Anyway, on the way home I had to get new shoes. The most boring shopping in the history of most boring shopping.  Mum picked Max and me up in the car and we went off to this old-fashioned shop where a very cross lady got loads of really horrible shoes out for me to try. I told Mum they all looked like what grandads wear but she wouldn’t listen and the shoes lady kept tutting at me.  Suddenly Max started giggling. One of the pairs of shoes jumped out of the box and started jumping about! Then another pair joined in! Mum and the shoe lady couldn’t believe their eyes! We knew just what had happened. Zack and Neb had stowed away in the car and come in to help. 

Then we heard Toby’s growly voice from under the seats.  “Disgusting! These shoez have got fleaz. That’s why they’re jumping about.”

All the other shoppers screamed and stampeded so fast for the door that they all tried to go through it together and got stuck. The cross lady had to call the fire brigade to get them free! And in the meantime, I chose some really cool shoes and the cross lady and Mum were so upset by everything that they didn’t argue. Result! 

Next Friday is April Fool’s Day. I wonder if the gargoylz have got anything planned?

We had a tunnel and a secret lab and a launch pad for our superspy rocket. But then Jessica came along. She wanted to play but she didn’t want to play Spy-boy. We didn’t want to play Spy-boy with her either but instead she wanted our base to be a princess castle! Ben and I were nearly sick.

Luckily Bart, Jelly and Neb had come to play with us. So Jelly melted down into a squidgy blob all over her shoes, Neb blended in with the cardboard and tripped Jessica up and Bart burped some spiders down her neck.  Jessica ran away screaming and so the secret base became a princess-free zone again.

Bart wanted us to tell you his best joke for this time of year but he likes two and couldn’t decide which one.  What do you think?

Q. What season is it when you’re on a trampoline?…

A. Spring-time!

Q. Can February March?…

A. No but April May!

Ben and I have to make a model of a king for history homework so we’re going to plan it out this weekend. We’ve chosen King Henry the eighth and I’ve had an awesome idea about how to do it that will be a trick as well.

Anyway, playtimes haven’t been as much fun without our stony friends. Ben and I tried to play Super special secret agents today but we made a big mistake!  We’d planned an awesome trick on those icky girls, Lucinda, Poppy and Tiffany. All week we’ve been making confetti bombs!  They’re easy peasy. Ben got some of the thin paper bags that his mum puts sandwiches in.  We filled them with all the paper bits from Dad’s paper shredder.  Our plan was to drop them on the girls when they go to have their playtime chat under the honeysuckle. 

So we got in position and when we heard the footsteps we dropped our bombs.  But we didn’t know that the girls had been overtaken at the last minute and our paper bombs splattered all over…. Barry-the Basher-Price!

He was really angry and started rampaging about.  We were sure he was going to find us any minute when all of a sudden it began to rain over his head.  It was Ira using his special power.  Before he could say ‘you’re bashed’ the paper and water turned to papier-mâché and got stuck on his head like a sort of drippy helmet.

It took three dinner ladies and Mr Duster the caretaker to get Barry free.  And then he had to walk round school with pink bits stuck on his stubbly hair because Dad had shredded some pink paper. Mrs Hogsbottom said he’d broken School Rule number 363 – boys must not have shredded pink paper in their hair.

So Ira saved us in the nick of time.

The gargoylz are off again next week to visit more schools but we’re going to spend all weekend with them. We’ve told our mums we’ve got a brass rubbing project at the church. I wonder what we’ll get up to. 

Oh… Toby wants to know if anyone saw them this week? They were in Brighton, Essex and Kent. They hid from the teachers of course!

The show was as bad as we thought – full of dancing pixies and furry animals.  Ben and I got really fidgety.  We had to sit through ten minutes of this and Neb and Zack hadn’t played any pranks at all.  I was just telling Ben that I thought they must have gone to sleep somewhere when Mum poked us in the back.  She told us that if we didn’t keep quiet we’d be banned from playing football for a month!  So we zipped our lips while Jessica and eight other little lambs skipped about.  (They looked more like a herd of hippopotamuses.)  Then Arabella pranced on to the stage to do a dance called the Dying Duck.  She had a stupid pink costume on which was covered in feathers.  Ben and I were just agreeing that we’d never seen a pink duck before when we remembered the footie ban threat and shut up.

Arabella was jumping and twirling to some horrible twinkly music when suddenly the feathers on her dress began to fly off into the air.  We knew what was happening of course.  Invisible paws were plucking the dancing duck!  The feathers were all around Arabella like a pink blizzard.  She tried to dance on, spitting out bits of fluff when suddenly she began to spin like a top across the stage and then disappeared into the wings.  There was an earsplitting crash and that was the end of the show.  She’d bowled into the rest of the farm animals and they were all shrieking so loudly with terror they couldn’t dance.  Result!

I’m at Ben’s house now for tea and we’re going to leave some pink feathers all over her bed! 

We’ve had a great half term.  We went to an activity swim at the leisure centre on Tuesday with lots of floats and inflatables.  But mostly we’ve been getting ready for Halloween on Sunday.  And there’s lots to plan.  I’m having a Halloween party and everyone has to dress up in a scary way.  Ben’s coming of course and some other friends from our class – or should I say, fiends from our class.

The gargoylz have been helping and we’ve promised them their own party when everyone else has gone home.  We’ve been making paper ghosts and shiny skeletons to decorate my bedroom.  I left a skeleton on Jessica’s pillow and waited for her screams.  But Mum found it first.  She screamed really loudly so the trick worked in a way.  Bart’s going to burp up lots of spiders for us so my bedroom will be Scary! Scary!! Scary!!!  That will keep Jessica out.

Bart was wondering if anyone has some Halloween jokes for him.  Ben has one.

Q.  Why didn’t the skeleton go to the party?

A.  Because he had no body to go with!

Bart likes that one and so does Rufus!

Abel’s joke is -

Q. Why do witches wear name badges?

A. So you can tell which witch is which! 

Don’t forget to post your Halloween jokes too.

Right, we’re off to the kitchen to practise making witch’s guts and eyeballs. We’re going to use spaghetti and lots of gungy tomato sauce that looks like blood, with mozzarella cheese balls on top. Yummy and yucky!

And the great thing was Abel and Jelly came too.  The bad thing was so did Arabella! – Luckily Jessica’s too small.  I don’t know why she bothered. She did nothing but shriek and hold everyone else up when she got scared.  If that wasn’t bad enough she tried to tell us how to do it.  The helper had to hoist her up the Tarzan net because she couldn’t climb it.  Max and I got ahead of her but then my dad said we had to wait until she caught up!  And then when she did she was really bossy.  So we made a plan.  We told Arabella that there were pterodactyls in the trees.  Of course she didn’t believe us.

When she was going across the wobbly bridge Jelly popped up in front of her.  That should have been enough to scare her but she just said that Jelly was a cheap plastic model!  He was very offended.

So then we told her that the trees were haunted.  She stuck her tongue out at us.  But she doesn’t know about Abel.  He turned into a tree and when she climbed up him, he growled, ‘Watch out!  My bite’s worse than my bark!’

Arabella screeched, scrambled along the stirrups and down the next zip wire in record time.  After that, she insisted on sticking close to Dad.  Max and I were free.

Tonight I’m going to put some twigs in her pants drawer so she’ll think the ghostly tree has come home with us.

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.

Anyway he soon recovered when I told him we were going to spend the whole of the next day in my garden right away from his annoying sister.

However, I’d forgotten that my annoying sister would be around.  When we got outside, ready for a game of superspies, Jessica had taken over the whole lawn with a yucky teddy bears’ picnic and told us to go away and play indoors. 

We were about to spray her with water from the hose when Mum saw us and made us sweep the patio – and she said she was going to keep an eye on us.

We were just thinking that this wasn’t going to be a fun day after all when a pair of stony ears popped up from a pot plant.  It was Zack, and Neb was with him.  We pretended to be polishing the pot and bent down to tell them all about Jesscia taking over the garden.  Zack and Neb grinned at each other so we knew they were going to do something cool.  Zack disappeared and Neb blended with the patio stones.

When Jessica went inside to get more juice, her teddy bears began moving about.  She couldn’t believe her eyes when she came back to see Grumblytum on his head, Sleepytime Ted up a tree and Mr Fuzzyfur with his head through a hole in the fence and the others were all in a heap on the shed roof.  And half the picnic had been eaten.  She let out an ear-splitting scream and told Mum that we’d done it!  Of course Mum knew it wasn’t us as she’d been watching us making a beautiful job of the patio.  Jessica was so cross she started taking her bears inside.  We helped which made her even crosser and then we had a great game of superspies.   It’s extra good when you’ve got two vanishing gargoylz!

Bart has read a teddy bear joke in a book.

Q. What do you get if you cross a skunk with a teddy bear?
A. Winnie the Pooh!

Oh dear he’s just made one up one of his own.

Q. What do you get if you cross a bottom burping gargoyle with a teddy bear?

A. Barney the Pooh!

I’ve thought of another trick I can play on Jessica.  Going off to get tin foil and a plunger!

Max quickly stood in front of Rufus, and Neb used his special power to blend in with my duvet. But Jelly was so alarmed that he turned into a ball of gloopy jelly on the floor. Arabella stepped right in the middle of him with her bare feet. It was so funny to see her slipping about trying to get him off – and she got even more annoyed when we started laughing.

Then we got going with our pranks.  We played loads but I’ll tell you about the best one.  Mum and Dad were sitting in the garden having a drink.  Neb used his secret power to blend in with the grass and went over to them.  He sucked up all the tea in their cups when they weren’t looking and put muddy water in instead.  They both took a big gulp and spat it out all over each other.  Trouble was, they heard Max and me laughing and thought we’d done it.

I’m writing this on Arabella’s laptop as mine’s gone funny ever since Bart burped spiders on it. It’s gone to be fixed. Arabella doesn’t know I’m in her room. Or does she? The door’s opening. Help!

Mrs Hogsbum is back – worst luck.  She couldn’t wait for a flight so she hired a donkey all the way to Oldacre School.  Don’t know how it managed to swim the Channel!

Up early this morning and I’ve just played a great trick on my annoying little sister, Jessica. Mum’s going to call her for breakfast at any moment and I’ve swapped her boiled egg for rubber egg I got from the joke shop. It looks very realistic. She’s going to get so cross when she can’t break the shell.

Last Friday at computer (boring) club I clicked off the blog just as Mr Widget came up. Unfortunately he caught sight of a picture of Toby on the blog page so I had to pretend that I was researching Gargoyles of the World. Mr Widget said the picture looked nothing like a real gargoyle. He’d have a fit if he knew the truth – which he never will.

Anyway Toby overheard what Mr Widget said about him so he decided to play a trick on him.  He got Zack to pop invisible and go and borrow some green food colouring from the vicar’s kitchen. He put it in Mr Widget’s tea, so when Mr Widget drank it he went green all round his mouth. We went and told Mrs Hogsbum. She didn’t believe us until she came along and saw him. She told him he’d broken school rule number five hundred and thirty-two – teachers must not go green without permission. Computer club finished early – good result!

And then we told Bart all the jokes and he cheered up immediately so double good result.

Oh dear! Dad’s on the warpath. It turns out that Jessica hit the rubber egg so hard it bounced out, hit Dad’s spoon and splattered him with cornflakes and milk. For some reason they think it’s my fault. Got to go!