When Mum Went Funny Read Online Free

from them. “We can have scrambling eggs,” she said.
    While I washed and peeled the vegies and cut them up, Kate looked in the safe and found an old end of bacon, and the bones and leftovers from last night’s shoulder of mutton. As we chopped up and added everything to Mum’s nail soup, it got thicker and smelled better, and we hung around wanting to taste it and, at last, we ate it. Then Kate remembered to put in a bit of pepper, a drop of Worcester Sauce, and something she found in the cupboard, and it tasted better still.
    When we’d eaten our soup, Mum took out the nail, washed it under the tap, and put it on the windowsill over the sink.
    “What are you putting it there for?” asked Jimmy.
    “I’m going to keep it because it’s such a very tasty nail,” Mum told him. “It made the best soup I’ve eaten for years.” And we all said so, too, Kate loudest of all.
    “We might have nail soup again tomorrow,” Mum said.
    We all looked at each other. “Yes?” we said, a little unsure. “Again. Tomorrow.”
    Betty said, “And there’s lots of eggs!” and Jimmy said, “You wait till I tell all the kids at school how our mother made soup out of a nail!”
    “I wouldn’t say anything about it,” Mum told him quickly. “We wouldn’t want our secret to get out, would we now?”
    “Gosh, no!” said Jimmy, but I could see he didn’t know why not.

6
Putting the Car Up On Blocks
    “
O
h, confound the blessed things!” Mum told Mr Robinson at the garage in Waharoa. “I’m sure they hide themselves deliberately, just so I can’t find them. They were in here, I’m certain of that!” She hunted through the glove box again.
    “Have you children been playing with the benzine coupons?” she said, going through her purse. “Kate, I hope you haven’t hidden them!”
    “Why would I want to hide them?”
    “I never know with you, my lady!”
    “Bring them in next time you’re in Waharoa, Mrs Costall,” Mr Robinson said, “but remember, or you’ll get me into trouble with that little Hitler at the post office. It’d be more than my life’s worth, if I got caught not asking for coupons, now petrol’s rationed. You’ve no idea, the forms I have to fill in.
    “You’d think he was running the war effort single-handed, the way he goes on about ration books, all the extra work, and the time it takes getting them out of the safe, issuing them, and locking them up again, and the returns he has to send in. ‘There is a war on, youknow,’ he tells me, Old Grizzleguts!”
    We looked at each other. Mr Robinson always said “Old Grizzleguts” and “little Hitler” when he meant Mr Weston. None of us liked Mr Weston because he told us to clear out of his post office, and he always served the grownups first, even when we’d been waiting for ages.
    On Guy Fawkes Day, Dennis Jones used to light crackers and throw them through the post office door to explode on the shiny brown lino. Mr Weston was waiting once, and chased Dennis all the way to the railway crossing, before remembering he’d left the post office open, and a German spy could have parachuted down, climbed over the counter, blown open the safe, and pinched all the ration books.
    Dennis reckoned Mr Weston ran all the way back, puffing and holding his fat puku with both hands. Dennis gave him a few minutes to settle down, then sneaked up the steps, lit a jumping jack, and threw it in the door. He also shouted, “The Jerry parachutists are landing!” This time Dennis tore the other way, through the plantation, across the railway lines, and all the way down to the creek. His father gave him a hiding that night, but Dennis reckoned it didn’t hurt. “It was worth it,” he said. “Old Grizzleguts goes purple every time he sees me now.”
    But I was telling you about the time Mum got sick of forgetting her petrol coupons, and she drove home saying, “I’m fed up with this wretched old car. Thecanvas is showing through the tyres, and Mr