Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire

Robin Bennett

Description

Adventure and magic for 7-10 year-olds: Mad inventors, shark submarines and England's deepest lake under Creake Castle. Fred Longshanks is invited to tea in the village by Tobias Brown, Inventor Esquire. Before he knows it, he has embarked on an insane journey to get to the bottom of England's deepest lake in the grounds of his parents home in Creake Castle. What they discover on the journey changes both their lives for ever.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 14 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780957456563
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
TOBIAS BROWN
by
RS Harding



Publisher Information
Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire Originally published in Great Britain by Monster Books The Old Smithy, Henley-on-Thames, OXON RG9 2AR
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2013 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
The right of RS Harding to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser ISBN 0-9532261-3-9 soft cover A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Text copyright © 2013 RS Harding
Illustrations copyright © 2013 Rob Rayevsky



Dedication
The Creake Castle series is dedicated to Major Francis Budd, otherwise known as ‘Grandpa’



Creake Castle
Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, high on a hill in England’s countryside, a Knight, who was probably some sort of magician too, decided that he wanted to build a castle. Not because he particularly needed one or because there was any war going on, he just fancied it. Some people are like that; and anyway, he knew that you couldn’t possibly be a proper Knight unless you had a Castle, with a moat, a drawbridge and a very good view.
He got some builders together, some local stone and large amounts of wood and had it built in next to no time at all. The castle was called Creake and the Knight, who was called Sir Creake, was very proud ofhimselfand ofhis gleaming white castle on his green grassy hill, with its high towers and bright red flags waving in the wind.
The Knight was also very clever, and he had the castle blessed with magic. There was a lot of it about in those days and it was certainly cheaper than it is now.
As I said, that was a long time ago. But the castle is still there today and a boy called Fred lives there with his mother and father, Sir and Lady Longshanks, direct descendants of Sir Creake. The castle doesn’t gleam white anymore and most of the flags have gone, but the hillside is still just as green and lovely as it always was and Fred is happy living amongst the ancient battlements and the towers.
He is never bored because some ofthe magic that the castle had when it was first built is still there to this day, sleeping in the stone. Things always seem to happen at Creake and often to Fred himself. Interesting things. Maybe even Marvellous Things.
Sometimes it seems that there is just as much magic in Fred himself as there is in Creake Castle. Or perhaps it is all just part of the same thing - you can decide about that for yourself.
It is time we began..........





Chapter One
On inventors
Do you know what an inventor is? Well yes, I suppose that is rather an easy one. Inventors invent. Everybody knows that, and if they don’t, then they should listen to what is being said in school and not stare out of the window quite so much.
Inventors invent everything. Take a look around you. Everything that you see has had to be invented by someone, somewhere and at some time. Not just modern stuff either, like computers, cars, hi-fis or that thing that makes the kettle turn off when it has started to boil. Even old-fashioned things. Particularly old-fashioned things. Like clocks, pencils, pens, even shoes and socks.
Reasons have to be invented too. Like why you have to go to bed when you are still wide awake, or why you have to get up when you are still half-asleep. And why school cabbage always tastes as if someone’s boiled their underpants and is now trying to make you eat them.
Well, anyway, this is a story about an inventor. And it is also about Fred Longshanks, whom you may already have heard about. He lives in a very old castle called Creake Castle, in the middle of the countryside in England with his mother and father, Sir and Lady Longshanks.
It is a wonderful old castle with a lake and a moat and on a clear day Fred can stand on the battlements and look out at the whole of Dorset, spread out before him like a very large map.



Chapter Two
Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire
On the morning in question, Fred was lying fast asleep in his bed, dreaming about an immense cake piled high with strawberries and covered in castor sugar, the sort that looks like snow and makes your mouth tingle when you eat it on its own.
‘CRRAAAASHH! KABOOM! Tinkle tinkle....................flibit’ went something extremely loudly in his ear.
One minute he was in the dream, cutting himself a huge slice of cake in the shining sun, and the next there was a tremendous noise and he was wide awake and nearly jumping out of his skin, trying to run in sixteen directions at once.
The crashing noise continued whilst Fred escaped (or at least tried to) from the sheets, which had tied themselves in knots around his head. He turned and stared at what was coming through his beloved window in his beloved bedroom, high up in his beloved castle.
The more he stared, the less he could make out what it was. It was large, certainly, made out of bits of wood, apparently, and it had a man sitting in the middle of it. On a bicycle. A very old decrepit bicycle, by the looks of things. Fred was more surprised than angry, although deep down in his heart he certainly felt it was a rather rude thing, crashing about in other people’s bedrooms whilst they were still fast asleep, having the sort of dreams you only had once a month and only if you were lucky.
There was a pause, as the dust settled.
Then: ‘Hello,’ said the man, quite normally, as if they had just met each other out on a walk, or at tea in someone’s house.
‘Hello,’ said Fred, partly because he couldn’t think of anything clever to say just at the minute, and partly because he was beginning to feel curious. The machine lying half in and half out of the window was obviously some sort of plane and that, in Fred’s world, meant that it was worth another look. He was very interested in planes.
However, it didn’t look like the type of plane that you could buy in a shop, or wherever it was Fred supposed that planes normally came from. It wasn’t the usual sort of plane. It looked home made, he decided. The man looked strange -home made too, if that was the right word, but in a nice friendly way. He had a long pointed beard and wore a velvet red coat. On his head he wore a flying helmet, with a strap around his chin and what looked like a camera stuck on the top. His eyes were grey and had fine wrinkles, etched like kindness at their edges.
There was a long silence.
‘Would you like a glass of lemon juice?’ asked Fred eventually, because he still couldn’t think of anything else to say. And anyway, he knew that offering drinks to guests was the polite thing to do. The flying gentleman, who was picking bits of Fred’s bedroom window out of his coat, looked up in surprise, as if he had forgotten Fred was there, and beamed through the dust.
‘Yes, that would be absolutely splendid, my dear boy.’
And so, ten minutes later, they were sitting on the window seat, with Fred looking at the flying machine and the broken window. ‘I really am most frightfully sorry about all this mess and the nasty shock of course,’ he said to Fred for the fourth time in as many minutes. ‘It’s windier today than I had calculated for. But the aircraft seems to be all right.’ Fred thought it was best to accept the apology gracefully; besides, he was fascinated to find out what the funny old aeroplane and this man with a strange contraption on his head were all about. He coughed politely.
‘Erm,’ he started, ‘what’s the plane, and what’s that thing on your head for? Actually... If you don’t mind me asking?’ he finished. The old gentleman, who was sipping his lemon, staring into space, stopped what he was doing, looked up and peered at Fred closely. Then he beamed again, both his eyes twinkling in the morning sunlight. It was a very special sort of beam, the sort that, when it is beamed right at you, makes you feel like a million dollars, or whatever the local currency is. Fred suddenly felt glad that this nice old man had crashed into his bedroom window. It was interesting, more interesting than school holidays. Kit was on an exchange in France, staying with some people called the de Lafonts. In her last postcard to him, she had written that the family had a daughter Kit’s age, called Isabelle, a swimming pool in the garden and a pony in a field. Fred felt a little jealous, quite frankly, which was not helped by the fact that he was also a little bored. He’d been on holiday for almost a week and in that time not a single dangerous or exciting thing had happened to him. Until now.
‘I know,’ said the pilot, clapping his hands together, and spilling lemonade all over the carpet in the process, ‘it’s a very long story, so why don’t you come to my laboratory for tea sometime next week and I’ll tell you all about it?’
‘Well...I...’ started Fred.
‘Good, excellent,’ he said, ‘that’s all settled. Say Wednesday at 4 pm, here’s my card and don’t forget to ask your parents. Now,’ he said getting up and starting towards the door. ‘I must be off,’ Fred started to get up. ‘No, no, don’