Jaspar Expresses Himself

You may or may not be interested in what happened to my evil cousin, Jaspar. I will tell you anyway.
He had been allowed to stay behind and not go to the stupid fairy exhibition at the Stroud museum. He was allowed to do this because he said he was doing something Expressive of Himself. And since Mad Aunt Caroline is mad keen on children expressing their natural tendencies she thought Jaspar could stay at home and express his.
So here is what happened.
When I ran away from having my aura cleaned, I had no other place to go than back to my cousin's house (before my evil cousins moved in, it was very popular). It is a big old house at the top of a very steep hill and by the time I got back I had stopped running and started sweating. So, there I was sweating along the narrow lane leading to the house when I see smoke whirling its way into the sky. I am always keen on fires so I speed up a bit. I can see smoke pouring out of Mr Pyman's kitchen window. Mr Pyman runs the parish council and does not eat meat for a living. MAC says he is her spiritual twin. I run into somebody large and reflective.
'Look out, son!' says the firefighter. 'Someone's set their bacon butty on fire. You need to clear the area!'
Now I know that those are the type of words you normally only hear on the TV, along with stuff like, "he needs fluids - stat!" or "you've got 24 hours before we throw the book at you!"
So I know it is serious. I clear the area by jumping into the next door neighbour's garden. From here, I can get into MAC's garden, no problemo. I am working my way up through the area of reflection which is the scrubby bit at the bottom of the garden, when I hear a voice. The voice says, 'HELP!' in capital letters but you can only just hear it because of the noise from the bacon butty fire. It is then that I hit the fog. It is thick and grey and makes me cough. Not fog then. More like smoke.
'HELP!!' screeches the voice from above me.
'Who is it?' I shout. And, 'where are you?' Although I have my suspicions.
'It's me, your cousin, Jaspar, you **!"£$&**.' I peer up through the smoke. 'I'm stuck in my @&&**$£@ bedroom! Get me down!'
Jaspar is obviously very good at expressing himself. Question is, should I bother actually rescuing him?

It Is All My Cousins' Fault

So Ok, I will tell you but first I have to let you know that it is all my cousins' fault. See the trouble was, they came round, which was quite weird as well as being a complete disaster because I am told to entertain Skye and Jaspar while the adults go and discuss Something Important. This is a terrible thing because:

a. The adults go and drink coffee and eat very expensive biscuits
b. Skye and Jaspar are fiends in human form
c. I need to look after my stick insects
I am not at all keen to combine b and c. but I would much rather put a and b together and see how they like it.

I cannot do that, so I decide to do the next best thing and that is to take the fiends in human form to be entertained in The Parents bedroom. I show them the wardrobe and the ensweet bathroom but they are not particularly entertained. I then very politely offer them the use of The Parents' bed for bouncing purposes and Jaspar starts to snigger.

'Bet they made it here!' he says and he starts making stupid 'ooh' and 'aah' noises.
'It takes a fraction of a second to do it,' says Skye.
She has adopted the lotus position and her brother begins bouncing and she is flying up whenever her brother comes down.
'What?' I ask.
'He-bounce-doesn't-bounce-know,' says Jaspar.
'bounce-we've-bounce-known-bounce-for two-bounce-whole months,' says Skye.
'Shut up,' I say, a bit disturbed. 'You do not know anything!'
'Au contraire,' says Skye, and she flies off the bed, completing a complicated double turnover in the air. Sadly, she lands on her tiny pink princess feet. 'WE KNOW EVERYTHING.'
'Up to and including how babies are made,' says Jaspar, beating the feathers out of the pillow.
I am relieved. I have known how babies are made since before I was born. The Parents made sure of that.
'I know that,' I say and allow a smug smile to pass my lips.
'Then you'll know how your Mum and Dad made a baby,' says Skye. 'A new one. Newer than you.'
I think I might have screamed and wiped the smug smile off my own face but I cannot remember much apart from feathers flying.

The Ground Will Make Your Pancreas Ache

The pancreas was discovered by Herophilus (335-280 BC), a Greek surgeon but he did not bother to call it anything. A few hundred years later, Ruphos, another Greek anatomist, gave the pancreas its name. 'Pancreas' comes from the Greek pan, "all", and kreas, "flesh" which sounds as disgusting as it looks, like something bad from Dr Who.


Because I think it is Dexter bashing at the front door, I open it. Aunt Caroline (102) is sort of floating on the doorstep and The Unspeakable Cousins are pulling up Mum's daffodils. I think I scream but I cannot be sure because I am suddenly enveloped in purple dress and perfume and bosom.
I can just about hear my cousin Jaspar (9) say, 'I'm hungry!' and then everything starts to go black.
When I come round, I am lying in the garden and my other cousin Skye (4) is looking down on me. She has her bad fairy outfit on and a sparkly tiara jammed into her fluffy white hair. She pokes me with a silver wand.
'Get up,' she orders, 'the ground will make your pancreas ache.'
I cannot think of anything to say to this, apart from, "what is a pancreas?" but I do not say this because she is just a baby-child and should not know what a pancreas is before me and anyway she has gone into the house. I think very carefully about running away but I think for too long. Dad appears in the doorway and hisses. 'What are you doing lying about? Your cousins are here!' As though I was just dozing on the pancreas-ache-making ground and must have missed them. He hauls me to my feet and looks about him as though more aunts and cousins are going to spring out of bushes at any second. He is nervous - he'll start blaming me for stuff any moment. I can see Dexter weaving down the road on his new new bike. I want to warn him about the danger but all my trainee spymaker training is lost in the pain of Dad's Vulcan death grip.
His beard bristles. 'Why didn't you warn me they were coming? I'm in the middle of some teeth sorting and I've still got to mount Baden-Powell's molar...she'll want me to look at their teeth again...'
'I did not know they were coming until they were here,' I explain but it is no good.
He is ranting now about children and teeth and I just hope that Dexter has the sense to run away. At the doorway to hell, I hear the thumps and screeches that tell me Jaspar has found our cat, Serbena; daffodils lie strewn along the hallway; Aunt Caroline's laugh is billowing through the house.
Dad's grip tightens. 'Why did you pick all those daffodils, Wilfred?'
'We'll stay until the moon rises high in the sky, darling!' I hear Aunt Caroline say in her sing-song mystical sort of voice.
Dad's face is purple.
'Hello - what's up?' Dexter appears with his Bad Boyz cycle helmet on. It makes him look like a fat alien.
'And why is he here as well?' Dad shrieks. He points his finger at me. 'I blame you for this, Wilfred.' He stomps off into the kitchen.
Dexter shrugs. 'Problem?' he asks.
'You could say that,' I reply.
I think I can feel my pancreas beginning to ache.