Mrs Hogsbottom gave us a funny look on Monday but she didn’t say anything. We reckon she was too embarrassed about getting soaked on Saturday.
We hadn’t forgotten that we wanted to play a trick on Lucinda, Poppy and Tiffany – remember they laughed at us when we had to join Wasps in Need, Miss Bleet’s stupid charity. When we went into the classroom on Monday there was a printed note from Mrs Hogsbottom to Miss Bleet on her table that she hadn’t read. We weren’t supposed to see it but this is what it said.

Dear Miss Bleet
Yesterday some of the pupils in your class made loud noises when they went past my room at playtime and made me spill my coffee down my best cardigan. It was outrageous. They are breaking school rule number 369 – pupils must not make the headteacher jump and spill her coffee down her best cardigan. I intend to lie in wait today and catch those pupils IN THE ACT.
from Mrs Hogsbottom

That gave us a brilliant idea. We hid the note and printed off our own…
Dear Miss Bleet
I didn’t have much sleep last night as my pet tarantula got out and I spent half the night trying to catch him so I may fall asleep today and that would be outrageous. Please ask some of the pupils in your class to make very loud noises outside my room to keep me awake. They will be rewarded.
from Mrs Hogsbottom

Miss Bleet read the note out to the class and Lucinda, Poppy and Tiffany put their hands up straight away – little creeps. We knew Miss Bleet would choose them as they’re such goody goodies. Off they went with drums and hooters, looking very smug and soon there was a load of banging and hooting from down the corridor followed by the biggest OUTRAGEOUS we’d ever heard. Then it all went quiet.
We didn’t see the horrible girls all day so we think they got their reward!
It’s going to snow tomorrow! Let’s hope school has to shut on Monday. Then we can play snowballs with the gargoylz!!!

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We haven’t had any time to play a trick on Lucinda and her ghastly chums because we had a crisis.
This is what happened. It’s been really cold around here. Well, the weather played a trick on poor old Bart.
Last Saturday I was having breakfast when there was a tapping sound at the kitchen window. Jessica was facing it and shouted that there was a monkey outside. I knew at once she must mean Toby. While Mum told her that monkeys don’t live in our street, I said I’d make sure and I grabbed Dad’s gardening coat and I went outside. It was freezing and all the grass was white with frost.
I hadn’t gone far when Toby burst out from a bush. He told me that Ben and I were needed urgently down at the church and with that he flew away. I ran to Ben’s house and we whizzed down to the church on his skateboard. At first we couldn’t see what was wrong. Then we realised that Bart was standing in the gutter of the church roof. It turned out that his feet had frozen to the gutter while he was sleeping and now he couldn’t move. He was staying very still so that no one guessed that he was alive. And his friends didn’t know what to do. Azzan had tried to breathe flames over Bart’s toes but as it was so cold, his fire was coming out as red ice!
There was only one thing for it. We decided to defrost Bart with warm water but we thought someone might spot us if we threw buckets of water at him. Especially as we’d have to climb up on the church roof to do it. Then Ben remembered that there’s a hose that we’re not supposed to touch in the playground. The only hot water tap we could get to was in the boys’ toilets so we got Toby to fly in and stick one of the hose ends onto it when there was no one in there. It might have been Saturday but Mr Bucket the caretaker was around and we were sure we’d seen Mr Widget’s bike in the staff car park.
Anyway Zack popped invisible and ran along, pulling the other end along behind him. He ran over the school wall and into the churchyard, with the hose trailing behind. When he’d got it aimed at Bart we told Toby to turn on the warm water. It came out in a gush and defrosted Bart so quickly it nearly knocked him off the gutter.
Then we heard Mrs Hogsbum shouting, “Outrageous!” We didn’t know she was in school! She stormed out into the playground so we couldn’t tell Toby to turn off the tap. We hid behind the bins instead and Bart shinned out of sight down a drainpipe and behind a gravestone. All Mrs Hogsbottom could see was the hose trailing into the churchyard and water spraying up in the air. Zack was so surprised when he caught sight of her ugly face peering over the wall that he turned the hose on her! It was great! She fell over backwards and we rushed up to help her back into school, dripping and spluttering. She kept moaning about school rule number 392 – school hoses must not turn themselves on and soak the headteacher. We gave her a towel and ran off to have fun with our stony friends.
I hope Mrs Hogsbum doesn’t start wondering what we were doing in school on a Saturday.

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Lucinda has found out that there are no such things as Arctic wasps. She stormed into school on Monday with loads of boring stuff she’d printed off the Internet and started shouting at us in the playground and threatening to tell Miss Bleet. We said that Arctic wasps are so rare that no one has ever seen them. Lucinda said, ‘Well how do you know they exist then?’ We said you can hear them. They make a very low buzzing sound. We said there’s a prize for the person who spots the first one but you have to be careful not to be stung.
Then we got Neb to blend in with the background so he couldn’t be seen. He came and stood behind Lucinda in the classroom and every now and then he buzzed in her ear. She yelped and jumped in the air so many times that Miss Bleet asked her if she was ill. Lucinda told her that there must be an Arctic wasp in the room and although she would like the prize, it had to be swatted or it would sting her. Miss Bleet got really angry about this because she’s a wasp lover and has even started a charity called Wasps in Need for them. She threatened to send Lucinda to Mrs Hogsbottom.
Well we knew we wouldn’t have so much fun if Lucinda wasn’t there so we made a signal to Neb to go and buzz in Miss Bleet’s ear instead. We thought it would send her running from the room but she got really excited and nearly trod on poor Neb. She said that she’d never heard of an Arctic wasp and she wanted to see one. So we were to stop our lesson and search the classroom thoroughly. And she said that she would give her own extra special reward for the first person to see one.
This gave us an awesome idea. Last term the Reception Class did a dance for assembly called the Flight of the Bumble Bee and they all dressed up in brown and yellow striped costumes. We whispered our plan to Neb and he set off. Anyway, the next thing that happened was that I pretended to look out of the window by chance and I yelled, ‘There’s a whole swarm of Arctic Wasps on the church!’ The gargoylz had found the costumes and were scampering about all over the roof in them. They don’t usually like being seen by humans but they don’t mind when they’re in disguise.
Miss Bleet stared at them and said that they looked rather big for wasps. But Max told her that was because we were far away and if we got up close they’d be much smaller! Arctic Wasps are a bit unusual like that. Miss Bleet was so confused she gave up and said I’d won the prize! Max and I got really excited because of course I was going to share it with him. But it turned out to be a year’s free membership of ‘Wasps in Need’, Miss Bleet’s stupid charity.
Lucinda and her friends Poppy and Tiffany started sniggering at this so now we’ve got to think of another trick to get our own back.

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In assembly today Mrs Hogsbum said she didn’t want to hear any rubbish about Friday 13th being unlucky. Worse than that we were all to work extra hard. Even worse than that, she’d told our teachers that we couldn’t have play time until we’d finished. And even even worse than that she was going to come to all our classrooms and give us a spelling test. She unrolled a great long list that ran down to the floor!
It was awful. We had to go straight to our classroom and start learning hundreds of spellings. We needed gargoyle help and we needed it straight away. Luckily I was sitting next to the window. I pretended that there was a wasp around me and quickly opened it. Busybody Lucinda stuck her nose in and piped up that there aren’t any wasps around in January so I told her these were special Arctic wasps – very rare and very deadly! That shut her up and she hid under her desk for the rest of the lesson. Then I flapped my arms at the imaginary Arctic wasp and hoped that one of our friends would see me from the church roof. The spellings were really hard to learn and the lesson ticked by without one sight of a stony tail or ear. It was time for secret plan: signal the gargoylz in a different way!
I started coughing as loudly as possible. When Miss Bleet asked if I was all right. I said I’d caught a cold from having the window open. I asked if I could get a drink of water as that was the only think that would stop it. Then Ben asked if he could go with me in case I was taking really poorly and he had to call an ambulance. Miss Bleet looked at us as if she didn’t trust us – I don’t know why – and then she said ‘All right then, but be quick.’
We scooted out of the classroom at about a thousand miles an hour, straight up to the caretaker’s cupboard. There’s a good view of the church roof from the little window there. We waded through mops and dusters and loo rolls and I climbed on a ladder to reach the window. Toby saw me waving and flew down. We told him the problem and he scratched his head. None of us could think of a way out of the spelling test. If we stayed in the cupboard we knew Mr Bucket the caretaker would find us and we’d still have to do the test. If we flooded the whole school Mrs Hogsbum would make us sit in lifeboats and still do the test.
“I’ve got an idea!” Ben yelled suddenly and I was so surprised I fell off the ladder on top of him. But it was a brilliant idea. We wrote a load of really easy peasy spellings on a long bit of toilet paper and gave it to Toby. Ben told him to give it to Zack who would pop invisible and swop it for the hard list that Mrs Hogsbum was going to give us.
It worked! Ben and I ran back to the classroom and took our places just in time. Mrs Hogsbum gave us all evil stares as we were trying not to laugh at her loo roll list. But we got every spelling right! Everyone did – well, everyone except for Lucinda who was still under the table hiding from the wasp and refused to come out. Mrs Hogsbum couldn’t understand it. So Friday 13th was a lucky day for us!
Trouble is – I have the feeling Lucinda might want her own back on us when she finds out that there are no such things as Arctic wasps.

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School has started again and Mrs Hogsbottom shouted at us all through assembly today saying that we had to work really hard this term and there was to be no fun and games. Even Lucinda Tellingly and her chums looked shocked.  We reckon Mrs Hogsbum must have been on Father Christmas’s naughty list and not got any presents! Well, we know our stony little friends will make sure that school is fun.

We had an amazing surprise on Saturday. Our mums and dads said we were going shopping in the sales. Max and I were horrified. We were sure we were going to need gargoyle help so Max took a backpack and we asked if we could walk past the church on the way. Pretending we were waving to the pigeons, we managed to get Toby and Theo to jump into Max’s bag when no one was looking.

We were forced to walk along the high street towards the shops while our ghastly sisters were skipping ahead and talking about all the lovely pink dresses they were going to buy. I told my mum I was too tired to go any further. I said my leg was hurting and it was cruel to make a boy walk so far when he’d only just got over a broken leg. She told me that my leg was all better now but to keep me quiet, we’d go inside this huge building and have a sit down.

Max and I tried to stop them because it was a theatre and you can’t sit on the seats without tickets. I was so sure that my embarrassing mum was going to ask the manager if her little boy could rest for a while. Max whispered into his backpack but the gargoylz weren’t there. We saw the tips of two stony tails disappear into the theatre. We were just wondering how we could get them back when our mums flapped tickets in our faces. It was a surprise. We weren’t going shopping after all. We were going to see the pantomime – Dick Whittington. Oh no we weren’t. Oh yes we were!

We took our seats but we were really worried about where the gargoylz had got to. Arabella, Ben’s bossy sister, complained that we were wriggling too much because we were looking round for our stony friends. We spotted Toby. He was sitting up on an empty balcony, ready to watch. And then Theo turned up on stage! The actors were a bit surprised when a real kitten appeared out of Dick’s hat – and the actor playing his cat nearly forgot to sing. But then the cat scooped Theo up and made him part of the show. He told the audience that he was his little nephew.

And then, when the queen, who was really a man in a big dress, threw sweets out to the audience, Toby flew around catching them and dropped them in our laps!

Next week is Friday 13^th. Unlucky for some!

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Christmas was awesome! I had the best presents in the history of best presents. My uncle and auntie and all my cousins came and we played games. Toby, Bart, Eli, Abel, Theo, Barney and Ira had stayed at mine and they were very excited about having Christmas dinner. Dad always cooks loads so I knew there’d be enough for them. I just hoped that they’d stay out of mischief.
But when we went to sit down at the table for our turkey we found that all the crackers had been pulled and the jokes were missing! I knew who’d done that – Bart! I could hear him chuckling at the jokes under the table. Arabella tried to say it must have been me but I’d been playing with my cousins in front of all the grown-ups so she didn’t get very far with that. And luckily, Mum had bought two boxes of crackers so we all got a new one.

Bart wants to tell you some of the best cracker jokes.

What athlete is warmest in winter? – A long jumper.

What do reindeer hang on their Christmas trees? – Horn-aments!

What do you get if you cross Santa with a duck? – A Christmas Quacker!

Have you got any to tell him? He’d love to hear them.
We’ll see you in 2012!

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School holidays! No more Mrs Hogsbum for two weeks. And it’s nearly Christmas!!
I went to hospital with Ben and his mum on Tuesday after school so he could have his plaster off. Theo and Jelly came with us as they wanted to see what happened. They sneaked into the boot of Ben’s car and when we got to the hospital they hid behind a curtain in the cubicle. It was okay until the nurse came in with an electric saw! They were so scared that Jelly melted into a pool of purple goo and Theo ran up the curtain in fright squeaking ‘She’s going to cut his leg off!’ The nurse thought it was me and told me not to be silly.
We were really looking forward to school the next day because Barry the Basher had been telling Ben that his leg would be all thin and weedy and would drop off when he didn’t have his plaster on any more. Of course, Ben’s leg looked fine but I found a an old chair leg and we put a sock on it and strapped Ben’s trainer to the bottom. Then at playtime we rolled Ben’s trousers up to the knee and he bent his leg up behind him so that it couldn’t be seen. Neb blended in with the background and held his leg steady for him. Then Zack popped invisible and held the chair leg in place. It really looked as if Ben had a skeleton leg under his sock. We called Barry over and told him he was right about Ben’s leg – it could drop off at any moment. Ben gave a little cough and Zack grabbed the chair leg and waved it in the Basher’s face.
Barry ran off screaming about haunted legs and did five laps of the netball courts before the dinnerladies tackled him to the ground.
It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow!! The gargoylz have decided that they will split into two groups and one will lot sleep in my room and the others with Ben. They want to stay awake and see Ruben, their gargoyle friend from the North Pole. We’d like to see Father Christmas as well and see how he is but we know that we have to be asleep or he can’t leave us any presents.
Happy Christmas, everyone!

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The birthday party turned out to be for St Mark’s Church! It’s 900 years old. And the gargoylz were very excited because there was loads of lovely food in a big marquee. Sausage rolls, crisps, mini burgers in mini buns, and lots more. And there in the centre of the table was the best thing in history of best things. The vicar’s special triple choc cake. It was massive so there was plenty for everyone.
But there was a problem. There were two humans guarding the food. And worse than that, they were Doris and Aggie, the demon flower arrangers. They were being really mean with the portions. Ben and I got a bit on our plates that was so small you needed a magnifying glass to see it. We didn’t know how we were going to feed all the gargoylz as well!
We needed to make a plan so we met the gargoylz out in the churchyard. It was trying to snow but Abel turned into a banana tree because they have big leaves for us to shelter under. He said he didn’t mind getting wet. Trees like it. Zack said he’d turn invisible and grab some cake. Simple! We tried to tell him that it wasn’t simple because people would see the cake moving about on its own but Zack had already popped invisible and Toby said he could see him running off towards the church. It’s handy that the gargoylz can see Zack when he uses his special power.
We sprinted back to the church – well Max sprinted and I hobbled – to try and stop him. But it was too late. Suddenly we saw Doris and Aggie running out of the tent screaming that they were being chased by a haunted beef burger. Of course it was invisible Zack flapping the burger at them. Other people turned to see what was going on but none of them saw the burger. We saw it disappear in two bites. Zack had eaten it! We should have realised that he’d think of something. Doris and Aggie has a lie down in the first aid tent and we sneaked along and took enough cake for all the gargoylz – and big slices for us too! Everyone else looked pleased that the demon flower arrangers had gone – even the vicar. They all queued up behind us and helped themselves.

I’m having my plaster off on Tuesday. Hurray!

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The play was awesome. Most of Ben’s lines were ‘Arggh, Jim lad,’ and even he could remember that! And Ira was in the play! Long John Silver has a parrot called Captain Flint and the stuffed model went missing just before the curtain went up. No one had any idea where it was except I did find some claw-shaped footprints in the dust near the costume box. Then Ira appeared. He’d covered himself in green paint and had an eye patch. Gargoylz don’t usually let humans see them but Ira was in disguise so it was all right. And he’s convinced that he’s a fierce pirate parrot, although he’s never been on a ship, so he knew all the right things to say, like ‘pieces of eight’ and shiver me timbers!’ Everyone was impressed and wondered how Ben was making the model talk. Though they were a bit puzzled when he suddenly squawked ‘pigeons on the spire’!  There was one sticky moment when he forgot himself and flapped his wings, making his special power work. It began to rain over Mrs Hogsbum but only for a few seconds!

I was a character called Blind Pew and I had to walk about as if I couldn’t see. I had great fun, bashing into Lucinda!  The audience gasped when she nearly fell off the stage though – but then they laughed as they must have thought it was part of the play. And Mr Widget said it was good character acting.

Then the gargoylz started to sing a pirate song from the lighting.

Pirates, pirates we are pirates

Pirates, pirates here we come

Fighting, swishing, swashing, swinging

Falling over on our … backs.

They’re still no good at rhymes!

Mum says we’re going to a party tomorrow and she said it’s not a person’s birthday. What a mystery! Hope there’s plenty of cake!!

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It’s been a busy week, me hearties. We’ve been rehearsing for the school play – Treasure Island! I was desperate to be in it and I wanted to be a pirate. Well, most of the characters are pirates but we have this new supply teacher, Miss Wrighton, and she thought it would be funny if the girls played the pirates and the boys played all the other parts.  She saw my plaster cast and said I should be Jim Hawkins…..  I got really excited. Jim Hawkins isn’t a pirate but he is the main character of the story. I was going to be the star!  Then it turned out she hadn’t finished her sentence. Things got worse. She carried on to say I’d be Jim Hawkin’s mother!  She said I could sit down to rest my leg and look scared when the pirates popped up. And worse than that I didn’t have any lines! I just had to wail a lot.  And worse than that, I was going to wear a pink frilly dress left over from Sleeping Beauty!

Time for some gargoyle help. We had to get rid of Miss Wrighton. Our story friends scampered up to the lighting above the stage and as soon as the girly pirates appeared they scattered them with glitter and some tinsel from the Christmas tree. The girls were delighted and danced around flapping their tinsel. Miss Wrighton screamed that no one was taking it seriously and ran off and wouldn’t come back so Mr Widget had to take over as director.

All the boys went to him demanding to be pirates and Lucinda Tellingly said she wanted to be Mrs Hawkins as she wanted to wear the pink dress. So Mr Widget agreed. He started to change all the characters. I heard a voice in my ear. It was Enoch hiding behind the PE equipment. He told me to limp across the hall, with my bad leg bent up behind me. I didn’t understand why but he told me there was no time to explain and that I HAD TO DO IT. He said that last bit in the voice of the evil Tangoman and no one argues with the evil Tangoman. So I did exactly what he said.

Mr Widget clapped his hands and jumped up and down in excitement. Max and I were worried that he’d gone mad too and that Mrs Hogsbum would take over but it turned out that Mr Widget thought I was just the boy to play the villain of Treasure Island – Long John Silver. He’s only got one leg you see.  So it’s all sorted. It’s going to be the best school play in the history of school plays.

There’s one little problem. Can I learn the lines? I’m not very good at that.

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