The Boy Who Cried Fish Read Online Free Page A

when you’ve got a puncture, but unfortunately, with both him and Wystan out of the show, it was like being a spare wheel with a puncture. They’d both be sitting backstage tonight, watching the show through the curtains, passing Percy Late his plate and keeping Flopples’s after-show carrot warm for the Doctor.
    ‘I thought you might appreciate a change of scenery, boys. Take your minds off things. How do you fancy visiting the Aquarium?’
    ‘Aquarium?’ Fizz asked.
    ‘A big building full of fish,’ explained Dr Surprise.
    ‘I know that,’ Fizz replied. ‘I just meant “What Aquarium?”’
    ‘Oh, whichever one’s nearest,’ said Dr Surprise, reaching into his pocket for his pocket watch and glancing as if to check the time. At this point he noticed that his hand was empty.
    ‘Where’s your watch, Doctor?’ asked Wystan.
    ‘I keep forgetting,’ Dr Surprise replied, ‘it’s at the watch-mender’s in town, being mended. Flopples mistook it for a carrot last weekend, and, well . . .’
    Fizz had been wondering why the Doctor’s act these last few days had involved lots of sparks, mind-reading and magic tricks, but none of his famous hypnotism. This explained it, since he always dangled his pocket watch when he put people into trances. Without it he was just a normal man with a top hat, monocle, dangerous rabbit, card tricks, unexpected fireworks and surprising bunches of flowers.
    ‘There’s an Aquarium I spotted just along the prom,’ Dr Surprise went on, putting the non-existent pocket watch back into his existent waistcoat pocket. ‘Won’t take us five minutes to walk there. It could be interesting. I’ve heard that they have a lesser green-footed coral octopus in there that can disguise itself so well that it completely vanishes. It changes colour and shape and the texture of its skin and all sorts, and, hey presto!, you simply can’t see it any more. Sounds like marvellous stuff. Or so someone said. I wouldn’t know anything about it.’
    ‘Yeah, okay,’ the boys said. ‘Why not?’
     
    This would be a good time to tell you where the circus is. As you know, Fizz’s home is a travelling circus and this means every week or so they move from one place to another, parking up in a town park and setting up the Big Top to entertain the locals. So, where’s the circus today?
    It’s by the seaside.
    If you look into the sky you’ll see gulls circling. If you look closer you’ll see the gulls are seagulls. And they’re still circling.
    The circus is set up in a park, one side of which faces the sea. There’s a row of trees, then the tarmac strip of a path and then a rather pebbly beach and then water. Lots of water, water as far as you can see. In the other direction the park opens out into the town, which is just like any other town, except with more fish and chip shops, seashell emporia and concrete sandcastles. (Since the beaches in these parts are singly shingly, a bright-eyed Mayor in the 1980s had half a dozen giant sandcastles built out of concrete around the town (in the parks, squares, shopping centres and so on). He claimed they reflected the cheery seaside nature of the town, without the impermanence, the mutability if you will, of a normal sandcastle (that is to say, the sea can’t sweep them away, because they’re great ugly things made out of concrete). He said they’d bring in tourists. Tourists disagreed.)
    A more recent Mayor (the current one in fact) preferred to attract tourists with big posters advertising his ‘ Summer Season Festival of Fun!!! ’ The circus had been booked as the main entertainment and had been parked in the park for just over a week. They had one more night here before the festival ended and the tents got packed away and they trundled off to a new town.
    Fizz had been busy with circus work and his lessons, and had hardly had time to stroll on the beach, let alone go exploring along the prom. But now he had nothing but time on his hands. A little