MICHAEL ROSEN was brought up in London. He originally tried to study medicine before starting to write poems and stories. His poems are about all kinds of things – but always important things – from chocolate cake to bathtime. He was Children’s Laureate from 2007 to 2009, and founded the Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2008 as part of his laureateship to honour books that make children laugh!
Go to michaelrosen.co.uk and click on ‘videos’ to find Michael doing ‘Chocolate Cake’ and many others.
CENTRALLY HEATED KNICKERS
MICHAEL ROSEN’S BOOK OF VERY
SILLY POEMS (ed.)
QUICK, LET’S GET OUT OF HERE
YOU WAIT TILL I’M OLDER THAN YOU
NO BREATHING IN CLASS
(with Korky Paul)
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa
Puffin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
www.penguin.co.uk
www.puffin.co.uk
www.ladybird.co.uk
First published by Viking Books 1996
Published by Puffin Books 1997
Reissued in this edition 2016
Text copyright © Michael Rosen, 1996
Illustrations copyright © Shoo Rayner, 1996
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Cover illustration by Tony Blundell
ISBN: 978–0–141–92797–8
All correspondence to:
Puffin Books
Penguin Random House Children’s
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
When me and my brother have a fight
my mum says:
‘Stoppit – someone’ll get hurt.’
And we say:
‘He started it.’
‘I didn’t. He started it.’
I say:
‘Mum, who started the very first fight
between me and Brian?’
And she says:
‘You.’
‘Me? But I’m four years younger than him.
How could it have been me?’
And she says:
‘Well, it was like this …
You were about two years old
and Brian was six.
You were sitting in your high chair
eating your breakfast
and Brain walked past.
You leaned forward
and banged him over the head
with your spoon.’
‘There you are,’ says my brother,
‘you started it,
you started it.
I always knew you started it.’
Wipe that face off your smile.
Don’t eat with your mouthful.
When you cough, put your ear over your mouth.
Don’t bite your nose.
Don’t talk while I’m interrupting.
How many tunes do I have to tell you?!
Above the tap it said,
‘Run a long time
to get hot water.’
So I ran round the room for a really long time
but I didn’t get any hot water.
Harrybo says:
‘That’s the best toy car you’ve nicked yet,
it’s –’
My dad walks in behind him.
‘What did you just say, Harrybo?’
Great! He didn’t hear Harrybo properly.
Harrybo turns round –
‘… about the car – the – er …’
‘What car?’
Oh no! The questioning.
‘Whose car is it?’
Together we say:
‘It’s Harrybo’s.’ ‘It’s Michael’s.’
‘Where’s it from?’
‘Woollies.’
‘So who paid for it?’
Together we say:
‘Him.’ ‘Him.’
‘It couldn’t have been you, Michael,
you haven’t got any money.
Where did you get the money from, Harrybo?’
‘I didn’t have the – er actually …’
It’s all just about to blow up.
‘Look, tell me if I got this wrong:
did I or did I not hear Harrybo say:
“It’s the best toy car you’ve nicked yet”?’
There’s no escape.
‘Yiss.’
‘What do you think Harrybo meant
when he said that?’
Play dumb.
‘I’m not really sure.’
‘Harrybo, what did you mean
when you said:
“It’s the best toy car you’ve nicked yet”?’
Silence.
‘Do you think Michael nicked the car?’
‘Oh no. I wouldn’t think he’d do a thing like that.’
Fool, Harrybo. He’ll pounce on that.
‘See, Michael, even your best friend …’
My best friend!
‘… thinks you’re not the sort of person
who’d do a thing like that.
Aren’t you really sick of yourself?’
Course Harrybo doesn’t think that.
He’s got a Bluebird racing car
that he nicked as well
in his trouser pocket.
‘Yiss.’
‘Well, you know what you’re going to do,
don’t you?’
‘Yiss.’
‘What?’
‘Take it back.’
‘Exactly. And when you get back here
you, me and your mother
are going to have a long talk about this,
aren’t we?’
I thought we just had.
‘Aren’t we?’
‘Yiss.’
Harrybo’s dad grows hundreds of vegetables
and Harrybo says:
‘Let’s go down the garden …’
and he attacks his dad’s broad beans.
‘Come on, you have some,’ he says,
and he’s munching through five of them.
I don’t like them very much.
Maybe I’ll just have one
to show I’m not feeble.
Then he goes for the peas.
‘These are GREAT,’ he says,
‘really sweet.’
And he sticks his thumb in the pod
and squirts a row of raw peas into his mouth.
Sometimes he pulls up radishes and carrots,
wipes the mud off them,
bites the tops off
and munches up the rest.
‘You want to try potatoes, Michael,’ he says,
and he heaves one of his dad’s potatoes up,
wipes the mud off that too
and –
crunch –
he eats a raw potato
then
redcurrants,
blackcurrants,
gooseberries.
I once said the redcurrants
smelt like cat’s pee.
Didn’t bother him.
He gobbles these till his chin
runs red.
And the apples.
His dad grows the hardest, bitterest apples
you’ve ever seen,
with knobbly, leathery skins.
‘Great!’ says Harrybo,
‘let’s get at the apples.’
And he munches them up:
the whole thing –
the core,
the pips,
the little hairy bits at the ends.
He leaves nothing.
He even found some little green pip things.
‘Stursham seeds’, he called them.
‘Try these,’ he says.
They were sour, peppery beans.
Horrible.
‘I love these,’ he said
and he scooped handfuls of them into his mouth.
It’s incredible watching him
roaming round the garden
grabbing at anything growing.
He chews grass.
He eats dandelion leaves.
‘These are just great, Michael,’ he says.
‘You ought to eat them, you know.’
I’ve seen people very carefully nibbling at
one raw mushroom,
thinking they’re doing something
daringly healthy.
Harrybo can munch up twenty.
My brother once told me that
Mum and Dad have got a deal about
telling off.
He said that
if one of them
is telling one of us off
then the other parent
won’t join in.
He said that they’d said
it isn’t fair on a kid
if both parents have a go
at the same time.
It works like that most of the time.
My dad gets angry about something,
like the time I stuck toothpaste
in his shaving soap:
‘What did you think?
I wouldn’t notice?
The little fool!
He spends hours and hours in that bathroom
and we think he’s washing himself!
But this is the sort of monkey business
he’s getting up to.
This is my shaving soap.
Not yours.
If you want to play about with shaving soap
buy your own.’
And Mum doesn’t say a word.
Not a word.
But somehow when it’s Mum’s turn
it doesn’t quite work out the same way.
She’s telling me off
for not cleaning my shoes:
‘How can you go out like that?
You look like a tramp.
I don’t want to be seen in the street with you.
All I’m asking is that you give them a wipe.
A little wipe.
That wouldn’t harm you, would it?’
And out of the corner of my eye
I can see my dad
twitching about,
itching to join in.
He’s nodding and tutting
and coming in with:
‘Quite!’
and
‘You’re right there, Connie.’
Then when Mum goes out the room
he bursts out with:
‘You’ve pushed your mother to the edge this time.’
Never mind her,
he’s well over the edge.
