Barry the Basher was horrible this week. Well he’s always horrible but this week he was a fiend. Every playtime he went round asking people if they wanted to see his stamp collection. No one dared to say no as they’re all too scared. Every time anyone said yes he stamped on their feet. Me and Max spent all our playtimes keeping away from him. We couldn’t even play football! In the end there was only one thing to be done. We sneaked over to the church wall and called to the gargoylz.

Zack and Neb agreed to help as they can’t be seen when they use their secret powers. Then we challenged the Basher to show us his collection. His face lit up with an evil grin. ‘Wait a minute!” I told him. “We’ve got our special force field socks on so you can’t stamp on our toes!”

Barry grinned even more horribly and raised his foot up high to stamp down. But Neb and Zack grabbed hold of it and held it still. Barry went red with the effort but he couldn’t move his foot.

“We told you we had force field socks,” laughed Ben. Barry clenched his fists and screwed up his eyes, trying to get all the strength he could. Just at that moment, we whipped our feet out of the way and the gargoylz let go of his shoe. Barry slammed it down, lost his balance and went head over heels into the flowerbed. Mrs Hogsbum was furious. He’d broken School Rule number 820: Boys must not do gymnastics through the tulips!

Bart played a trick on us this morning. We were just lining up to go into class when he burped some spiders down our necks!  So we’ve got to think of a way to trick him back.

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We had the most awesome day on World Book Day yesterday with our favourite author in the history of favourite authors – Troy Brawn! Enoch, our owly gargoyle friend, was just as excited as we were. His special power is imitating voices – especially voices from stories, and even more especially all the villains in Spy-boy so we made sure we sat by a window in the hall and opened it a bit when no one was looking. Enoch crept in and sat under the radiator next to us. The hall was decorated with Spy-Boy posters and there was a pile of books on a table at the front. Enoch started hooting in excitement. We told him he mustn’t make a sound and we had to hold his beak to stop Mrs Hogsbum hearing him.
Then the amazing Troy Brawn came in. First he asked us questions all about Spy-boy and me and Max shouted out all the answers until Mrs Hogsbum zapped us with her killer glare. Then Troy read a bit from his latest book, ‘Spy-Boy and the Giant Jellyman’. It was brilliant.
When he got to the bit where Spy-boy is in the underwater cave and the Giant Jellyman is creeping up behind him and just about to strangle him with his millions of tentacles, we all heard the voice of the Jellyman. But it wasn’t coming from Troy Brawn – it was coming from under the radiator. Enoch was doing the voice! Everyone thought it was us!
“Outrageous!” shouted Mrs Hogsbum. “You are breaking School Rule Number 357 – boys must not join in with stories when famous authors are reading them.” Enoch immediately disappeared in fright out of the window.
But Troy Brawn was grinning at us. “That’s so cool!” he said. “You boys do the voices much better than me. Come out and help with the rest of the story.” Before we knew what was happening we were out at the front with a book each and the whole school gawping at us. We were terrified. We knew we couldn’t do the voices like Enoch. We were going to be in big trouble. Troy carried on with the story. “And the Giant Jellyman said, in a loud jelly voice…” We opened our mouths but nothing came out except a feeble croak. Troy looked at us. The whole school looked at us. Mrs Hogsbum glared at us.
Then a loud jelly voice echoed round the room. “Ho ho ho Spy-boy. You cannot escape my tentacles.” It was Enoch! We quickly mouthed the words as he said them. “You are about to be squeezed into the squidgiest, squashiest jelly in the world.”
At the end of the story Troy Brown was so pleased he gave me and Max a whole set of signed Spy-boy books each and some stickers and posters!
After school we found Enoch to say thank you. The other gargoylz were with him. They’d just come back from a school where Cyrus had got so excited listening to the World Book Day story that he burst out singing and sent everyone to sleep with his special power – including the author who was reading the story. The other gargoylz were so desperate to hear the end that they ran around trying to shake everyone awake. But of course they had to wait until Cyrus’s power wore off so they while everyone was asleep they found some face paints and made the teachers look like gargoylz. Was that your school? What did you do for World Book Day?

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My mum’s decided we all need to GET HEALTHY. Groan! I told her I was healthy enough already but she didn’t listen even when I ran up and down the stairs twenty times to show her how fit I am. On Sunday she decided we would all go for a brisk walk in the country – and that Ben must come too. This was a double disaster – it meant we couldn’t play with the gargoylz AND our stupid sisters Jessica and Arabella had to come along.  They moaned even more loudly than us!  Then Mum said if we were lucky we might catch sight of some interesting animals.  The girls cheered up and decided to look for bunny-wunnies! We told them that there wouldn’t be bunny-wunnies in the forest as they’d all been eaten by the fierce monsters that live there. They didn’t take any notice but started telling us we were babies who still believed in fairy tales.

Well, we were plodding along this really boring track in a forest when we suddenly noticed a tree blocking our path. “That’s strange,” said Mum. “I’m sure that wasn’t there just now.”

Of course it wasn’t. We knew exactly who it was – our gargoyle friend Abel, who can make himself into a tree!

We couldn’t get past the Abel tree but we thought it would be great to climb up into his branches. But guess what!  Mum wouldn’t let us. She said we’d probably get stuck as it was such a tall tree. Then Jessica saw that some of the tree’s branches were bending over so much that they made a ‘sweet little house’. The girls rushed off to go inside. We thought that was going to be really bad for Abel – he’d be deafened by their giggling!  While we waited we mooched about in the undergrowth trying to find sticks for a sword fight but Mum said that was too dangerous. She made us do exercises on the spot instead.  All of a sudden Zack popped into view and told us not to worry. The gargoylz had a Plan.

The next second Jessica and Arabella came rushing out of their sweet little house screaming there were monsters in there – and a skeleton! They wouldn’t stop running so Mum had to chase them down the path.

As soon as they were out of sight we heard gargoyle chortling. Toby, Zack and Rufus were hiding in the house and Rufus had turned into a really cool skeleton. We all had a climb on Abel’s branches and got right to the top. Mum was ages finding the girls and said she was never going to go walking with any of us again. RESULT!

Next Thursday is World Book Day. Troy Brawn is coming to our school. He wrote the Spy-boy books and he’s our favourite author. We’re going to get signed copies of our favourite ones. YAY!

The gargoylz are going to visit schools in Kent and Essex. They’ve promised to behave. We shall see…

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Bad news – it’s nearly the end of half term already. But it has been awesome! On Monday Ben’s mum took us to have a lesson on a climbing wall that’s just opened at the leisure centre. When we told the gargoylz we were going they were really excited because we were going to learn to climb like them, and then we could all have fun on the church roof! We didn’t like to tell them that we’d get into terrible trouble if we did that. But we invited them to come along.
Anyway, when we set off that morning in Ben’s car we got into trouble anyway. There was a dreadful smell from the boot. Barney had got so excited he’d let out a prize bottom burp. Ben’s mum thought it was us and said if we did that any more we couldn’t go climbing – the smell would knock out the climbers and they’d fall off the wall.
When we got there – disaster! Lucinda and Tiffany had come along and they were going to share our lesson! They had their pink climbing helmets on and looked very smug. The instructor said that after our lesson there was going to be a climbing competition and the prize was free entry to everything at the leisure centre all week. Lucinda and Tiffany told us they would win easily as they’d been learning for ages.
Well, we had our lesson – and it didn’t go too well as we kept slipping and dangling off our safety ropes and the girls kept laughing at us. Then we went off to the new Competition Wall. It was shaped like a stone castle and it looked great, much higher than the one we’d been practising on. Some of the bricks were sticking out a little bit for hand and footholds. The instructor said we’d be the first ones to use it. Lucinda asked why we were bothering to have the competition – she knew they’d win anyway as the other team were such weeds. Max and I were furious. No icky girl was going to call us weeds! The instructor blew his whistle and we set off. At first we thought the girls would win, especially as Ben kept getting his feet stuck between the stones. They were definitely ahead. But then we heard them complaining about the wall. They said they couldn’t get over the huge lumpy bits! We didn’t have any huge lumpy bits our side so we looked across to see what was going on. Lucinda was right! There were some very strange shapes stuck to the wall that hadn’t been there before. One of them winked at us! It was Toby – he’d curled up and frozen and Lucinda was dangling from his tail. And Barney had made a really spike shape just above Poppy’s head. This was our chance. We scrambled up the wall and got to the battlements first! When we looked down the gargoylz had gone and the instructor was telling the girls not to make excuses. The wall wasn’t faulty and he couldn’t see any lumps. They’d lost fair and square. We gave them a friendly clap when they got to the top but they didn’t look too pleased.
And since then we’ve had an awesome week at the leisure centre. Theo especially likes the soft play but Neb’s favourite is the pool with all the flumes. Hope you’ve had a fantastic half term too!

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When we woke up on Sunday everything was covered in snow! Ben and I went rushing off to find the gargoylz. They were making a slide from the top of the church roof and piling up a huge heap of snow in the churchyard to land on. We got Ben’s sledge for them to use so they could go faster. Of course they all wanted to have first go, and we could see them on top of the roof fighting to get on board. In the end six of them set off with Bart steering and Theo on his head looking terrified. The sledge went so fast it overshot the landing and crashing into a tree. It was really unlucky because at that moment Barry the Basher was climbing the wall from his back garden into the churchyard, just under the tree. All the snow fell off the branches and he disappeared in the avalanche. By the time he’d fought his way out the gargoylz had vanished and all he could see was me and Ben trying not to laugh. We told him it wasn’t us who did it but he didn’t listen. Instead he stole our sledge and hopped back into his garden where we couldn’t get him.
We had to get our sledge back! We peered through a crack in the wall while Enoch called, “Outrageous! Give that sledge back this minute!” in Mrs Hogsbum’s voice! We saw Barry going pale and start to bury the sledge in the snow. Then Enoch called out, “If you do not give that sledge back now, I will come and get it!” At once Barry sat down on the buried sledge and tried to look innocent. We were amazed that he didn’t run away. Perhaps he thought that Mrs Hogsbum wouldn’t be able to get over the wall!
Time for part two of the plan. Zack popped invisible and Neb camouflaged himself. We saw their footprints as they climbed into Barry’s garden. Of course he couldn’t see our friends, but what he did see was a great big snowman magically taking shape in front of him. It had bony fingers, a long pointy nose and an angry face. It was a snow-Hogsbum!
That was too much for Barry. He dug out the sledge as fast as he could, slung it over the wall and ran in crying to his mum. We had sledge races with the gargoylz for the rest of the day.
As there wasn’t any more snow the school didn’t shut even for one day this week! It wasn’t too bad as the playground was still covered and we made mini snow-Hogsbums for Barry to find. For some reason he hasn’t bullied anyone since!
Half term next week. WE CAN’T WAIT!!

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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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