Coded message

Robbie and his friend Nick were not happy!

Double French with Miss Knowles was nobody's idea of fun. To make matters worse, there was a test schedules for later that afternoon.

As Miss Knowles was muttering something about a conjunctive known, there was a knocking sound behind Robbie and Nick that seemed to be coming from the radiator.

Robbie whispered in Nick’s ear that it was probably an air-lock. Robbie had learned this from Dad and knew that you had to bleed radiators to sort out this problem.

Halfway through the French test later that afternoon, the knocking started again.

“Maybe it’s morse code?” Said Nick in a loud whisper.

Unfortunately, Miss Knowles heard the whisper and deducted a mark from Nick.

Robbie however, found this interesting. Maybe it was someone sending code. Nothing for it, this was a problem that needed to be solved.

So after school, Robbie and Nick went to the room above their classroom as that’s where the knocking seemed to be coming from.

It was the girls toilet!

“That’s it” said Robbie. “A girl is sending us a coded message from the toilet”

The boys were excited as can be and shot to the library to borrow a book on morse code so that they could decipher the message.

The school librarian was happy to find such a book. It hadn’t been borrowed for quite some time and had a thick layer of dust. The librarian blew the dust from the cover which unfortunately caught Robbie in the left eye and made him drop his heavy pencil case on to his foot.

The next day the boys sat eagerly in class, not listening to the teacher but waiting for the next coded message. At the same time as the day before, the knocking started.

Nick seemed the quickest at deciphering the code and came up with the following message

Wnyt a bpti uf iy bhfsl

The boys stared at this message for quite a time until Robbie declared

“Want a bite of my bagel. That’s what it says! A girl is inviting us to share her bagel!”

The boys were beside themselves with excitement.

“How do we find out who sent the message” Asked Nick.

Robbie thought for a while and then answered.

“Simple! We borrow a dress from lost property and a lipstick that I can take from Mum’s handbag. She has loads! When the knocking starts, you ask to go to the toilet. Quickly change so that you look like a girl. Go into the girls toilet and see who is sending the message”

Nick thought this was a brilliant plan. He was very worried about dressing up as a girl but didn’t want to look like a wimp.

So after school, Nick managed to borrow a dress whilst Robbie distracted the teacher by complaining of a sharp pain in his left, big toe. In the evening, Robbie took a lipstick Whilst Mum was on a lengthy phone call, arranging her next book club meeting and the boys were ready to go.

So the next day, when the knocking started again, Nick held up his hand and asked if he could go to the toilet.

Off he shot, quickly changed into the dress and slapped on some lipstick although some of that mysteriously ended up on his nose. He charged through the girls toilet door and found………Nothing!! Not a soul was in there.

Nick scratched his head, walked out of the girls toilet and almost collided with Miss Gurney, the head teacher.

“You girl, you know that lipstick is not allowed in school” She bellowed.

Nick fled like the wind. Despite his fear, Nick couldn’t help but think how draughty it was running in a dress. He changed back into his normal clothes, wiped off the lipstick with a tissue and rushed back to class.

Miss Gurney had spotted a distinctive mark on the back of the fleeing child's dress and she knew that this dress belonged to Rosie Leach, one of the naughtier children in the school.

So Rosie was summoned to Miss Gurney’s office and was completely bemused when she was given a detention, after all, Rosie had been singing with the school choir at the time of the alleged offence. But Miss Gurney was quite fierce and Rosie thought it best not to argue.

The knocking on the radiator never occurred again. Robbie and Nick both got a C their French tests and Nick’s Dad could not work out how his son had got lipstick on his nose.

Little did the boys know that Miss Jarvis, the music teacher had been planning a school concert in her spare periods. She had listened to her i-pod for songs that could be used and was prone to tapping her foot in time to the music on a radiator pipe in her room. The noise had echoed down the pipes and, well, you know the rest!

 

With thanks to Melinda P for suggesting the two words lipstick & solved. 

 

 

Lost & found

Robbie was a little distressed.

His pocket money had been stopped for 3 weeks after he slipped a spider into Ashleigh Dobb's pencil case during a spelling test.

The problem was, a new set of dinosaur Top trumps was being released and Robbie had no money to buy them.

Robbie called at his friend Nick's house so that they could play in the park and discuss the situation. On the way to the park, Robbie's eye was drawn to a card displayed in the corner shop window with the following request.

It read

'Missing cat Peaches

Please return to Woodland cottage if found

Lucky finder will be paid £50.

This was it! How hard could it be to find a cat? Robbie was a little unsure how he would find the peaches but thought he'd still get a reward for finding the cat.

"Come on" Robbie said "Let's look around the Woodland cottage area"

So off they jogged to Woodland cottage where as suggested by the name, there was quite a sizable wood.

They kept as quiet as possible so as not to disturb any wildlife. Both Robbie & Nick screamed in a high-pitched way when a Muntjac deer suddenly shot from the undergrowth. Nick thought he'd spotted a deadly snake but it turned out to be a long stick with different shades of moss on it.

Suddenly, out the corner of his eye, Robbie saw a black shape move. It was definitely a cat.

Nick and Robbie approached the cat from slightly different angles but every time they got near, the cat scampered off. It always returned to near why they were standing and obviously thought this was a game. After Nick had fallen face-forward into a muddy pool and Robbie had plunged straight through some stinging nettles, they managed to catch the cat after it got distracted by a particularly large dandelion.

"How do we know it's the right cat?" Asked Nick.

Robbie looked at the collar of the cat. A tag on the collar said 'lucky'

"This is it" Said Robbie "The note in the window said "Lucky finder gets £50" "Well, we have found Lucky. The owner will be delighted after his loss and will pay us a reward!"

Robbie & Nick took the cat to Woodland cottage but there was no reply when they knocked on the door. So they wrote a note giving Robbie's address on a scrap of paper found for reasons they never discussed, just inside Nick's sock. They tied the cat to the garden gate with a piece of twine that they found lying near a vegetable patch and went home for tea.

Later that evening, there was a large rap on the front door. Dad answered the door and Robbie then heard a few raised voices.

Dad returned to the dining room and asked Robbie

"Did you take a cat to Woodland cottage today?"

"Yes" Replied Robbie excitedly, "Did someone bring round a reward?"

"You found the wrong cat!" Said Dad in a fairly exhausted way. "You found a cat called Lucky, but the missing cat was called Peaches! Lucky had a different address on the bag of his tag and we need to return him to his correct owner."

"Oh, and you've lost another two weeks pocket money" Dad carried on.

Dad and Robbie drove a bewildered Lucky back to the address written on the back of the tag, kncked on the door and returned him to a grateful owner who hadn't actually realised that his cat had wandered off.

Funnily enough, on the way home, Dad and Robbie had to drive past Woodland cottage.

About 500 yards past the cottage, Dad suddenly had to slam on the brakes as a cat shot across the road and crashed into a dustbin that had been left for collection the following morning.

Dad rushed over to the carnage and picked up a disheveled and shocked looking cat.

Written proudly on his name tag was 'Peaches'.

Dad had to smile. He drove back to Woodland cottage and returned the cat to an extremely grumpy but grateful owner.

The owner decided to pay a reward of just £10 and kind-hearted Dad gave it to Robbie so that he could buy his Top trumps.

The additional two week pocket money ban was still left in place, but Robbie didn't really mind as he and Nick stayed locked inside for at least a couple of weeks during their spare time comparing and trying to out-do each other's dinosaurs.

© Chris White