Gargoylz Blog » Mrs Hogsbum
13
May
Bouncing Bagpipes

Posted by Max

Well the trick with the wet sponge worked but not exactly as we meant. We got the bucket and the sponge up in the bedroom without Ben’s mum seeing.  Ben stood at the window waiting for Arabella to pass but Toby got really excited and threw the sponge too soon.  Ben hadn’t managed to get the window open and the sponge bounced off the glass and hit him in the face! It was funny!

We had the worst lesson in the history of worst lessons today at school. Mr Widget took us for country dancing out in the playground. Yuck! If that wasn’t bad enough we had to dance with girls. Double Yuck! And if that wasn’t bad enough, Mr Widget played the tunes on his bagpipes.  We had to stick cotton wool in our ears.  We wondered about asking Zack to use his pin like he did last time and pop the bagpipes but Mr Widget had wrapped them in a sort of pin-proof bag. We sent out an urgent message to the gargoylz (paper aeroplane over the church wall) and along came Jelly.

Jelly was awesome. He glooped into a bouncy ball and bounced across the playground and then shot up the bottom pipe of the bagpipes into the bag. Then Jelly began to jump about inside. Poor Mr Widget could hardly hold on to the bagpipes, they were wriggling so much. He played faster and faster until we all fell over in a heap.  Mrs Hogsbum leant out of her window and said he’d broken school rule number 855– teachers must not play musical instruments that wriggle.

Country dancing was over – result!

Got to go.  Nan’s coming round and she’s promised to bring cakes.  Toby, Neb and Eli have just arrived so I’ve got to make sure there are some left for me!


5


Our Valentine’s day trick worked awesomely – and you won’t believe who we played it on!  Mrs Hogsbottom! 

When it was first playtime we got Theo to sneak a special homemade Valentine card on to her desk.  Mr Duster, the caretaker, nearly caught him but he turned into a kitten just in time and we didn’t see him for hours as Mr Duster scooped him up, gave him a cushion in his broom cupboard and found some tuna for him.  Toby tried to rescue him but Theo said he didn’t want to be rescued as he was enjoying himself. 

Anyway, we didn’t know that was all happening because Ben, Azzan, Ira and I were hiding under Mrs Hogsbum’s window waiting to see what would happen when she read her card.  Ira had written the verse and it said (in wobbly writing as he had to hold the pencil in his beak)…

Yo ho ho
And a bottle of ink
You’ve got a big nose
And you stink.

When Mrs Hogsbum came into her room and read the card she bellowed ‘Outrageous’ and the whole school heard it. Then she insisted on finding out who had written Ira’s card so she stormed round the school making everyone go into the hall and write out the poem so she could check our writing. Even the teachers! In the end she decided that Mr Widget who had sent it! Well, his writing was very wobbly with her breathing down his neck! She yelled ‘Outrageous’ another hundred and fifty times and told Mr Widget that he’d broken School Rule number 636 – Teachers must not send rude Valentine cards to the head teacher! She said he’d have to stay in at playtime!

It’s half term next week and Ben and I are going to Lasershoot.  Arabella and Jessica are going too so we’ve got to think up a really good trick so they won’t go there ever again.


10


Ben only just managed not to get a bashing from the Basher. As soon as Barry marched up to him and whipped the gloves out of his pocket Ben said, “That’s very strange! How did those gloves get back in there? I had them on the walk and suddenly I felt someone take them out of my pocket, but there was no one around. That’s spooky!” (Quick thinking, Agent Neal) Anyway, Barry looked really frightened and ran off down the corridor shouting something about the Ghastly Glove Ghost was now haunting the school. We heard him getting told off by Mrs Hogsbum for breaking school rule number 386 – Boys must not shout about Ghastly Glove Ghosts in school time.’

Nan brought round some lovely cakes yesterday and that reminded me. We promised you all a scrumptious recipe and Barney chose this one – Muffins. He says it’s one of my nan’s best and it’s easy peasy. 

It looks like a lot of ingredients but the muffins are really easy to make. Get a grownup to help you.

Barney’s Favourite Muffins

You will need: 

  • 250g self-raising flour
  • 25g cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 175g caster sugar
  • 175ml milk
  • 2 large eggs, beaten
  • 100ml sunflower oil
  • 75g plain chocolate chunks (don’t eat them all before you start)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Paper muffin cases
  • A 12-hole muffin tray
  1. Get your grownup to turn the oven on to 170ºC (375ºF, gas mark 5).
  2. Put muffin cases into a 12-hole deep muffin tray.
  3. Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder; stir in the sugar. Add everything else and mix it all lightly together.
  4. Spoon the mixture into the cases. Bake them for about 20 minutes until they’re springy and not squidgy when your grownup gives them a poke. Cool for 10 minutes; then put on a wire rack and leave until cool.

Eat up as soon as they are cool!!!

Nan’s going to let us help her make some when Ben and I go round there on Sunday. The gargoylz are going to join in – when Nan’s not looking, of course.


2


Happy new year, Gargoylz fans!

I’m supposed to be looking up how the Vikings farmed!  I’d much rather find out how they had battles and all that.  But Miss Bleet isn’t looking so I’m writing this blog and looking up Viking battles!

We’ve been back at school for four days now.  It’s been fun thanks to the gargoylz.  Mrs Hogsbottom was in her usual bad mood and really moaned at everyone in assembly today for coughing. She said we had broken school rule number 422 – children must not have colds during school time. After saying ‘outrageous’ three times in a row, she put her glasses on to read some important messages – well she thought they were important.  Ben and I don’t care about her new sprout garden in the playground! When she took her glasses off to glare at us, everyone started laughing, even the teachers. Mrs Hogsbottom now had black circles around her eyes. She looked like a disgruntled panda! She got crosser and crosser and of course that made us all laugh even more. Eventually Mr Duster, the caretaker, went over and offered her his sponge.  That was the end of assembly – five minutes early.

At playtime we rushed over to the wall next to the churchyard and sure enough there were Toby and Ira waiting to hear what we thought of their trick. We told them it was awesome and asked how they did it. Ira explained that it was an old pirate prank! They rubbed pencil on her glasses frames so that the lead rubbed off on to her face when she put her spectacles on.

I’m going to try it on my dad tonight!


11


Our party hats started off okay. I went round to Max’s house on Saturday and found that Jelly, Neb, Barney and Ira were already there, helping Max to get out all the paper and glue and stuff that we needed. We decided to make pirate hats.  We’d just got our cardboard into cool pirate hat shapes when Max’s mum called us for a snack.  When we got back (bringing cookies for our friends, of course) we found a terrible mess and not a gargoyle in sight. The hats were covered in dead leaves, old socks and toilet paper!  And so was the furniture. Then Barney, Neb and Ira popped out of the wardrobe and yelled ‘surprise’! They thought we’d be pleased. When we complained about the hats, Ira told us that he knew all about olden day pirates and they always looked a bit messy. Then we heard Jelly calling for help. He’d turned into a ball of purple goo and was stuck to the top of Max’s hat. When we’d peeled him off and he’d gone back to normal he explained he wanted to be there when Mrs Hogsbum gave his hat the prize.

We felt really stupid at the party in our hats. I had one of Max’s football socks dangling in my face and he had toilet paper over one eye. We wanted to take our hats off but Mrs Hogsbum said we’d be breaking school rule number 961 – boys must not take party hats off at Christmas parties. And then it was brilliant because we won the prize for the funniest hats!

Then Abel played the most awesome Christmas trick on Mrs Hogsbum. He waited until she was making her rounds of the school at lunchtime and transformed into a Christmas tree, complete with baubles and tinsel. He took up the whole corridor. We were just coming along and saw Mrs Hogsbum going red in the face with steam blowing out of her ears. Unfortunately she spotted us and thought we’d done it. She told us we’d broken school rule number 962 – boys must not block the corridor with Christmas trees. The moment she’d gone, Abel turned back into his normal self, scampered round to overtake her and turned into a tree again. She couldn’t understand how the tree kept moving and in the end she thought she must be going mad and went home. Result!

Now we’ve got two whole weeks off for Christmas!


6


The Christmas fair was awesome.  There were some cool stalls in the hall – Cracker Tug-of-war, Pudding Rolling and Splat the Christmas Rat.  And of course, the cake stall.  The gargoylz were all hiding under it when Ben and I arrived and Miss Bleet, who was running it, looked very upset as the supplies kept disappearing. We had to buy a whole lot of goodies and lure the gargoylz away in case they got spotted. Then Zack saw Father Christmas and shouted – ‘Hello Santa, how’s Ruben?’

Mrs Hogsbottom thought it was me and told me I’d broken School Rule number 357 – Boys must not shout at Father Christmas! Poor Zack was very disappointed that Santa didn’t seem to recognise his voice. He cheered up when Ben and I told him it wasn’t the real Santa because we’d seen Mr Duster’s wellies under the red trousers – and Santa is far too busy to come to a school fair at this time of year.   

Anyway, the school play was yesterday and Ben was in it after all! And he played the main part – Scrooge. Luckily for him, Gavin, who was supposed to play Scrooge has chickenpox and Duncan, his understudy, came out in spots just before the curtain went up. Anyway, Miss Bleet had to ask Ben to do it instead. As he didn’t have time to learn his lines (and he couldn’t have done no matter how long he had!) he was allowed to use his script. He was very nervous but the gargoylz helped. When the ghosts visited Scrooge they sat above the stage and made wonderful wailing sounds and rattled chains and boxes of pasta.  We weren’t sure why they used pasta until Eli explained that they just liked the noise.

Signing off now. Tomorrow we’ve got to make hats for our school Christmas party next week. There’s a prize for the best one. We’ve promised the gargoylz that they can help. We’re not sure that was a good idea.


2

19
Nov
Spelling test trickz

Posted by Ben

Mrs Hogsbottom told us we’d broken school rule number 820 – boys must not make working models of fireworks that contaminate the mashed potato.  We had to stay in at break time as a punishment but it was all right as Zack popped in and kept us company.

Talking of Zack – he played a good gargoylz trick on us today!  We were on our way to school and – wait for it – we were practising our spellings!  I know you must be thinking we’d gone soft in the head but there was a good reason.  Our mothers had sat us down and said that if we tried really hard in this test we could go to Max’s grandmother’s on Sunday and she’d bake all our favourite cakes.

So we were almost at the school gates when ‘pop’, Zack appeared.  He wanted us to play with him as the other gargoylz were all having a snooze.  They’d found a huge clump of thistles in the churchyard and were now sleeping off their prickly breakfast.  Well we had to tell Zack that we didn’t have time and we’d see him at playtime.  ‘No you won’t!’ he laughed and disappeared.

We did our test and I was really pleased that I remembered how to spell business and boomerangs – Miss Bleet was having a B day.  She gathered all the papers in and then looked at mine first and stared at me angrily.  ‘I should have known you wouldn’t learn your spellings, Ben,’ she said as crossly as she could.  I was gobsmacked – I was sure I’d got them all right. In my head, I could see Max’s gran taking my cakes away.

Miss Bleet held up my paper and said, ‘you don’t spell business and boomerangs like this!’  Everyone started laughing.  On my paper it now said, businezz and boomerangz. And all the other words had been changed. I knew who’d done it. Zack! 

‘Why can’t you be more like Lucinda?’ demanded Miss Bleet, holding up Lucinda’s test.  The whole class – except Lucinda – began shouting with laughter.  Her test had been changed as well!  When Miss Bleet checked, every word on every test had been changed.  Good one, Zack!

Miss Bleet sat down with a thud. She couldn’t understand it. ‘Our pencils must be faulty, Miss,’ piped up Max, with a wink at me.  ‘Perhaps they can’t write the letter ‘s’.’

The bell rang then for break and we left our teacher writing ‘s’ over and over again with the pencils and waiting for them to change into ‘z’.  She had to give us all 10 out of 10 so Sunday cakes here we come!


9

12
Nov
The BEST fireworks ever

Posted by Max

The church firework display last Friday was THE BEST EVER, although we thought we were going to miss the whole thing, thanks to Theo.  Ben and I got to the churchyard before anyone else was there and went off to find the gargoylz. We could hear them rustling about in the grass and see them rushing about on the roof but they didn’t seem to notice us.  Suddenly Zack appeared with a pop in front of us. “Can’t find Theo… all looking for him,” he panted. Then he disappeared. Next Toby flew down in a flap and told us that Theo is so scared of fireworks that he hides every year and the gargoylz always miss the display as they’re too busy looking for him. 

We joined in the search. People were starting to arrive in the churchyard now and some of them tutted when they saw us crawling about among the graves. (They soon backed off when we told them we were looking for our pet tarantula!) Just before the display was going to begin we heard a little miaow from Ben’s backpack. Theo had jumped in there. He looked terrified and wanted us to take him away.

Then I had my brainwave. We got Abel to turn into a really bushy tree and got Theo to climb up into his branches. Theo felt safe curled up there with Abel’s leaves all around him in a sort of nest.  The other gargoylz got on the roof for the best view – after they’d eaten all the hot dogs that the vicar had brought out for the children.  (His wife made some more so it was okay.)

The fireworks were great. We oo-ed and ah-ed for ages and the last one lit up the whole sky. After that, all us kids were given sparklers and we wrote our names in the air. All of a sudden someone shouted that there were children on the church roof. We looked up and Ben and I had to stop ourselves laughing.  The whole roof was sparkling with sparklers. Some seemed to be running up and down the spire. Then Lucinda Tellingly gave a shriek and said there was a kitten in a tree, waving a sparkler.  Luckily no one believed her! 

Oh dear. Mrs Hogsbum is coming into the classroom. I think I can guess why. Ben and I made a working model of a Catherine wheel for the hall display. Unfortunately it went off accidentally at lunchtime and sprayed glitter all over the mashed potato. Well, it wasn’t me or Ben that set it off, but I think I know who it might have been!


5


Miss Bleet nearly saw our blog last week.  Just in time, Max fell off his chair and pretended he’d broken his nose so she forgot all about the tea cosies – whatever they are.

The Harvest Festival was nearly a disaster, thanks to the gargoylz!  When we told them about the food collection, they all rubbed their tummies and said it sounded like a nice feast.  We told them that the food was for the old people and they promised to leave it alone but when Max and I went to add our tins of spaghetti hoops to the pile we found that everything had been opened and scoffed.  We knew it was the gargoylz because there was a trail of custardy claw prints leading to the window.

And then we heard Mrs Hogsbottom coming.  (She was yelling at some infants and the sound was getting louder and louder.)  We quickly wiped away the prints and covered the mess with our new tins just as she came in.  She looked at us suspiciously and went on her way.  We knew we were in big trouble.  The moment she discovered the food had been eaten, she’d blame us because she’d seen us there.

We went to find the gargoylz and gave them a telling off.  They said they were very sorry but the food had looked so nice that they couldn’t resist. They told us they would sort it all out.

And they did!  Barney sneaked into the vicar’s kitchen and made muffins and cookies.  They were strange shapes and a bit burnt because Azzan helped him by breathing fire but he made loads and put them on pretty plates.  Then Abel and Eli carried all the food from the vicar’s larder into the school hall to replace the things that the gargoylz had eaten.  The next time Mrs Hogsbum checked on the display it was bursting with food and Max and I were safe.

We felt a bit sorry for the vicar because Miss Bleet recognised the plates and told him off for burning the cookies!

I can hear Arabella screeching from her bedroom.  I think she might have found the fake dog poo I put on her carpet.


3

17
Sep
Five-aside footie fun!

Posted by Max

I’m on the class computer and I’m supposed to be looking up tea cosies through the ages.   (I don’t even know what tea cosies are but they’re sure to be stupid if Miss Bleet’s interested in them!)

We had an awesome day on Sunday – a whole day of footie training.  It was run by Oldacre Town FC and we actually played on their pitch.  Ben and I had just started dribbling practice when someone else turned up – Barry Price.  And he’d brought his four cousins with him.  They barged about with the Basher, crashing into kids and spoiling everything.

Then we had a five-a-side competition.  Ben and I were in a team with Duncan and two boys we didn’t know.  We won our first match one-nil – Ben scored a dazzler – but then disaster struck.  We had to play Barry’s team with the Basher in goal.  They all flattened us like bulldozers.  They should have been red carded but the ref was scared of them.

Then the gargoylz came to the rescue. It was nearly the end of the match and we were five goals down and we heard a whisper from under the away bench.  It was Zack and Jelly.  They’d come to watch and realised we needed an emergency gargoyle trick.

Before we knew what had happened Jelly had turned into a squashy ball.  Zack popped invisible and suddenly the Jelly ball was sailing towards the goal.  Zack must have thrown him!  Barry thought it was the real ball and dived to save it. It got stuck to his hands and his cousins all rushed up to pull it off him. While they were doing that Ben and I both scored a hat trick and won the match six-five! And the best thing was that Barry and his cousins got told off for playing with a baby’s toy.

We were really helpful at the end of the match. We unstuck the ‘baby’s toy’ and said we’d get rid of it. The Basher and his cousins all scowled at us and we managed not to laugh as we took Jelly away.

Right got to go and find some tins of food.  Mrs Hogsbottom has ordered us to bring things in for the harvest festival next week.  She and Mr Widget are going to make a display and then all the food is going to be given to the old people in the village.  Mrs Hogsbum has told us that anyone who doesn’t do this will be breaking School Rule Number 836 – Children must not forget to bring in food for the Harvest Festival when the head teacher has ordered them to do it.

Whoops!  Here comes Miss Bleet and I haven’t found out what a tea cosy is.


6

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