You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!. Andy Stanton

rest of them chased each other in circles or had races.

      WHACK!! The pan came down on Mr Gum’s head faster than Superman. SPLAP!! The pan whipped him one on the bottom. BOING!! A fat one to the belly.

      Mr Gum doubled up in pain and tripled up in fear as the fairy raged. ‘It ain’t my fault!’ he yelled. ‘I ain’t never seen that dog before!’

      ‘I don’t care whose’ BASH! ‘fault it is! It’s your’ SPLURK!! ‘job to’ WALLOP!! ‘do the gardening,’ VROINNNK!! ‘you stupid trouserface!’

      Mr Gum flung himself down on the lawn and lay there whimpering, his eyes shut tight in unbraveness. Jake, on the other hand, was having a brilliant time. But just then a cloud shaped a bit like a bone drifted by.

      With a hungry bark Jake ran off to chase it. Mr Gum watched as the dog bounced over the fence and disappeared off to who knows where. The moles raced back to their moleholes at the speed of moles. As suddenly as it had begun, the terror was over.

      Mr Gum spent all afternoon repairing the damage. The fairy watched over him, scowling and brandishing the frying pan dangerously to hurry him on. Eventually the garden was back to normal, and with one last WHACK for good measure the fairy flew back to the bathtub and vanished. Mr Gum breathed a sigh of relief and went inside to find he’d missed his favourite TV show, ‘Bag of Sticks’, which was a picture of a bag of sticks for half an hour. (Mr Gum was the only person in the country who ever watched ‘Bag of Sticks’. Everyone else turned over to watch ‘Funtime with Crispy’.)

      ‘That dog ought to be given a meddling medal, he’s such a meddler,’ muttered Mr Gum. ‘I hope that’s the last of him.’

      But it wasn’t the last of Jake, it was the beginning. Jake’s big doggy brain could not stop thinking about that amazing garden and the very next day he returned with much the same result as before. And the day after that. And the day after that. But not the day after that, because it was a Wednesday and everyone knows that dogs have the day off on Wednesdays.

      But on Thursday you should have seen him! He was back with a vengeance. Every day (apart from Wednesdays) it was the same story. That massive whopper of a dog would come bouncing over the fence and start romping around like an uncontrollable doctor, sometimes leaving his ‘little gifts’ as was only natural. Mr Gum would run out into the garden shaking a fist on the end of a stick to frighten him off but he could never catch him. Jake would just bark like a cheeky schoolboy doing an impression of a dog barking. Then he’d bounce over the spiky fence and disappear off to who knows where.

      Three weeks later Mr Gum was covered in frying-pan-shaped bruises and he had missed ten episodes of ‘Bag of Sticks’. It was time for action. Nasty action.

      It’s time for action,’ said Mr Gum to nobody in particular. ‘Nasty action.’

      Nobody in particular shrugged his shoulders and wandered off to eat his dinner. Mr Gum went to the shed and got out his thinking cap. He put it on his knee (it was a kneecap) and started thinking about how to get rid of that dog.