What a Load of Rubbish Read Online Free Page A

Tilsley”. As Her Majesty had no idea where to put Malcolm’s unwieldy barrow during the ceremony in the royal stables, not without upsetting the horses and the corgis, she was only too pleased with his idea and quickly wrote back agreeing.

    After that interview, Malcolm’s careers master was never the same. Never in his long career had he met a pupil with ambitions of becoming a street cleaner – the poor man just could not get his head round it. What child wants to sweep roads for a living? Some weeks later, he booked himself into a home for “tired and retired intellectuals”, where he is still a resident to this day twenty-seven years later. He sits alone in his room, still tearing at what little hair he has left; still trying to fathom the reason – WHY?

Chapter 3
Malcolm and the Power of the Pooperscooper
    Early morning on the very swish, slightly snooty Willowy Lane, birds sang in the acacia trees, a milk-float drove along stopping every few houses so that the milkman could take away the empties and put fresh pints on the doorsteps, whistling cheerfully as he did so. Children went to school, a gentle breeze blew down the street rustling the leaves in the trees and the faint “dah-daah” sounded from an express-train as it hurtled through Suburbiaville Central station.
    Malcolm had been on parade since eight-thirty that morning making sure people could travel to work in safety, without slipping on any oily or greasypatches, banana skins or, God forbid, some pooch had “pooed” on the pavement. So far, ever since Malcolm had started working the Willowy Lane patch, this hadn’t happened but just in case it did, he was there, no more than an arm’s stretch away from his trusty broom and pooperscooper.
    So it happened that on one day in particular, this is exactly what did. Malcolm was sizing up his day’s work, calculating the wind direction. Flexing his muscles, shifting his weight from foot to foot and mentally preparing himself to embark on a frenzy of urban enhancement. When on the far side of the street, he spotted the potential hazard. At a distance of about eighty metres away his eagle eye picked out an enormous dollop of doggy-doo. On his patch this was unthinkable – his whole reputation was at risk. The canine offender, probably a stray from a less desirable area, had only just fled the scene of the crime and had Malcolm looked, he would have just spotted its furry tail disappearing around a corner. An evil smelling vapour was escaping from the nauseous mound, a sort of testament to its freshness.
    Then disaster loomed. Malcolm heard a door open, loud smacking noises when kisses were blown, with a cheery, “Goodbye darling!” Followed by a CRASH! as the door slammed shut. A smartly dressedcity gent stepped out of his front garden on the same side of the street. He wore a pin-striped suit, collar and tie, and cufflinks. The whole ensemble was completed by the shiniest and most expensive looking pair of shoes that Malcolm had ever seen, with a silver bar across each instep. The man was reading a paper – the stocks and shares page. So engrossed was he in the facts and figures before his eyes that he failed to spot the dollop of disease lying directly in his path. Neither did he see the noxious vapours escaping, threatening to contaminate everything within a five metre radius.
    Clip-clop, clip-clop; the city gent and this remarkably shiny, remarkably expensive pair of shoes were en route for disaster. And judging by that slight squeaking noise they were probably brand new.
    Malcolm realised he had only seconds in which to act. The Theme from Jaws played over and over in his imagination. But he did not panic. In an amazing feat of mental agility he worked out the approximate distance from himself to the city gent. Then, in a split-second, he gauged the distance between man and mess and carefully divided this by the estimated cost of the shoes, and added the time it would take