looking cool, calm and confident.
Unsurprisingly, Stanley’s bashed blind-car was facing the wrong way, so had to be picked up and turned around by some miserable marshals.
Marshals:
Overweight people dressed in bright orange boiler-suits who always hang around race circuits. They are always shouting at thin people and throwing their weight around.
Just as the pre-race tension was about to boil over, David shouted “BLIMEY, LOOK!!” as a hoard of unruly enemies suddenly came over the horizon towards the race track.
Firstly, a rickshaw ridden by a Ninja arrived and parked next to Ken Wong, prompting some long hard stares. The Ninja pulled an offensive facial expression by lowering his eyebrows and sticking out his chin, just to annoy Ken Wong. Spikes arrived in his muscle-van and pulled up next to Studs, then a milk-float silently joined the starting grid, right next to Lady Orange. The next person to arrive was Unwise-Man in his sausage van who had noticed Wise-Man in the crowd. He naturally gave him an evil grin and twizzled his moustache. Finally a very boring car with no damage at all arrived on the track with an old aged bowling enthusiast at the wheel. The pensioner raised an angry fist towards Jess and mumbled something about a torn up bowling green covered in dog poo.
David wasn’t sure if these uninvited enemies should be allowed in the race, but decided it would be much more entertaining to let them take part.
David waved to his new school friends in the crowd including Naughty Brian, and felt very proud to be holding the village flag.
It was now time for the Bottomhamsted Main Event to start and everybody in the crowd started cheering and making a racket with their Air Horns.
David waved the famous Peg flag around as fast as he could, to signal the start of the race and the contest for the million pounds was on.
The Possum Road residents all got off to an excellent start, leaving the uninvited enemies behind. Wong took an early lead into the first corner as he had cheated by fitting his rickshaw with microscopic propelling thrusters. David made a note of this in his notebook. This of course meant that Wong entered the corner too fast for the rickety rickshaw and he smashed into the ancient wall. Studs was right behind him and narrowly missed running Wong over! Wong got back on his rickshaw and continued to thrust his way around the track, but Studs was now in the lead. Behind Studs was Roy, who’s more nimble convertible car was managing to catch Studs in the corners. On the next corner, he was close enough to nudge Studs’ car in the back bumper so he went for a daring overtaking maneuver.
As Roy was driving with his roof down, Studs reached out of his window with a frying pan and whacked Roy over the head. This caused Roy to lose some speed and concentration so he was overtaken by Jess, who had managed to find surprising power now all the dogs had been removed from her car. In fact Jess’ car was behaving very much like a Greyhound. After a few laps, the enemies had managed to find some extra speed and were now starting to catch up with the Possum Road residents!
Jess noticed that the enemies were gaining and feared for everyone’s safety, so decided to take drastic action.
All her dogs were sitting in the grandstand among the spectators and were listening out for any of Jess’ special commands. Jess gave one of her extra special commands, and all the dogs jumped up from their seats, leaped over the fence and started running round the track among the racing vehicles.
First, they hunted down Unwise-Man’s van and jumped through the open window. The dogs started licking his face and nibbling his ears, forcing him to stop driving. He jumped out of his van and ran off to the bathroom to wash all the dog slobber off his face.
“HORRRAAAYYYY” roared the crowd.
Then they caught up with the unwelcome Ninja and started biting his rickshaw’s tyres. The chewed tyres suddenly burst, causing the rickshaw to wobble all over the track and come to a grinding halt.
“YEEEEHAAAA” the crowd added.
The dogs then closed in on the grumpy bowler and growled menacingly at him. Their growling was enough to convince him to stop racing, and return sheepishly back to the old people’s home.
“WOOOOOOOOF” the crowd continued.
Spikes would be the biggest challenge for the dogs, as he was not scared of anything, but they somehow managed to catch up with his monstrous muscle-van and jump in the back. To everybody’s surprise, Spikes suddenly started sneezing uncontrollably. In fact, he sneezed so much that he couldn’t control his muscle-van and had to retire from the race. Spikes was very angry about discovering that he was allergic to dog hairs, so added dogs to his ‘Most Hated’ list.
“SUPERB!!!!” was the final comment from the crowd.
Of course, the milk-man in his ridiculous milk-float was so slow that he had already given up and gone home.
Now that all the uninvited enemies had been eliminated from the race, Jess’ dogs jumped back over the fence and continued watching the race from their seats.
Max Potato was starting to get a bit frustrated as he was able to lap the circuit much faster than the others in his ghost-car, and it appeared that he had actually won the race several times already. Sadly for Max, nobody noticed his achievement and his record breaking lap times were just ignored.
This is one of the problems faced by ghosts in general. People only seem to notice the bad things that ghosts do, but their heroic deeds and great achievements go un-rewarded.
Stanley still somehow managed to go round the track the wrong way despite the marshals lining him up correctly at the start. This was very hazardous for the other drivers who had to swerve round Stanley on every lap.
On the other side of the track, Wong suddenly lost control of his rickshaw as one of his thrusters malfunctioned. He swerved all over the track, narrowly missing all the other competitors but he ran straight into the on-coming Stanley! Wong was thrown from his rickshaw saddle, straight onto the bonnet of Stanley’s blind-car. Thankfully, due to the many jumbo-sponges and soft rubber bumpers which cover Stanley’s car, Wong suffered no injuries at all and he actually said he felt much better following the accident and that his long standing back pain had been miraculously cured.
Unfortunately, Lady Orange was running in last place, as she would feel guilty if she overtook anybody. She was so kind and generous that she simply waved her rivals by with a cheery grin.
Roy was starting to re-gain confidence and his cornering speed was now becoming very impressive. As the track is mostly circular, he was beginning to gain on the two leaders, Studs and Jess. With another daring overtaking attempt, he managed to squeeze past Jess’ Greyhound car and moved up to second place. Studs was now directly in front of him, and was leaning out of the window making threatening gestures with his frying pan. Undeterred, Roy managed to surprise Studs and overtook him whilst ducking down to avoid contact with the deadly frying pan.
Roy was so surprised to be leading the race, that he made the mistake of relaxing and started to dream about the prize money.
This daydreaming caused Roy to slow down so much that Studs rammed his car violently from behind, pushing Roy so hard into the wall that he smashed straight through it! The impact was so devastating that Roy’s car actually punched a large hole right through the ancient wall and into an undiscovered network of underground caverns.
Fortunately, Roy wasn’t hurt in the accident but unfortunately, the sparks from the impact ignited some trapped methane which had been lurking within the caverns for hundreds of years. This then started a chain reaction of unbelievable explosions.
The network of underground tunnels ran directly under the village, so many dramatic and explosive events started to unfold. The first explosion was small but went off directly under some spectators, sending worms, and insects up people’s trouser legs. This caused the spectators to dance around and shake their legs, attempting to eject the creepy crawlies. First they would hop around on one leg and frantically shake the other leg, then they would swap legs and continue shaking and hopping around. Some
spectators on the other side of the track noticed this manic movement, and as there was also music playing, mistakenly thought it was a new kind of festival dance. Soon several groups of people were hopping and shaking their legs, obviously really enjoying the new dance routine. The next explosion was a large one and took place directly beneath the local cesspit. This caused an enormous amount of sewage to be blasted into the air and rain down on the Bottomhamsted picnic area which was currently occupied by the local cake decorating society. The ladies of the society were not amused when their cakes were suddenly decorated with the contents of a cesspit, and they all decided to immediately write angry letters to their local MP. Despite the ladies definite disapproval of the sewage shower, there were reports of these cakes actually tasting pretty good and selling well on the society’s web site.
Normally such a series of explosions would create much unhappiness and inconvenience, but today was obviously a lucky day as each explosion created mostly happiness and convenience.
For example, a stray cow which was about to fall down an Oz Hole, was saved when a manhole cover which had been blasted into the air, landed directly in front of it, covering the open Oz Hole and enabling the lost cow to walk across unharmed.
A small but secure garden shed which had been blasted into the air from