Chapter Two

by Dunalley C E Primary School

The spacecraft landed silently a short distance away from the house. Proddle the salesman looked out from the spaceship to check that they had landed safely.

"Pinkerello!" he jabbered (he always started his sentences like that). "Priff clop forg puwn pattish!" - which means in English, "We seem to have arrived!"

"What is this strange place?" said Captain Pinash, in his own Pinko language. "I rather like all this green stuff on the ground."

At Calthorpe Grange, the birthday party was in full swing.

Pinash decided to wait until Cook came into the garden so that they could talk to her about trading the wakerupper for the Daisy.

Daisy was still busy bringing out the food for Alfred Calthorpe's birthday party, when Cook finally came out. Now was the alien salesmen's chance. Pinash, Proddle and Pazaz stepped out of the glowing pink spaceship and into the garden. Everyone looked in amazement to see such strange pink creatures. When it sank in that these were no ordinary creatures, everyone fought and screamed to get back inside.

Everyone that is, except Daisy. Daisy could hear the three Pinkerellians speaking in a strange language. She didn't know that it was Pinko. She was fascinated by these lovely little beings. They obviously weren't human, but they were moving and seemed to be breathing. They certainly didn't look like anything Daisy had ever seen before.

Now she looked more closely she could see a very strange object in the smallest one's hands. She was not at all afraid.

"Whatever is that in your… your hand?" she asked.

Pazaz switched on his automatic language unscrambler. "Could you please repeat that?" he said in perfect English.

"I was just asking what that thing is in your…hand?" Daisy was wondering to herself if it WAS a hand.

"Oh," replied Pazaz, "That's our Wakerupper. It's for making sure that you get up for work on time."

Daisy thought to herself that she would never need anything like that, because Cook was always nagging her to get up for work. She took the Wakerupper from Pazaz and started to look carefully at it.

Cook was still nowhere to be seen. Proddle, Pinash and Pazaz started to jabber away together in their own language. They knew that they would have to leave this planet soon, as the air was starting to hurt them as they breathed it. They would have to simply take the Daisy and leave the Wakerupper in her place.

Daisy was quite happy to step into the strange spaceship, because she hated working every day, and she was just ready for a bit of adventure. There was also something very compelling and inviting about these strange little pink creatures.

The spaceship door closed behind her, and suddenly she realised - there was no going back now.

Soon they had travelled out of the Earth's atmosphere and past lots of other universes. As Captain Pinash steered the spaceship past some giant asteroids, Daisy started to talk to Proddle and Pazaz in Pinko, which she was learning very fast.

Suddenly Captain Pinash cried out.

"Oh, no! It's Captain Slug"

"Who's Captain Slug?" asked Daisy. But Pinash, Pazaz and Proddle were too busy talking to each other frantically in little pink high pitched voices to listen to her.

"Who is Captain Slug?" asked Daisy again, a little more loudly and urgently this time.

"Captain Slug is our arch enemy," cried Pazaz.

"Help, help," shouted Chief Pinash. "I can't steer the ship, and we are hurtling straight towards Captain Slug's ship, the Slimy Terror. I can't stop…"

© Cheltenham Festival of Literature 1999
last amended 6th October 1999