5 Peter Picker

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PETER Picker SOME CHILDREN LIKE to blow their nose; some like to pick. Peter was a picker. The boy always had a finger up his nose. Sometimes two. One in each nostril. The buried treasure he was searching for was of purest green: SNOT.

Although he was short for his age, Peter Picker could pick an extensive and seemingly endless supply of it. Runny snot. Gloopy snot. Hard snot. Snot balls. Snot icicles. Snot stalactites. Snot stalagmites. He was the lord of all that was green and Slimy. After picking, the boy would give his latest morsel of snot a quick inspection, and then add it to his BALL of BOGEYS. He had read in a book of world records that the biggest ever bogey recorded was produced by a rather hefty German girl named Fraulein Schleim. Hers was the size of a Cannonball, and weighed as much as a medium-sized pig.* *Although only twelve, Fräulein Schleim already had a number of unsavoury world records to her name. The girl had produced the world's biggest block of EARWAX, which was the size of a tub of ice cream. Next she was responsible for the world's largest shower of DANDRUFF, managing to completely cover a football pitch just by untying her pigtails. The world record Fräulein Schleim was proudest of, however, was the one for the smelliest FOOT CHEESE. When she took off her steel-toe-capped boots, the stench flattened every tree within a ten-mile radius.

Propelled by the idea that he too could earn a place in The Book of World Records, Peter Picker set about attempting to smash his rival's effort. He was determined to produce the bogey to end all bogeys -a GARGANTUAN ball of snot. He had started with just one ordinary, medium -sized bogey. However, once he had stuck bogey after bogey to it, it became a super-bogey. Then a MEGA-BOGEY. Finally it progressed to being an ULTRA-BOGEY. Now, every time the boy picked his nose (which was at least once every few seconds), he added to it. When Peter started, it was just the size of a pea. But with each new green globule it grew. Soon it was the size of a conker, then a melon, then a football, then a snowman. The boy became so focused on entering the record books that he often bunked off school so he could spend all day picking his nose.

At first Peter was able to carry this ball of snot around with him. When it became too big and heavy, the boy simply rolled it along the street. However, one morning on the way to school, Peter had accidentally run over his neighbour's cat, Ginger, and the poor creature had become embedded in the snot ball. "MEOW!!!" The bogey was so sticky Peter had to shave the cat's hair off to remove it. "MMMEEEOOOWWW!!!" Now the boy kept the sphere of snot safe in his bedroom. By the time of this story, the sphere of snot (or SNOT-SPHERE for short) was the size of an asteroid. It looked like it had come from outer space too. A kaleidoscope of greens. Light green. Dark green. Green green. Not-so-green green.

But, with new bogeys being picked, licked and flicked on to it by the minute, Peter's SNOT-SPHERE was becoming too big even for his bedroom. The boy's bed and wardrobe were crushed by the size and weight of this truly evil-looking ULTRA-BOGEY. One morning, while rooting around in his nostril, Peter found a particularly large booger. Without a second thought he wiped it on the SNOT-SPHERE, but this was one final piece too many, and the boy heard a buckling sound. TWANG! It was the floorboards creaking under the enormous weight of the ULTRA-BOGEY. Peter raced out of his room and downstairs to the kitchen. Looking up at the ceiling, he saw cracks shooting across it. Then, before Peter could pick his nose again, the SNOT-SPHERE crashed down through the ceiling and landed next to him.