Instead of turning left to the centre of the un-amazing village where Nessie and Norton lived, or right to the nearby town the Mad Dogs raced straight across the road towards the hedge opposite! Nessie cried out “Eeek!” Norton would have cried out "Eeek!" too, but he didn’t have enough time to remove his Maths Hat so he thought “Eeek!” very loudly instead. In fact, he and Nessie were moving so fast that the “k” of the “Eeek!” had hardly left Nessie’s mouth or been thought in Norton’s head when the Great Dane in the quadbike hurtled straight into the hedge and burst out the other side.
The other four Mad Dogs followed, tearing through the gap left by the quad bike: first the Bloodhound, then the Bulldog, with Norton crouching behind him, then the Beagle with his hidden passenger and finally the Poodle, with Nessie hanging on to her for dear life. On the far side of the hedge was a field. It was a wide, muddy field on a steady upward slope. At the top of the slope stood a great tree called a Mighty Oak. The Mad Dogs headed straight for it, making an ear-splitting noise and leaving deep furrows in their wake. When they reached the Mighty Oak, they came to a dangerous skidding halt the way teenagers do on mountain bikes. The Mad Dogs switched off their engines and suddenly everything was very quiet. The only sound was of a chill breeze rustling the Mighty Oak's bare branches.
At first, the Mad Dogs did one thing only: they raised their wet doggy noses and breathed in. Then, all except the Poodle, the only female among them, trotted over to the Mighty Oak. The Bloodhound, the Bulldog, the Great Dane and the elderly Beagle gathered round the base of the great tree. They stood looking obedient and alert.
Then there was a bark.
“Yip-yop!”
It was a posh, high-pitched sort of a bark and it came from within the sidecar attached to the elderly Beagle’s motorbike. It sounded like a command and it had an immediate effect. All four of the male dogs immediately lifted whichever of their hind legs was nearest the tree and did a boy doggy wee against its trunk. Then they lowered their legs and stood to attention again. There was another bark from the sidecar:
“Yip-yap!”
As one, the four male dogs trotted rather stiffly back to their vehicles. And soon the peace was shattered as once again they revved their tre-mendous, powerful engines...
REV!
REV!
REV!
...and set off back down the hill at an even more terrifying speed than they had gone up it. Suddenly, the slope seemed very steep. Suddenly, Nessie and Norton thought they were going to die – and on Christmas Eve too! But then something happened that could only happen in the sort of story that has Secret Blancmange in it (of which more eventually) and Gnome Kings who talk to God. Just ahead of the Mad Dogs was a huge ridge in the muddy field. As the Mad Dogs hurtled towards the ridge Norton pulled his Maths Hat all the way down and Nessie’s eyes closed behind her purple shades.
And then the Mad Dogs hit the ridge.
And then...they were flying!
Flying!
Flying high up in the sky!
The Bloodhound was howling!
“HOW-ULL!”
The other Mad Dogs were howling.
“HOW-ULL!”
And soon, without thinking about it or knowing why, Nessie and Norton were howling too!
“HOW-ULL!”
And they kept on howling – howling and howling! – even as they and the Mad Dogs stopped climbing higher and began instead to plunge down and down and down and even more down towards the very middle of the un-amazing village where Nessie and Norton lived, towards the village green in the middle of the village's middle, towards the very middle of the village green where surely they would stop howling forever.
Tomorrow: the Secret Blancmange effect
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