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    Arabella Parker and The Primrose School Revolt
    Arabella Parker and The Primrose School Revolt
    Arabella Parker and The Primrose School Revolt
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Arabella Parker and The Primrose School Revolt

    By Ray Murray

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    About this ebook

    At nine and a half, Arabella Parker is a quite extraordinary girl. For one thing she can fly, an ability that she seems to have inherited from her Great Aunt Agatha.

    Her parents, being terrible snobs, are more concerned with what the neighbours might think.

    Ghastly Lady Gilbert-Thomas, Chairperson of the School Governors, and her equally untrustworthy husband, Sir Sidney Gilbert-Thomas, Chairman of the County Council, want to sell the school so that a megastore can be built.

    But they haven’t taken into account Arabella who calls on the children of Primrose Primary to fight back and save it. Her mother is appalled; her father is devastated: What on earth will his bank chairman think?

    “We’re revolting,” Arabella tells Mrs Brown, who supports the revolt.

    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says Mrs Brown with a huge grin.

    “We are,” insists Arabella. “My Aunt Agatha told me how to do it.”

    And do it she certainly does.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRay Murray
    Release dateSep 5, 2011
    ISBN9781465708588
    Arabella Parker and The Primrose School Revolt
    Author

    Ray Murray

    Born in London, Ray Murray, the author, was creative director of a large American advertising company, working in both their UK and New York offices where he won numerous awards for his creative TV advertising, and saw his work exhibited and acclaimed in London, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Arabella Parker and the Primrose School Revolt is his first children's book. A second Arabella book will be published shortly. He is now working on a third novel in the series. Happily married, he lives in Oxfordshire, England.

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      Book preview

      Arabella Parker and The Primrose School Revolt - Ray Murray

      ARABELLA PARKER

      AND THE PRIMROSE SCHOOL REVOLT

      By Ray Murray

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 Ray Murray

      First published in 2011

      Copyright Ray Murray 2011

      Smashwords Edition

      Cover Design: Ray Murray and Steve Banbury

      All rights reserved.

      All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      For Anna Banbury, aged 11, who read it at an early stage and thought it fun; David Murray, who said let’s publish it; and Joan, my darling wife, who never complained when I was lost in Arabella’s world, writing it.

      To all my American friends: Hi!

      Primrose Primary is an English school in an English town in England. As you probably know, we use a few different words for different things over here. But no big deal as you say in America. For instance we call our mothers Mum or Mummy, not Mom or Mommy.

      We also call candies, sweets; cotton candy, candy floss; sidewalks, pavements; back lots, gardens; carousels, roundabouts; and vacations, holidays.

      And we have different words to describe what happens at school. School yards are known as playgrounds; recess periods are known as breaks or break times; the academic year is divided into three terms, not semesters; and in those terms we have half-term breaks. Sounds complicated? It’s not really; just slightly different words for a very few odd things.

      Other words you might come across in this story are skipping rope for jump rope, caretaker for a janitor, arithmetic for math; pocket money for allowance, jam for jelly, trousers for pants, and car bonnet for hood. You may possibly find more that I’ve missed.

      It’s interesting isn’t it? We both speak English but sometimes have different words. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story.

      LOL (lots of love) Arabella

      CHAPTER 1

      Lift Off!

      I know that quite extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people. Look at Alice who went down a rabbit hole and through the looking glass and met all those strange people and things. Not that anything like that, or as mega extraordinary as this, has happened to me before. And not that my parents have ever considered us to be in any way ordinary. As far as they’re concerned, the Parker family is like better than everyone in our street, anyone in our town - and except for Lady Gilbert-Thomas, Chairperson of the School Board of Governors and wife of Sir Sidney Gilbert-Thomas, Chairman of the County Council, and possibly The Queen - and like in the rest of the country, the world and maybe even the universe.

      Perhaps I’d better start from the beginning.

      My name’s Arabella Parker, aged nine and a half. At Primrose Primary, which is my school, I’m neither top nor bottom of the class, but pretty much kind of like in the middle. Doesn’t worry me. There are times when I love school, and times when I think it sucks - especially during arithmetic lessons.

      I’ve also been told that I’m opinionated. Well, I’ve looked that up and it says that I’ve got my own ideas about things: and a good thing too, I think. Miss Morgan says I’m bossy: and the answer to that is, I’d like to see how she’d grow up in our house without being bossy.

      So, despite what geeky Lucy Davenport, who I hate, may think I’m quite normal, like. That is, normal until today, when everything that was once normal and ordinary changes, the normal disappears and the ordinary gets an ‘extra’ stuck in front of it.

      It’s pocket money day, and I’ve already spent most of mine at Mr Aziz’s corner shop on the kind of sweets Mum says aren’t good for me, and hidden them in my bedroom, under the pillow.

      At the moment, Mum’s busy in the kitchen, and my dad’s out in the back garden telling Mr MacGinty, our next door neighbor, how he found twenty-five pence missing from the bank’s total, and how he’s spent the past three days tracing it, and how pleased head office is that he’s now found it. Or something weird like that.

      I can see Mr MacGinty’s long ago stopped listening. How interesting, he says, meaning how boring, and stifles a mega yawn. I know exactly how he feels.

      Dad then tells him: Yes, it is. And before Mr MacGinty can disappear back indoors, goes on to say how last year a whole pound had gone missing for a whole week before he managed to find it.

      I sigh, bored to death standing at the living room window just listening to him. Goodness knows how Mr MacGinty must feel, you know, rooted to the spot, his eyes all glassy like, and unable to think of an excuse to escape.

      Dad’s got his Saturday morning clothes on: brown versions of what he wears to the bank on weekdays, when he wears dull grey suits and dull ties that match his dull hair. On top of all that he has a dull face that only smiles at his own jokes and which he calls witty, I call twitty, and everybody else thinks are dead boringWhile I’m on the subject of parents, I think I should point out that my mum’s XL large and likes loud clothes, which she calls colorful, with the loudness not just in what she wears - her voice can travel mega distances as well. Specially when I’ve done something she thinks is wrong.

      She also thinks it’s very common for me to call her ‘Mum’, and my dad ‘Dad’. I can’t think why. Mummy and Daddy are much nicer, she says. So Mum and Dad is what I call them in my head, and Mummy and Daddy is what I say when I want to talk to them.

      She also tells me not to speak common, like. I don’t, I tell her: I talk the same as other children. She then says yes, that’s what she means. I don’t understand half of what she says.

      Now don’t go away with the idea that I don’t love my parents. It’s just that I wish they were like more aware of the good things people think and do, specially me, and less with the not so good things. Harry Blakey, at my school, says that’s stupid: they’re parents; that’s how parents think. He’s probably right.

      You’ll gather by all this that at the moment I’m utterly, utterly, utterly bored. Not only that, I’m thinking how extraordinary it is (my new word) that parents as dull and boring as mine, have ended up with me, a middling, normal girl of nine and a half who would like something extraordinary and exciting to happen just once in her life, before she becomes as boring and dull as they are. Not for a moment, you know, thinking that it might.

      I sigh, turn away from the window and to pass the time stretch up to take a book from the bookcase only to find it just out of reach. The book’s one of my favorites, filled with pictures of undersea kingdoms and mermaids with flowing blonde hair, like mine, riding sea horses and dolphins. I put more effort into the stretch and find this time I can now get hold of the book and take it down.

      Lost in an undersea world of pink coral castles and sunken treasure ships, I don’t hear my mum call that lunch is ready. It’s only at the second time of her calling that the loudness sinks in.

      Frowning, she enters the living room to say in a voice which can be heard five hundred miles away, that when she’s spent the past hour slaving over a hot stove in the kitchen, she doesn’t expect to be ignored when she announces that lunch is on the table and ready to eat.

      I say, Sorry, Mummy. Then, seeing me reach up to put the book back, she lets out like a mega ear-piercing scream. The scream brings Dad in from the dining room to see what the noise is about, and his eyes bulge out on six foot long stalks.

      I drop back to the floor, not knowing, you know, that Mum’s scream and Dad’s bulging eyes come from them having seen me like four inches above where I should be. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?

      WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? Mum yells, at the top of her voice.

      Putting a book back, I reply, astonished at her outburst. What in the world is all the fuss about?

      Floating like that, says Mum, going red in the face.

      Floating? I reply, even more confused.

      You were four inches up in the air, wasn’t she, Percival?

      Probably as much as four and a half.

      I look down at my feet and they’re like firmly on the living room carpet, where they should be. Curious, I try to imagine, you know, what it would be like to raise myself up off the ground like they both seem to be saying.

      Mum screams again and Dad’s eyes bulge once more, because I’ve actually done it.

      STOP THAT AT ONCE, Mum yells, rushing to close the living room curtains before the neighbors can see. "I

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