NO ORDINARY ROOM by Bill Williams Read Free Book Online

who was peering over the top of the hedge.
    ‘Stone the crows, Mr Cranleigh you made me jump.  I thought you were……’ Jamie said, but stopped himself from saying, Uncle Stanley.   It had crossed Jamie’s mind that old Rufus might actually be Uncle Stanley.  After all no one had any idea what Uncle Stanley looked like?   He might have owned both houses and rigged the whole thing up with the help of his solicitor just because he was lonely.  Jamie had seen Mr Cranleigh wearing shorts while he was gardening and he remembered him having very knobbly knees, so perhaps knobbly knees ran in the Tranter family.  Jamie hadn’t noticed if his own knees were knobbly, but he intended to have a really close look at them the next time he was in the bath.  
     ‘Mr Cranleigh, did my Great Uncle Stanley have names for his fish and did he have a favourite?’
    ‘He did and what odd names they were.  None of them were what you would call ordinary names, like Goldie or Speckley.  I know that one of was called Faraday.  I can’t remember what he called his favourite fish, but I know it was another strange name.’
    Jamie felt like groaning.  What was it about older people like Rufus and his dad that caused their memory chips to fail?  Well that was the end of that then and there was no point in bothering with the other questions now.  He may as well have gone to the football match with his dad.
    ‘Bye, Mr Cranleigh,’ Jamie said as he trudged off towards the house.
    ‘Hang on.  That name has just come to me.  It was Impedance.  I told you it was a strange name.’
    ‘Thanks, Mister Cranleigh.’ Jamie shouted, unable to hide his excitement.
    Mr Cranleigh looked puzzled as he watched Jamie hurry away; obviously elated by the information he had just given him. 
    Jamie headed for his dad’s collection of football books and soon found the answer to question one.  He now felt that that he was in with a real chance of being able to answer all the questions.  He hadn’t been very hopeful of finding out the name of goldfish, but there was a good chance that someone in the family would know the details about his great grandparents.  He had three more questions to answer, well only two really, because he could easily do the maths calculations in question six once he knew the answer to question five about his great grandmother’s birth year.  There was no point in asking his dad for the answers, but he had just had an idea that might help, but he would have to lie to his mum.  Well, it wasn’t really a lie, a little fib perhaps and maybe not even that if he actually did what he said that he would do.
    ‘You should have gone to football, Jamie,’ Debbie said as Jamie entered the kitchen and then asked him if there was anything wrong because she could tell that he was restless or bothered about something.
    ‘I’m fine, Mum.  It’s just that I’ve got an idea for a surprise for dad, but I need to telephone Uncle Steve.’
    Debbie gave Jamie a quizzical look.  ‘What sort of surprise.  Is it something to do with football?’
    ‘It’s nothing to do with football, I’m going to try and do some research about dad’s family tree and I need some information to get started.’
    ‘Your dad would like that.  Isn’t that what they call geology?’       
    Jamie looked towards the ceiling.  His mum was forever getting the meaning of words wrong.  One of her classics had been when she had referred to decapitated coffee instead of decaffeinated.
    ‘It called genealogy, Mum,’ Jamie explained.
    Debbie smiled.  ‘Well I was close, wasn’t I?’
    ‘So, can I phone Uncle Steve now?’
     ‘Of course you can, but don’t forget to tell him that it’s a surprise, because I think your dad plans to give him a call over the weekend.’
    Uncle Steve was Jamie’s favourite uncle just ahead of his mum’s brother, Billy and they were both good fun and so different to his henpecked Uncle Alistair.  Uncle