CHAPTER ONE
It was a dismal Monday morning.
Dexter Bacon stared gloomily at his reflection in the rain spattered window pane. The mop-head staring back wished himself any place but a wet playground, whilst wearing second hand wellies and a leaky raincoat. A large droplet of rain gathered at the end of Dexter’s nose and hung there momentarily before falling off into oblivion. Placing his forehead on the cold glass of the window, a deep sigh escaped from the ten year old, misting up his reflected image. He was as cheesed off as a mouldy lump of cheddar left in a long forgotten lunchbox. There was no doubt about it; things just weren’t going right for him at Boughgandale Primary. In fact, everything seemed to be going wrong.
As he stood alone in the drizzle, the events of the previous month tumbled through Dexter's mind. He thought about his recent mistake of announcing to one and all, his decision to become a vegetarian. Impulsively, he’d decided to share this information with his new classmates. This had resulted in him earning the nickname ‘Streaky’ from the kids on the back row; something which in itself wasn’t a problem, until it was accompanied by the odd meatball winging its way towards his head during dinner time. He decided that picking bits of congealed school gravy out of his hair wasn’t on his list of favourite ways to pass the time. Wiping the rain from his nose, he made a mental note to control his tendency to blurt out his inner thoughts.
Lately, Dexter had also noticed that his teacher had begun to despair at his poor performances in class. She'd taken to rolling her eyes whenever he struggled during revision exercises. “Oh Dexter, do try!” Miss Whittle would say, as he grappled with the mysteries of algebra. But it was no good; he just couldn’t keep up with the pace of work she was setting. He’d begun to resent the implication that he was faffing around. He wasn’t! He’d sit there, racking his brains until they hurt, but still it made little sense. Maths was simply a foreign language, and Dexter didn’t have a passport to the land of Gobbledegook!
Then there was his clothing problem, and in particular, the permeability of his raincoat. The fact that members of staff on playtime duty had begun to enforce an unwritten rule that children must get as soaked as conditions allowed during rainy weather wasn’t helping matters. Apparently, loafing around inside, playing chess or reading in the classrooms when the weather was dreadful was now frowned upon by the headmistress. This was not a good situation to be in when global warming seemed to be establishing Dexter’s own personal monsoon season, at a time when his waterproofs were woefully defective!
To cap it all, for some reason that was a complete mystery to him, a number of the infants had taken a bit of a shine to Dexter at playtimes. The reception kids just couldn’t get enough of the tall and thin ten year old, and often pestered him to play games with them, even on days when he really wasn’t in the mood. It had got to the point where he’d occasionally considered hiding in the toilets during the morning break, just for a little peace and quiet.
“Come on now Dexter,” commanded the teacher, startling the boy out of his daydream. “Stop moping around under the bike shelter. You should be running around and enjoying some of this excellent fresh air! Good for the circulation and therefore good for the development of the brain!”
“But Mr Potts, if I run around, the water trickles down my neck and makes my underpants all soggy,” Dexter complained candidly, forgetting his resolve to limit the sharing of personal information and hoping for a glimmer of understanding from the disapproving adult looking down his nose at him.
“Nonsense laddie! Soggy underpants were the making of the soldiers that established that wondrous institution known as the British Empire. Good for building the character! Now, I don’t know what it was like at your previous school Dexter, but we can’t have any slacking here at Boughgandale Primary. Remember: a healthy mind and body helps fulfil potential and raises those test scores! We need big brains at Boughgandale. Off you go and don’t forget to inhale deeply!”
Reluctantly, Dexter lolloped off in his wellies. The rain lashed mercilessly into his face and the familiar sloshing sensation around his socks confirmed for him that an early death as a result of trench-foot was on the cards. To his dismay, a small group of younger children immediately began following, grinning madly, tugging at his raincoat and hoping the lanky ten year old might entertain them in some way. This continued for almost the entire playtime, and although he wasn’t generally the sort of boy who lost his temper, he was beginning to feel a little bit tetchy by the end of the break.
Fortunately, the bell went before he was tempted to say anything horrible to the gaggle of runny nosed five year olds who’d found him so fascinating that morning. He wandered back through the rain with the other aquanauts, grabbed some paper towels from the cloakroom, and attempted to soak up the gallons of water that had percolated through his clothing.
