Angus McMungus and his Incredible Tea-Cosy Plan

By Becky Overy

Life isn’t easy when you have a head of hair the size of a large bush. And when Angus McMungus’ parents get kidnapped by lemurs and he is left to look after his tea-obsessed gran on his own, it would seem that things couldn’t get any worse. So how does he end up being thrown out of his village home to live in the woods with a squirrel? And can six squirrels, a hysterical twig, a grumpy beaver, extraordinary plant juices and an incredible plan help Angus to get back home? With an army of angry villagers and a crazy granny to face, it may not be as easy as it seems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Becky Overy
• Release date: Jun 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301480548

Book preview

Teapot Chapter One.png

ACROSS THE HILLS from the barren and mountainous Donley Vere lies the humble, hidden and mostly unknown region of Wiley Vere. Wiley Vere spreads itself across a wide and lengthy valley, set between several small, green hills, with villages dotted here and there amidst fields of sheep and grass and mud...and a few more sheep (and a goat). And if you were a sheep in one of these fields, on a hilltop looking down at the little villages hidden away in this crack in the earth, the first thing you might notice, perhaps after the dark, glistening river that snakes its way down the length of the valley and beyond to the ocean; the first thing that might grab your interest, if you looked slightly to the right and down a bit, would be a giant teapot sitting atop a small hummock on the very edge of a little village known as Crumbly Bottom.

Now, let’s say you had special powers that enabled you to transform yourself from a sheep into an eagle; you could fly off the hillside and swoop down into the valley to get a closer look at this enormous, gold teapot with its proud standing spout. You might then notice its four pretty windows and the well kept garden that encircles it, full of strange and unusual plants. Flying closer still, you could sneak a peek through the windows to see who inhabits such a place. Of course, you may become so distracted by the smoke pouring out of the spout, or the butterflies sunbathing in the tropical flowers, that you fly straight into the side of the teapot and knock yourself out. But that would be a daft thing to do, because then you would never discover what lies behind the large, arched, red door, with a ‘no coffee’ sign stuck to it below a gold, teapot-shaped knocker. 

So let’s pretend that you don’t bang your head; that you land gracefully on the windowsill of this great golden teapot and peer inside. What do you think you would see? A giant tea bag brewing in some boiling water? No! Don’t be silly! This isn’t the giant teapot from Big Tea Drinkers Get More Tea Than They Bargained For—that’s a whole other story! What you will actually see, past the yellow curtains dotted with pictures of different-shaped tea bags, is a boy sitting on a sofa with something large and soft around his head and an old lady putting a cup of tea into a hamster cage. Not exciting you say? Huh! We haven’t started yet! You see, there are many tales to be told from Wiley Vere (like the one about the lonely goat who fell in love with a sheep), but this story begins right here; inside a teapot, on a small hummock at the very edge of the village of Crumbly Bottom. This is the tale of Angus McMungus and his incredible tea-cosy plan.

Tea Mug.png Tea Mug.png Tea Mug.png Tea Mug.png Tea Mug.png

Angus McMungus had the most unappreciated hair in the whole of Wiley Vere. That is not to say that it ever went unnoticed—quite the opposite. When Angus walked into the room you would have been forgiven for thinking that he was balancing an enormous fluffy dog on his head, or that he had just been in the farmer’s barn and hadn’t noticed that a large pile of hay had fallen on top of him. It might take you a few moments to really believe what you were seeing. You might even rub your eyes, blink a couple of times and point rudely at him with your mouth open wide in amazement (you wouldn’t be forgiven for that, though). But eventually, anyone with an ounce of humanity would stop gawping, close their mouth and feel greatly honoured to be in the presence of such amazing and unique hair. They would marvel at its volume and silky-softness; be in awe of its springy, curly, snugwuggly cosiness and delight in its blotting-out-the-sunlightiness. It was unfortunate, however, that the people of Crumbly Bottom didn’t seem to possess such appreciation, and reactions of shock and disapproval were more common whenever Angus went out and about. He was regarded as ‘weird’ by the locals: "That strange boy with the hair who lives in the teapot!" (What’s weird about that?) But what they failed to realise was that Angus’ hair was a rare and special gift and had been since the day he was born; the day his hair had saved his life.

That particular day, twelve years earlier than where our story begins, Angus had decided it was time to come out and meet the world. It was November, and the sun was shining brightly, taking the edge off the cold, biting air. Angus’ mum was sitting on the back doorstep of her house in Crumbly Bottom. She had a belly the size of a large planet and Angus was due any day. She was busy chewing on a chunk of wood. This had become a habit of hers recently. She had been so restless waiting for Angus to arrive that she had nearly nibbled all her nails off her fingers. In fact, she was so agitated that she had started to bite her husband’s fingernails too. This had caused a few arguments—especially when he was trying to type at the computer. So now she carried this piece of wood around with her instead and gnawed away at it like a hungry beaver.

Picking a few splinters out of her teeth, she looked over her morning’s work. She had risen early on this day, encouraged by the fresh, autumn sun, and had ventured into the garden with an occupying plan (meaning she wanted to occupy herself, not that she wanted to occupy the garden; she’d already done that by walking outside). Her plan had been to set up an exciting obstacle course for the local squirrels. This sort of thing was a speciality of hers as she had been designing and constructing her own mazes and circuits since she was a child. And now, after five hours of solid work, she had finally finished it.

The first section of the squirrel course consisted of a thick tightrope wire stretched between two tall wooden posts, which Mrs McMungus had bashed into the ground with a mallet in the centre of the garden. Now, this might seem like hard work for a pregnant lady, but Angus’ mother had tried to stay active and healthy throughout her pregnancy. She had managed to resist the cravings for syrup pudding and custard she had been having and was living on enormous wholesome meals of rice and seaweed. Although they weren’t a great substitute in taste for delicious custardy-syrupy puddings, they stuffed her so full that she didn’t have room left for anything else. She was also a naturally tall and slender woman who enjoyed walking and the odd bit of crazy dancing when nobody was looking, and if it weren’t for the enormous bump that contained little Angus, you might not have realised she was pregnant at all (those enormous bumps are a dead giveaway, though). Anyway, after setting up the tightrope, Mrs McMungus had put together a teeny unicycle made from odd bits she’d found lying around the garden shed and had placed it at the top of the first post. Her aim was for the squirrels to ride it across the tightrope wire to the other post. At the top of this second post she had placed a mini-trampoline, which she made by stretching part of a rubber glove over the top of a plant pot. The squirrels would need to jump on this to reach a much higher post that stood next to it. Once reaching the top of this third post, the squirrels would have to slide down a long tube which would plop them out into a paddling pool on the garden floor below. Here they were expected to race a goldfish to the other side of the pool and then quickly dry themselves with a hand towel before jumping into a remote control car at the pool’s side. Using the remote control inside it, they would then have to zigzag the car around five buckets placed diagonally across the lawn, leading them to the sandpit in the top left-hand corner of the garden. Now they would be able to see the prize cage filled with acorns hanging temptingly above the sandpit. But in order to reach it they would have to build a sandcastle high enough to get to the cage and sturdy enough not to fall apart as they climbed up it. Mrs McMungus couldn’t wait to see the designs they would come up with and had experimented with a few herself—her favourite being a sand climbing wall (though, she was also proud of her Empire State Building). The final obstacle she set up was a special Sudoku puzzle attached to the front of the acorn cage. Instead of numbers, this Sudoku puzzle used nine different kinds of nut, which she had painted to stop the squirrels from eating them. If the squirrels correctly completed the Nut-Sudoku, the lock on the cage would open and they would be rewarded with four acorns and a little Velcro badge to stick on their fur that said, ‘I’ve completed the Mungus trail!’.

Mrs McMungus shifted her bottom and stretched her back. She was about to get up and change the position of one of the buckets when she suddenly got a big urge to have a pickled gherkin. She put down her gnawed piece of wood, went into the kitchen behind her and grabbed the pickle jar from the fridge. Sitting back down on the doorstep, she pulled out a huge gherkin and stuffed it into her hungry mouth. She was about to reach for another when a terrible hot feeling started to burn her tongue. It escalated until her mouth and throat were feeling hotter than a sunburnt sausage taking a dip in molten lava. Looking back at the jar of pickles, she read the label: ‘Super, Extra Hot-Hot-Hot Chillies’. Oops. Now she remembered; her father had sent her these last week whilst away on his travels, and they just so happened to be in the same sized jar as the pickled gherkins she thought she was eating. She quickly got up and was about to rush into the kitchen to get a glass of water when she felt a contraction and had to sit down again. The baby was on its way! But her throat was burning like a fiery furnace and she desperately needed water. She called out (in a rather raspy voice) to Mr McMungus, who was upstairs in the computer room working on a website for Mr Chupham, the local butcher.

Mr McMungus was a little smaller than his wife; at five feet five inches to her five feet eleven inches he was, indeed, quite below the average height for a man. But this did not bother him too much. He had never been at all vain or insecure about his looks. When people used to comment that together he and his wife looked like a finger and thumb, he would just start singing the ‘One Finger, One Thumb Keep Moving’ nursery rhyme and chuckle to himself, not at all bothered by the weird looks he was getting. He had a round, friendly face, and even though his short, dark hair had started to recede in recent years, he simply accepted it as a new distinguished look and thought no more about it. He was quite a content person, you see. Although always on the lookout for something new to occupy himself with, he calmly enjoyed his pursuits and took his time with things. It was important for Mr McMungus to make the best of himself, whatever flaws he may have possessed. He was always willing to at least try, if only to give himself the new experience of something; to test the boundaries of his body and mind. And if he failed, he didn’t mind too much; he would just find something else interesting to do instead. In his youth, he had been a fan of the sport treerunning. This was a sport that involved very fit people making their way through the countryside by climbing over rocks, doing fancy moves across hills and, as the name of the sport suggests, getting through woods and forests by climbing up trees and jumping through the treetops. But, truth be told, Mr McMungus wasn’t very good at treerunning, and he had injured himself on more than one occasion. His interest in the activity soon came to an end the day he decided to climb a large oak tree and jump from its top branches into a much smaller oak tree. What he failed to realise, as he made the giant leap from one to the other, was that the second tree was actually in another field half a mile away and had not been smaller at all. Whilst falling through the branches towards the ground, he had concluded that treerunning probably wasn’t the best outdoor activity for him. Still, he waited for his bones to heal happy in the knowledge that he had tried and had gained a new experience for himself in the process (including the experience of having more broken bones than he had fingers). His current occupation was designing websites for people in the village, which was handy as it meant he could be at home to spend more time with the baby when it arrived. He was just putting the finishing touches to Mr Chupham’s title page, ‘The Crumbly Bottom Choppers’, when he heard his wife calling up to him.

Melvin!! Come quickly!!

Ah! She must have completed the squirrel course! he thought, and he sped downstairs like an excited child to take a look at it.

When Mr McMungus reached the door to the garden, he could see the back of his wife sitting down on the doorstep and could hear her panting, but he assumed she was having a rest after all her hard work. He stood behind her and admired the obstacle course she had put together.

You really are inventive! he said, smiling. Oh look, my love! A squirrel’s coming to test it out!

Sure enough, a little red squirrel was poking its furry face out from under a rosemary bush. It scurried over to the middle of the garden, stood up on its back legs, put its paws on its hips and looked up and down the course. Although the McMungus’ didn’t know it, this particular squirrel was called Squippet. She was the current Champion Course Runner in this neck of the woods and was always on the lookout for new and interesting layouts. Lately, acquiring acorns had been as easy as fluffing up her tail and she had been getting pretty bored. The most taxing problem she’d come across recently was trying to get some acorns off the front of a strange looking card someone had received from a friend without being noticed. And seeing as the card had been in the bin, and the bin had been outside, and the black bag it was in had a big hole in it, and the card had fallen out of the hole onto the ground, she had hardly worked up a sweat. But she had never seen a course quite like the one in front of her today. This was the work of a true professional.

There it goes! Mr McMungus shouted, excitedly, as the little squirrel scampered over to the bottom of the first pole and began its ascent.

But Mrs McMungus wasn’t interested in the squirrel. She felt as though smoke was coming out of her ears, and her face was now as red as a sunburnt piece of red paper on a red beach, eating a plum tomato. On top of that, it felt like the baby was not wasting any time in coming. And she would be right about that. You see, ‘Super, Extra Hot-Hot-Hot Chillies’ didn’t really agree with baby Angus either, and he decided he needed to get out of his mother’s chilli-filled body as soon as possible. So he placed his little feet on the side of his mother’s womb and prepared for takeoff.

Uuuuuuuuurgh! groaned Mrs McMungus from the step.

What’s that, darling? Have you got wind? Oh, look at it go! said Mr McMungus, pushing his dark-rimmed glasses into the bridge of his nose and smiling broadly as the squirrel reached the top of the pole.

The baaaaab…urrrghhhhh!!

The bayber? What do you mean, sweetheart? The paper? Have you got a cold? Mr McMungus watched the squirrel settle itself comfortably on the unicycle seat.

Mrs McMungus had had enough. There was only one good way to get her husband’s attention: she bit him on the ankle.

Mr McMungus let out a yelp of pain and finally looked down at his wife. But the face staring up at him was not quite the face he was expecting to see. The face he expected to see was the one that greeted him every time he awoke in the morning with a happy smile; the face with the large, blue eyes, high cheekbones and long slender nose; the face with the petite mouth which always turned up a little at the edges, giving his wife the permanent smile he adored so much. That face had disappeared. Instead, his wife’s frizzy hair was sticking to the sweaty, red cheeks of a fearsome monster from hell!

Who are you?!! he yelled.

It’s…me…you …g…great…bimp! said his wife, grabbing onto his leg and almost pulling him over.

Mr McMungus looked closer at the monster and recognised the blue eyes and slender nose of his wife hidden inside its face. Then he panicked. Oh my goodness! Is it time? Is it coming? Shall I get the car?

No, panted Mrs McMungus, …too late…catch…uuurghhhh…

What? What are you saying, my love? Catch what? A bus? You want to catch a bus to the hospital?

Mrs McMungus lay back on the kitchen floor; her legs sprawled out of the back door. C…catch…it…, she said.

Catch it? I don’t understand? Catch what?

The BAAAAAAAAAABYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

And that was the moment that baby Angus came out into the big wide world. He shot out at quite a speed and hurtled towards Squippet, who was carefully balancing on the unicycle halfway across the tightrope wire. Her eyes widened in fear when she saw the baby speeding towards her, but before she could pedal out of the way, it grabbed hold of her pointy ears and the two of them started to spin in circles around the tightrope wire like a windmill in a hurricane. Mr and Mrs McMungus looked on in horror as their baby boy let go of the squirrel’s ears and flew up into the air. Mr McMungus rushed over to catch him, but little Angus came down onto the mini-trampoline and hit it with such force that he was sent soaring up towards the clouds.   

Mr McMungus started dodging this way and that across the garden. He didn’t know where Angus would land when he came back down again, but he did know that he had to catch him! Meanwhile, Mrs McMungus had managed to pull herself up. She grabbed a duvet cover from the washing basket in the kitchen.

Catch him in this! she yelled, throwing the cover onto the grass.

Mr McMungus picked it up and held it out in front of him while he danced this way and that across the lawn, trying to judge Angus’ flight path. Angus himself was completely oblivious to the mayhem he was causing down below. He was goo-gooing and gurgling happily to himself, taking in the wonderful view of Crumbly Bottom for the first time and wondering if he could eat the fluffy white things he was heading towards. But before he got the chance to find out, the energy that had propelled him into the sky ran out, and he started to fall back down again, heading straight for the sandpit. 

Squippet, who had eventually managed to get control of the spinning unicycle, was perched at the top of the second post. Seeing the baby hurtling towards the sandpit, she quickly realised the gravity of the situation and sped into action. She bounced up to the third post, raced down the tube, left the goldfish spinning in her speed-swimming ripples, hopped into the remote control car, zoomed across the lawn and dived into the sandpit. Then, quicker than a woodworm dies in a plastic house, she built an exact replica of a baby’s Moses basket out of sand and stepped back out of the way as Angus plunged towards it.

Mr McMungus had been so preoccupied watching his son in the sky above that he didn’t notice Squippet’s quick-thinking idea. Instead, he began to run towards the sandpit himself, holding the stretched out duvet cover in front of him. But because he was looking up at the baby, he wasn’t looking at the ground, and his foot ran into one of the buckets, sending him flying head first into the sandy Moses basket. The baby bed was completely destroyed. On top of that, Mr McMungus had somehow managed to get himself tangled up in the duvet and was struggling to get it off his head.

Meanwhile, Crumble, the next door neighbours’ tortoise, had wandered into the garden to see what all the noise was about. When he saw Mr McMungus wrestling with the cover in the sandpit, he got quite a fright and edged slowly away. He was so scared that he didn’t notice himself walking backwards into the remote control car. He took another step back and stood on the reverse button. The car immediately zoomed back across the lawn, taking the frightened tortoise with it. Crumble tried to scream for help, but he was a tortoise and tortoises can’t scream, so he just sat in the runaway car looking like he wanted to scream. Then the car hit the same bucket that Mr McMungus had tripped over and Crumble went flying into the air.

Angus was nearing the ground now, but Mr McMungus was still fighting with the duvet cover and there was no time left. Squippet couldn’t bear to watch and put her little paws over her eyes. Mrs McMungus lurched to her feet and ran across the garden, but she knew she was too late. She screamed helplessly as she watched the neighbour’s tortoise glide over towards the scene of baby peril at the sandpit.

Then something very amazing happened.

Out of Angus’ bald, baby head sprung a fresh, springy helmet of thick, curly hair. This helmet of hair surrounded his head like a gigantic, furry, light-brown halo that rose out by at least two feet all the way round his cute, chubby, rosy-cheeked face. Mr McMungus finally yanked his head free from the duvet and looked up into the happy, smiling face of his new baby boy, who was floating down gracefully towards him holding the edges of his hair out to the sides to create an amazing hair parachute. Just then, Crumble landed with a thwack on top of Mr McMungus’ head, but he was too amazed to notice. He watched Angus drift slowly down, like a cherub holding up the gift of a holy sheep, until he plopped softly and snugly into his outstretched arms.

Mr McMungus lovingly folded Angus’ mass of hair under his body so that it acted as a blanket and clutched him tightly to his chest. Look at you, he said, with tears in his eyes. You come with padding!

Mrs McMungus was sobbing with joy as she ran to her husband’s side. Even Crumble had a tear in his eye, though it took about half an hour to slowly plop out onto Mr McMungus’ head. They all looked down at the incredible sight of the newborn child who, cradled within his curly, mousy-brown locks and wriggling his little arms and legs, looked very much like a baby hedgehog stuck on its back.

Mr and Mrs McMungus stood watching Angus in amazement for about an hour before they were interrupted by Squippet clearing her throat for attention. She had been waiting next to them patiently and had made a pile of sand acorns that she was now gesturing towards suggestively. Mrs McMungus was so grateful to Squippet for trying to help save her baby that she gave her a whole mountain of acorns to say thank you. Squippet then sat in the garden for the rest of the afternoon with some of her friends and they chomped through the enormous pile together. All sporting their ‘I’ve completed the Mungus trail’ badges, they were having a great time resetting the obstacle course for each other and seeing who could build the best sandcastle (so far Squizz was winning with his sand cow on a jet-ski being followed by sharks).

So now you have heard all about that special day: the day Angus McMungus was saved by his amazing hair. It wasn’t the most usual way to enter the world. In fact, some might say it was particularly unusual, and others might say that it was quite strangely unusual, and some different people somewhere else might say that it was particularly, strangely, unusually unusual. And if you went down the road and turned left into another street and knocked on the door of any random house and asked the person who answered it what they thought about the whole situation, they might tell you to get off their property before they call the police (some people are rude like that). But if you were to ask the McMungus’ what they thought of the event of their son’s birth, well, they would say it was a miracle. And they’d be right.

But I suppose you must be wondering how any of this relates to the giant teapot, the boy on the sofa with something large and soft around his head and the old lady putting a cup of tea into a hamster cage. Well, I’m pretty sure you have guessed by now that the boy on the sofa is Angus (that wasn’t too hard was it?) and that the large, soft thing on his head must be the amazing hair we have been hearing all about (again, that wasn’t the trickiest of puzzling puzzles to solve). But how did Angus end up living in a teapot with an old lady? That is the puzzliest puzzling puzzly puzzle question of all. And it would probably be best to answer it before we begin the story. So, shuffle your bottom about until you are comfortable. Get a drink, a biscuit, your cat on your lap, a giraffe on your head—whatever takes your fancy really—and settle down snugly while I tell you all about it.

Teapot Chapter Two.png

ANGUS MCMUNGUS WAS a happy little chap—at least from the moment he was born up until the moment he was taken out and about by his parents to places where other people existed. Up until this point he was very contented. He was what one would describe as a bouncing baby boy (and by that I don’t mean you could use him to play basketball with, but rather that he was large and healthy and full of chuckles). He had sprung into his parents’ lives (quite literally) and filled up every ounce of the air around them with a warm, carefree feeling and the smell of soft, milk-filled skin (with a hint of pooey nappy). His parents adored him and found it hard to stop smiling since he arrived. They had been walking around like elated zombies; tired but happy and occasionally wandering into doorposts.

The day after Angus was born, Mr and Mrs McMungus went to enquire at the Wiley Vere hospital as to how rare it was to have a child with so much hair and whether they could answer the question of how he managed to be born in such a speedy manner. The midwives and doctors at the hospital simply told them that babies can’t spring out of their mothers in such a way and that they were obviously making the whole thing up. As for the hair, they insisted that it was a wig and told them to stop wasting their precious time with silly jokes when they had real patients to deal with. A bit miffed, the McMungus’ took Angus home and decided that they didn’t need people like that to tell them what was what.

The new baby was visited by Mr McMungus’ parents, Arthur and Elsa, who were amazed and delighted with their incredible looking grandson. Although he was asleep for most of their visit, Angus woke up as they were leaving and was immediately immersed in a chorus of Oohs and Awws and Coochy-coos that sounded like some surreal, experimental choir was giving a performance in the hallway. Mrs McMungus’ parents were too busy to come and visit straight away but sent flowers and gifts, as did Mr McMungus’ older sister, Martha, who said she would visit them at Christmas. They then had a rather memorable visit from Mrs McMungus’ sister, Maxine, who came all the way across the ocean from Esbeteria.

Maxine was a fashion designer. After graduating, she had managed to get a job overseas designing clothes for the popular U-Lukrubesh chain of designer clothing. She was a tall, slender lady like her sister and looked very similar too, but with a slightly rounder face and fuller mouth, which she got from her father. She also took much more care over her appearance than her younger sister ever did; as children Maxine was always the princess or the ballerina, whilst Mrs McMungus was more interested in building things and getting messy. The difference was quite noticeable to Angus when his aunty first entered the room; her dark-brown hair was neatly sculpted around her face, whereas his mother’s seemed to have a life of its own and went where it wanted to (and from the look of it now it had just been having fun spinning around in the tumble dryer). Someone had also painted pretty colours all over his aunty’s eyes and mouth, and she had shiny things hanging from her ears and around her neck.

Maxine was a very tactile person and was always on the lookout for something new to delight her fingertips.  She took one look at Angus’ hair and immediately wanted to get hold of it.

Oh, Aveline! she said, when she saw baby Angus wrapped up in his hair. It’s just wonderful! She completely ignored Angus and started to caress his hair, rubbing it between her bejewelled fingers and pulling the curls straight, then letting them spring back into place.

Angus found it a bit annoying.

Oh, the things I could make with this, Aveline! People would pay top money for that texture—it’s simply fabulous! If you ever cut it, make sure you send me the hair, won’t you?

Angus stared at his mother with interest. So she was called Aveline! Up until now he had thought she was called either Sweetheart or My Love.

Cut it? said Mrs McMungus, incredulously. Why would I ever cut it? It’s completely unique!

How about I just take a little snip of it back with me then, to remind me of him? He’s got so much; you’ll never miss it. Oh, go on! He doesn’t need it all, does he? Just let me take a handful. It’s going to grow back anyway. Maxine looked up at her sister from where she was crouching down by Angus’ baby bouncer. Angus was sitting in it wide-eyed; his chubby cheeks slightly squished by the hair cocoon he was swaddled in. 

We’re not cutting anything off and that’s all I’m going to say about it!

Mrs McMungus was now getting red in the face. Mr McMungus didn’t like it when his wife went red in the face. Usually it meant she was about to internalise her anger, which would turn her into the ‘one-word robot’ for a couple of days. He didn’t like the one-word robot. It confused him. He would ask what was for dinner and it would say, Dunno. So he would ask if he should make the dinner, and the robot would say, Fine. So he would ask if that meant yes and the robot would say, Whatever. And then he would ask what time the robot wanted dinner and it would say, Whenever. So he would think, Oh, okay, I’ll make it later then, and would go back to the computer. Then at around eleven o’clock at night, having forgotten to make dinner at all, the one-word robot would suddenly burst into his room and malfunction, spurting many rude words out at once, very loudly.

He decided to diffuse the situation by changing the subject. "Um…perhaps we should take a trip to the bakery, my love. I’m sure Maxine would like to sample some of the local