Free My Brother's Famous Bottom Goes Camping by Jeremy Strong

1 Captain Birdseye and Cecily Sprout!
    My sister’s got a pet carrot. She has, really – a proper carroty carrot. It has green hair and she dresses it in Barbie doll clothes. My sister calls it Cecily Sprout.
    ‘Because my friend at nursery is called Cecily,’ she told Mum and me.

    ‘Yeah, but Cecily’s not a sprout,’ I laughed.
    ‘I think you mean Cecily Carrot,’ suggested Mum, but Tomato shook her head firmly.
    ‘No, I don’t. I mean Sprout.’ She clasped the vegetable doll close to her chest and whispered in the carrot’s ear. ‘You’re a sprout, aren’t you? Yes, you are.’
    ‘Has your friend at nursery got green hair?’ I asked.
    ‘Stop teasing her!’ Mum murmured with half a smile. ‘Tomato’s only three.’
    Of course, you’ve guessed that the green hair is really leaves growing out of the carrot top, and you may be thinking my family must be vegetable mad. Why is my sister called Tomato, and why does she have a carrot-doll?
    Well, first of all I have a twin brother and sister. My sister’s called Tomato and my brother’s name is Cheese. They do have proper names – James and Rebecca – but they were born in the back of a pizza delivery van and my dad called themCheese and Tomato. It was just a joke, but it kind of stuck and now everyone calls them that, even Granny and her husband, Lancelot.
    As for the pet carrot, that was sort of my fault. We grow vegetables in the back garden and the other day I dug up this weird carrot. The top half was normal but the bottom half had split into what looked like two long, pointy legs. I showed it to Tomato and told her it was a dancing carrot-woman. And now she won’t be parted from it. She got me to draw a little smiley face on paper. Then we cut it out and stuck it on the carrot.
    We grow loads of stuff. It’s like a mini-farm out the back, with a goat and chickens and a tortoise. I know you don’t usually find tortoises on farms but my dad got him. Yes – that’s the same dad who named the twins after his favourite pizza. My dad’s daft. (And great fun!) Dad says that Schumacher (that’s the tortoise) is the garden’s security guard.
    ‘We haven’t had a single cabbage stolen sincewe got him,’ declared Dad.
    ‘We never had cabbages stolen before we got him,’ Mum pointed out.
    My dad’s good at thinking up names. He used to have a pet alligator called Crunchbag – don’t ask! – and our pet goat is called Rubbish. (Guess what she eats!) He’s named the chickens too. We only got them a few days ago – four hens and a cockerel. The hens are supposed to lay eggs, but they haven’t produced a single one yet. I’m not sure what the cockerel is supposed to do. At themoment all he does is wake up the whole street in the morning before it’s even got light. Our neighbour Mr Tugg isn’t too happy about that and keeps coming round to our house to show off his impressions of an exploding volcano. (In other words he gets very, VERY angry!)

    Dad has named the cockerel Captain Birdseye, and he calls all the hens Chicken Nugget. He thinks that’s very funny. Mum says it’s cruel. Dad told her she was being silly because hens don’t understand English. Mum said that wasjust as well, because if hens could speak they’d tell Dad that he was a nasty, horrible man who ate chickens. Dad replied that she ate chickens too. Mum said yes, but she wasn’t the one calling them Chicken Nugget. Then they started laughing. My mum and dad are always having daft arguments.

    ‘Anyway,’ Mum went on, ‘you can’t call all the hens Chicken Nugget. Maybe the twins can think of some names. Come to think of it, where have they got to? I thought they came outside with us.’
    ‘They did,’ I agreed. ‘They went to look at the chickens.’
    There was a startled squawk from the hen house and a hen came zooming out, half running, half flying and three-quarters falling over itself. There were several more protests from deep inside the coop and two more