re going to need it. At the time, she’d laughed…

      ‘I know when someone’s put too much sugar in,’ she said as she moved amongst them, ‘so don’t try telling me otherwise. And you, Anthony Ryan, have used too much milk. And you, Edward Blunden, too much flour. And as for you, Alex Bristow, I can’t begin to think what you’ve done!’

      ‘Well, you did say to put two eggs in, Miss.’

      ‘Indeed I did,’ she said, dabbing at the strange mixture with a spoon, ‘but only the insides, not the shells as well.’

      ‘Really, Miss?’ said Al, eyes wide with affected innocence. ‘Wow! Good job you said before someone tried eating it.’

      The rest of the class sniggered. Miss Palmer didn’t. She swung round, rapped out a single word—

      ‘Silence!’

      —then was turning back to the four of them, each of them by himself the bane of her professional life.

      ‘Now look, you four,’ she said, ‘if we’ve been through this once, we’ve been through it a thousand times: you are going to learn cookery.’

      ‘Aw, do we have to, Miss?’ said Al.

      ‘Yes, you do have to. It’s part of the curriculum.’

      There was a chorus of ‘Aw, Miss!’ and ‘Come on, Miss!’ and ‘Stuff the curriculum!’ and one lone voice pleading: ‘But cooking’s for girls, Miss!’

      ‘And that, Alex Bristow, is where you’re wrong,’ she retorted. ‘What are you going to do for meals when you’ve grown up and left home?’

      ‘That’s easy. I’ll get me mum to send something over.’

      ‘Don’t be stupid, boy! Do you think she’s got nothing better to do than to wait hand and foot on you for the rest of your life?’

      ‘Okay, I’ll send out for a pizza, then.’

      ‘Hey, order me one while you’re at it,’ said Jon.

      ‘And me!’ said Eddie.

      ‘Extra pepperoni for me,’ said Tony.

      ‘Or maybe a burger,’ said Al. ‘I like burgers.’

      The rest of the class sniggered again. It was going well. They could tell because now Miss Palmer was really shouting.

      ‘Stop that! All of you!’

      She turned back to them. ‘If your attitude to life is anything like your attitude to cooking, Alex Bristow, I imagine your mother will be heartily glad to see the back of you. And as for a diet of pizzas and burgers, come back in ten years time when your body is bloated and your arteries clogged with fat and you can’t climb the stairs without stopping for breath halfway up. See if you still feel the same way about them then!’

      ‘But I like pizzas and burgers, Miss.’

      ‘Of that I have no doubt but do they like you, that’s the question. Now, you four, you can start all over again. And this time, I want to see a cake that melts in the mouth and tastes divine. Understood?’

      ‘But we’ve used all our ingredients, Miss,’ said Al, knowing this to be true and knowing there to be no way round it. They’d planned it well, this time.

      ‘So you have,’ Miss Palmer observed dryly. ‘But what do you know, I just happen to have brought some extra along with me, just in case some careless individual suffered an unfortunate accident along the way.’

      ‘Oh, sh—’

      ‘Yes, Jonathan Handley, including sugar!’ she snapped. ‘Now, there isn’t enough for all of you so you’ll have to make the one cake between you. Go on! You know what to do so find a clean bowl and get cracking.’

      They glanced at each other, each face a mask of something between frustration and resentment. Beaten again. And after all that effort...

      TWO

      Out in the playground, they retreated to their favourite corner to gaze forlornly at each other, to reflect on the lesson they had just been taught, and in more ways than one. They had taken care over its planning, had gone on to carry it off to perfection and had even managed to raise a few smiles in the rest of the class. And what did they have to show for their efforts? Another sense of failure and a sorry excuse for a cake. The one they could just throw away. The other they would have to live with.

      ‘Well, that went well, didn’t it?’ Al sighed at length.

      ‘Yeah, just like last time,’ Jon mumbled, ‘and the time before that and the time before that.’

      ‘It never works,’ said Tony miserably, ‘even when we go out of our way to muck it up.’

      ‘I reckon she’s onto us, meself,’ said Eddie. ‘We can’t get nothing past her. Maybe we should think about giving up.’

      Jon and Tony murmured faint agreement but Al didn’t. He just gaped disbelief at them, at each of them in turn. This was not what he wanted to hear.

      ‘What!’ he said. ‘Come on, guys, it ain’t that bad.’

      ‘It is, Al,’ said Jon. ‘Face it. We’ve tried everything under the sun and a bit more. There’s nothing left.’

      ‘Look,’ he said patiently, ‘she can’t make us learn if we don’t want to. All we’ve got to do is keep on making a complete foul-up of everything she gives us to do and she’ll chuck us out for sure. She’ll have to!’

      ‘What, you mean like she did just then? Forget it, Al. Like she said, it’s part of the curriculum so we’ve got to do it.’

      ‘Stuff that!’ said Al. ‘If I want a cake, I’ll leave it to me mum to make it.’

      They laughed grimly, but this was dangerous thinking and Al knew he would have to pull something really special out of the hat to get them back on track. But what to do, that was the question. They were running out of ideas, it was simple as that.

      ‘Come on, guys,’ he said, ‘we can’t give up now. We’ve come too far.’

      ‘Yeah and what have we got out of it?’ said Jon. ‘Four detentions and a letter home to our parents, that’s what.’

      ‘An’ a lot of food thrown straight in the bin,’ Eddie added miserably. ‘My mum’s getting fed up with forking out good money for ingredients and seeing nothing come back.’

      ‘Then that’s gotta say something, hasn’t it?’ said Al.

      ‘Yeah but to the wrong people,’ said Jon. ‘It’s old Palm Trees we’ve gotta convince, not Eddie’s mum.’

      ‘An’ I still think we can do it. So come on, suggestions as to what we’re gonna do next. I need some help here, guys.’

      They shuffled uneasily. Ideas were not things that came easily to them: they preferred to just go with the flow, take advantage of whatever the day brought them. Actual planning was something they tried to avoid. And they could. Usually. But not this time.

      ‘We could try putting in things that shouldn’t be there,’ said Jon.

      ‘It’s a start,’ said Al. ‘What have you got in mind?’

      ‘Well, there’s this stuff called Anchovy Essence. Me mum was telling me about it. Seems if you use more than just a couple of drops of it, what you make tastes terrible.’

      ‘Nice idea but she might rumble that one,’ said Al dubiously. ‘You know what she’s like for trying everything at the end of each lesson.’

      ‘Okay,’ said Tony, ‘too much sugar, too much salt.’

      ‘Even better,’ said Eddie, ‘how about sugar instead of salt and salt instead of sugar.’

      ‘You mean mix them up?’

      ‘Worth thinking about,’ said Jon. ‘And that is something we haven’t tried yet.’

      Al shook his head. ‘Won’t work. Let’s face it, if you put salt in your tea instead of sugar, you’d know it pretty quick. No, we’ve got to find some other way, something she won’t rumble but that’s really gonna be sure-fire.’

      But in the silence that followed, he knew he was asking the impossible. Hadn’t they been trying to find that very same sure-fire something for what?—two whole terms now? And for those same two whole terms, they’d gone into every lesson with the latest sure-fire something tucked up their sleeves, only to have a sure-fire failure dog their steps as they left. It was, he had to admit, almost enough to make him want to give up, too. But only almost…

      A voice cut across his thoughts.

      ‘Look out!’ Jon was saying. ‘Mad Max!’

      Al looked up. Mad Max. Great! Just what he needed right then. More properly known as Kevin Nigel Maxwell, it was not a name anyone called him to his face. Then, a simple Max would suffice, and with good reason: the word bully had long since been consigned to the sanitised glow of political correctness so the worst that could then be said of him was that he had a tendency to use his size to get his own way. As usual, he looked as though he wanted to have words with someone. And as usual, he looked as though he’d chosen their little group to have them with.

      ‘Oi, Bristow!’ he was yelling. ‘You done me that cake yet?’

      ‘What cake was that, Max?’ Al replied innocently.

      ‘You know what cake! The one for me birffday.’

      ‘Oh, that cake. Well, it’s like this, Max. I did make you one, the best cake Miss had ever seen, so she told me. Trouble was, when she came to taste it, it was awful. So she said, anyway. Said it tasted so bad, she’d have to take it home and throw it in her own personal dustbin, make sure nobody

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