Like thousands of other families at that very moment, the Blake family, which consisted of Granny and were gathered in the living room getting ready to exchange gifts that had accumulated under the tree over the last couple of weeks.
“Granny! Come on, you’re going to miss us opening our presents,” shouted Mia.
“Isabelle! What have I told you about shouting?”
“Sorry mum.”
“That’s okay sweetie.” mum, aka Claire said before shouting, “Muuum! Get a move on, we’re unwrapping the presents.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” they heard Granny shouting back from the kitchen.
Granny came into the living room and sat between her two grown up children, “Scoot on over William, let me sit between you and Claire.”
Once she was sitting comfortably, they were almost ready. “Billy, do me a favour and wake your Granddad up.”
“Sure Gran. Grandad, wake up!”
“I’m awake, I’m awake. Just resting my eyes.”
“Okay, who’s first?”
“Here Isabelle, open this one from me first,” Billy said to his niece, passing her a gift that looked like it had been wrapped by a ten-year old boy, which indeed it had.
“Jesus Billy, how much tape did you use?” Isabelle asked as she received the gift and looked for a way to open it.
“Just wanted to make it difficult for you to get into. It’ll be worth it though.” He replied.
Isabelle got busy trying to open the gift, looking for any surface that wasn’t covered in sticky tape. Billy got busy repositioning his phone, which was already secretly recording. Gran got bored and went to stand in the doorway to the kitchen.
Eventually, Isabelle found a thin slice of gift that was just the wrapping paper and dug all her fingers in, trying to rip through the packaging. Without warning, grain upon grain of rice exploded from her hands, showering the entire room with 2kg or uncooked white rice.
For a couple awful seconds, Billy noticed that the room was silent, everyone sitting there in a state of surprise. He looked around and saw the start of a smile on Grandad’s face as he started to wipe grains of rice from his lap. The grownups on the sofa had got it worst, and he could see tons of white bits in his mum and Dad’s hair, as well as Aunt Claire and Uncle Lloyd. Next in line as he swept his gaze across the room was Isabelle, who looked as though she was going to flip her lid at any second. Finally, he looked towards the doorway where Gran was standing unscathed and taking in the carnage that had quickly descended on her usually peaceful living room. He could see a gleam in her eye, the same one he saw in Isabelle when she was up to no good, and knew that he’d got away with it when she started to guffaw, holding on to the doorway for support as she laughed her heart out. Grandad wasn’t far behind, which set the grown ups in the sofa going, then Billy joined in, followed by Isabelle. Once they had all had a good chuckle, Gran went back in the kitchen
“That was a good one Billy, probably your best one yet,” Isabelle admitted.
“Best what one yet?” Gran asked as she came back into the living room carrying a handheld vacuum cleaner.
“Best prank Gran, we’ve been back and forth all year. It’s all on our YouTube channel. You wanna watch it?” Billy said.
“Maybe later, you’ve got some cleaning up to do and we’ve got some proper presents to open.” Gran said.
They did watch the videos later. After following the flow of Christmas day, they were now all sprawled out in the living room, either bedecked in new clothing or an awful Christmas jumper.
“I really don’t know where they get it from.” WIlliam said after the last video in which Isabelle had thrown flour all over a wet Billy.
“I do,” Gran said, “they get it from your Grandad’s side of the family, Claire got it when she was younger but then managed to restrain it.”
“I did not,” Claire said.
“Yes you did. Do you not remember the Apple Avengers?”
After a moment a look of recognition lit up Claire’s face and she said, “Oh my days. I do remember now that you mention it. Gosh, I’ve not thought about that in over thirty years.”
“What’s the Apple Avengers Gran?” Isabelle asked, suddenly sat up and fully interested to hear about her mum when she was younger.
“I must’ve been about seven and your uncle was about four or five at the time. It was Autumn and Mrs Crabby who used to live next door was still alive.”
“Mrs Crabby who died last year? Billy asked.
“Yeah, the same Mrs Crabby. We used to play in our garden, that summer Grandad built the treehouse that you see. It was a little different back then, a lot more basic. Anyway, there was me, Alice, Jessica, and Sally and that summer we spent hours in our garden making potions, daisy chains, etc. and occasionally we’d hang out in the tree house and peek over the fence into Mrs Crabby’s garden. She had a lovely garden that she maintained herself and pride of place were her gnomes, in particular one called Roger.”
“I remember those gnomes!” Billy interjected.
“Yeah, you used to love playing in her garden Billy,” William said.
“Anyway,” Claire continued, “Mrs Crabby used to talk to her gnomes. She had a habit of saying good morning to each and she actually had lengthy one-sided conversations with Roger. All that summer we got on really well with Mrs Crabby and she even invited us into her garden a couple of times. I remember once she held a tea party for us and invited all the gnomes.
“Summer turned to Autumn and it was the holidays again and my friends were round. We were playing dodgeball when one of our balls went over the fence and landed in the her garden, near to her house and nowhere near the apple tree. We thought nothing of it and carried on playing because we had plenty of spare balls. Later that day, just before my friends were about to go home, we are on the back and we hear Mrs Crabby call my name ove the fence. We scrambled up into the treehouse so that we can talk to her face-to-face and I remember that she had a face like thunder. Before we could even ask what was wrong she says we broke Roger the gnome with our ball and pointed to the end of the garden. Sure enough, there is Roger with a crack in his head and half of his hat laying cracked on the floor. And there, right next to Roger was our ball that had gone over earlier in the day.”
“Naughty mum,” Isabelle joked.
“More like naughty Mrs Crabby. We were polite but adamant that it couldn’t have been us and was probably caused by a fallen apple. I remember saying ‘Look, it was probably that one there’ to which Mrs Crabby replied with ‘no, it was you with your ball.’ We went back and forth like this, all of us crossing our hearts and hoping to die, saying the ball went over near her house and not the apple tree. Next thing we know, Mrs Crabby is saying ‘Don’t call me that’ even though we didn’t say anything. Then she says ‘yes you did, called me a witch. I’ll be talking to your parents.’
“Sure enough, when we were in bed and unable to give our side of the story, Mrs Crabby visited parents and told lies. All our parents believed her despite our protests and we were grounded for a week.”
After being grounded for a week, I invited friends around to my house but all said no, they didn’t want to come near Mrs Crabby. So we ended up going to Alice’s house and spent the day comparing our wounds. Sally got it worse, and she still had ugly yellow bruising on her bum and she had to sit on her side still otherwise it really hurt. I remember that day we actually did call Mrs Crabby all the naughty words that an 8-year old knew back then.”
“What were some of the words Aunt Claire, can you remember?”
“Sure, Billy but I’m not tellling you. Just know that we called her a witch and then some. Then one of us, it might’ve been me but I really cannot remember, one of us put forward the subject of revenge and we spent the rest of the day thinking of ways in which we’d like to get our revenge and we came up with a name - The Apple Avengers.
“Don’t forget the contract!” Gran added.
“Oh yeah, mum. I had forgotten about that,” Claire said.
“I still have it in the loft somewhere if you kids would like to see it?” Gran said. “William, be a darling and help you mother get a box out of the attic. It’s either in the one marked Claire 6-7 / William 3-4 or Claire 7–8 / william 4-5.”
Brings box down / finds contract / reprint it in story /
So which trick did you decide to play on her?
None of the ones I’ve just mentioned. We met up the next week and were a little more subdued and as you can see by the contract we decided against anything that would cause physical discomfort or pain to Mrs Crabby.
Instead, we went for a long prank, one that would keep us busy for months, involved a lot of preparation, and wouldn’t really start in earnest until the start of the next summer holidays.
What did you do?
We set out to convince Mrs Crabby that Roger the gnome had really come to life.
—---------------
First we pooled all our savings and pocket money.
“What’s this for” Claire hands William a couple of dollars.
“For the time I stole 2 dollars out of your piggy bank!”
Oh you cheeky so and so!
So pooled our money and then got down to planning. Alice had seen an exact replica of Roger, actually plastic moulds of differing sizes so we bought it and spent a couple of days pouring it into the first mold and then painting it to loook exactly like roger. We even sneaked into Mrs Crabby’s garden one Sunday when we were sure she was in church. We then made a gnome the next size up and compared the two but the difference in size was too much, so we spent days and days carefully sanding the gnome down.
In the meantime, Winter was fast approaching and we were forced to spend more time indoors. I remember we were playing in the first snow fall of the year and xxx came up with the idea of making fake footprints for the gnome and leaving them in the snow. Only problem was concealing our own footprints so we got William to go and offer to clear Mrs Crabby’s garden path. If I remember correctly, I had to pay him a dollar, so here you go Williiam.” and she handed over another dollar.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, it was easier to take out of your piggy bank because it had a hole in the bottom and mine didn’t.”
So William cleared the path leading up to the apple tree and later that evening I went out with the footprint outline that we’d made. Then I went to my room and watched out of the window for Mrs Crabby to return. I remember sitting there for ages until eventually Mrs Crabby went outside. She noticed the marks straight away and followed them back to the apple tree and where roger was now standing facing the tree and not in his usual position.
For that cherimstas we call got things relating to the the apple avengers - mainly paints and plaster for making our mold.
All through spring we worked on our gnomes and by the start of the summer holidays we had 10 gnomes of varying sizes.
We took roger and replaced him and then spent the rest of the day in the treehouse waiting for Mrs Crabby to make an appearance. She didn’t notice that Roger looked any different and we were pleased. We worked out that we would replace the gnome once a week for the next ten weeks, and in the meantime we would move roger around the garden when we were sure that Mrs Crabby was not looking.
Our plan worked. On week three we noticed that Mrs Crabby talking to Roger - my aren’t you growing up to be big and strong. And she even started leaving him some biscuits to eat. As soon as we saw this, we took it in turns to sneak over and steal the biscuits, leaving only crumbs on the plate.
“Where were granny annd granddad when all this was going on?”
“Oh, we were there, somewhere in the background.”
We had a scedule and each Saturday we’d meet in the treehouse to discuss who had the next gnome and who was going to replace it on Sunday. We’d then wait for Mrs Crabby to come back from church and try to hold in our fits of giggles as we watched her comment on how big and strong Roger was getting.
“You mean thing Mum!”
“Yeah aunt claire, you make Dad look like an angel.”
“Oh he was no angel.”
“Yes I was, don’t try to get me involved in your Apple avengers club. I don’t see my name anywhere on your contract.”
“You don’t. We’ll maybe you should look a little bit closer. What does this faded bit of crayon here look like to you?”
“A line, a bit of a scribble. Definitely not my name.”
“Well it is your name and you wrote it. You can just make out the ‘W’ and a couple of dots where you’ve forgot to put any ‘i’s’”
You trying to tell me that I was part of your vendetta against Mrs Crabby?”
“You weren’t just the part, you were the piste de resistance.”
No way!
Yes, way.
Mum, tell Claire, she’s lying about me.
“You must’ve been too young to remember but you did want to join the group. Every time Claire had her friends around that year you pestered and pestered, wouldn’t shut up about it actually.”
“Yes, and we refused all summer long until we’d finished with our prank and found it to be a bit anticlimatic. That’s when xxx had the idea to dress you up as Roger the gnome and stick you under the tree one Sunday.”
“Yeah, like that happened.”
“It did, you practically begged for us to dress you up, I spent a week with you, 20 minutes every evening, training you on how to stand still and coaching you on what you should say.
Sunday rolls around and there you are, dressed like a gnome and standing under the apple tree waiting for Mrs Crabby. I can still picutre you standing there now as we watched and waited in the tree house.
So what happened?
Mrs Crabby came back and didn’t notice that William was actually Roger. When we heard her chatting to William and William reply ‘I love you’, we couldn’t help ourselves and burst into fits of giggles, rolling around on the floor. By the time we had composed ourselves and looked back inot Mrs Crabby’s garden, you were both gone.
“So hang on a minute, you’re trying to tell us that this old lady couldn’t tell this difference between a garden gnome and uncle William?”
“No, she couldn’t. You should’ve seen him, he looked just the part.”
“You can see for yourselves if you like.” Granny said.
You took a picture of him, great, which album Claire said as she started rummaging through the box from the attic.
“You’ll not find it in there. It’ll be in a box labelled Irene Crabby in the attic.
William quickly finds box brings it down / sure enough, picture of Williiam stood under the apple tree.
Well I never.
“Mum, are you sure Mrs Crabby never cottoned on?”
“Positive, she had no idea.”
Then how to you explain this picture then?” xxx asked as she held up a picture of Granny, Mrs Crabby, and William sitting around Mrs Crabby’s kitchen table. Granny and Mrs Crabby looked full of life and were smiling for the camera while nursing cups of tea. William, dressed in his full gnome gear clearly visible in the background, sitting at the end of the table, biting into an apple.