The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked
Written especially for WBD 2016, this is a fabulously entertaining and touching novella from David Baddiel, author of the bestselling THE PARENT AGENCY and THE PERSON CONTROLLER.Illustrated by the hugely talented Jim Field, winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.Alfie has a routine. To be honest he has a lot of routines.But then one day Alfie’s babysitter is unavailable, and Alfie’s parents get Mrs Stokes instead. Mrs Stokes doesn’t do routines. Instead, she just tells Alfie to do what he likes. And that’s when things start to go weird.Does everything get hilariously out of control? Yes.Does Alfie learns a valuable lesson? Nah. This isn’t that kind of story…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016
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Text © David Baddiel, 2016
Illustrations © Jim Field 2016
Jacket illustration © Jim Field, 2016
Jacket Design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016
David Baddiel and Jim Field assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008167806
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008164911
Version: 2016-02-01
To the real Mrs Stokes …
Contents
Cleaning-his-Teeth-in-the-Evening: 6.49pm
Getting-Undressed-and-Putting-Pyjamas-on: 6.49pm
Alfie Moore had a routine. To be honest, he had a lot of routines. He had a waking-up routine, a getting-dressed routine, a cleaning-his-teeth-in-the-morning routine, a breakfast routine, a clearing-up-after-breakfast routine, a getting-his-schoolbag-ready routine, a checking-he-had-everything-before-he-left-the-house routine, a walking-to-and-from-school routine, a having-tea routine, a clearing-up-after-tea routine, a homework routine, a limited-amount-of-TV routine, a bath routine, a cleaning-his-teeth-in-the-evening routine (which, to be fair, was pretty similar to his cleaning-his-teeth-in-the-morning routine), a getting-undressed-and-putting-pyjamas-on routine and a going-to-bed routine.
Alfie was eleven and the routines had all been worked out by his dad, Stephen. Each one was precisely written out, listing all the things he had to do, and the times he had do them by, on pieces of paper pinned up on different walls of his house. For example, the waking-up and getting-dressed routines were on his bedroom wall, along with the getting-undressed-and-putting-pyjamas-on and going-to-bed routines, only on a different piece of paper (placed very neatly next to the first one).
But Alfie never needed to look at those pieces of paper because he knew all his routines by heart. Plus, he wore two watches, one on each wrist (one digital and one analogue, both given to him by his dad) to make sure he always knew the time. As a result, he was never late for school, always knew what clothes to wear, was never tired from going to bed late and always got all his homework done.
Alfie was perfectly happy. The routines made his life work very, very well; it only wasn’t operating under a routine when he was asleep, although Alfie didn’t really know about that because he never seemed to have any dreams.
Alfie’s routines did, of course, involve his dad and his stepmother, Jenny. His parents were there at exactly the right times to prepare his tea, to help him with his homework, to kiss him on the top of his head when the back of his head hit the pillow, as it always did at 8.35pm on weekdays and 9.35pm on weekends. But every so often Alfie’s parents did go out, to dinner parties and other things that they said they liked, but often came back from crosser and more miserable than they were before they went out. That could mean a disruption to Alfie’s evening routines.
Luckily, they had a babysitter who was completely up to speed with how Alfie lived his life. Her name was Stasia and she was Lithuanian. If anything, she was even more efficient than Alfie’s dad at making sure Alfie stuck to his regular timetable.
Stasia would arrive, promptly, at 6pm and everything would run smoother than smooth with Alfie’s having-tea routine, his clearing-up-after-tea routine, his homework routine, his limited-amount-of-TV routine, his bath routine, his pretty-similar-to-the-cleaning-his-teeth-in-the-morning-cleaning-his-teeth-in-the-evening routine, his getting-undressed-and-putting-pyjamas-on routine and his going-to-bed routine.
But then, one day, Alfie came back from school to find his stepmum, Jenny, video-calling Stasia on her smartphone. He wanted to interrupt her and tell her all about his science class, which he had really liked that day because they’d been doing space travel, but he could see that she was preoccupied.
