8 Harriet Hurry

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HARRIET HURRY YOU HAD TO WATCH OUT when Harriet was about. The long-limbed lady always rode her bike far too fast. The mother of six children, all girls, she dressed in cream silk blouses and long, flowing, flowery skirts, topped off with a feathered felt hat. Each morning, Harriet piled

all six of them on to her old-fashioned lady's bicycle to race them to school. Despite her proper appearance, Harriet was a SPEED DEMON. And the route from the country house where the Hurry family lived to school was downhill. So, with all the weight of her six children on the bicycle, Harriet could reach eye-watering speeds. She would overtake sports cars... WHIZZ! ...speed through red lights... WHOOSH! ...soar over speed bumps... ZOOM! ...take short cuts through hedges... RUSTLE! ...and perform a triumphant wheelie when they finally reached the school. WHIRR! To understand this obsession with speed, we need to go back to when Harriet was a baby herself. At her birth, she shot out of her mother's tummy super-fast. So super-fast that the midwife couldn't catch her. The poor

lady was like a goalkeeper trying to catch a speeding football booted by a star striker. Baby Harriet soared over the head of the midwife... WHOOSH! ...sailed out of a window... ZOOM! ...luckily landing in an empty pram idling outside the hospital. DOOMPH! The force of Baby Harriet's landing made the pram shoot off. WHIRR! The seconds-old infant was immediately speeding away from the hospital. As the child's mother screamed from

the window of the maternity ward... "STOP THAT BABY!" ...the newborn sat up in the pram, cooing with delight to be going so fast. "GOO! GOO! GAA! GAA!" The pram rattled off down the road. RITTLE! RUTTLE! ROTTLE! It weaved in and out of the path of oncoming ambulances. NEE-NAW! NEE-NAW! Someone must have alerted the police, as in no time three police officers on motorbikes were chasing after Baby Harriet. One of them shouted at the baby, "STOP, BABY! OR I WILL PUT YOU UNDER ARREST!" Baby Harriet was having none of it. Instead of stopping, she bounced harder and harder on her bottom. BOINK! BOINK! BOINK! But trouble was ahead. They were heading straight for a river at colossal speed. The baby bounced harder and harder still. BOINK! BOINK! BOINK!

The pram hit the riverbank so fast that it soared over the water and landed on the other side. DOOF! The police officers were not so lucky. Despite revving their engines... ROARR! ...they weren't going fast enough and plunged into the river. SPLOSH! Now there was no stopping Baby Harriet. Up ahead, more police had set up a roadblock of police cars to stop the runaway baby. There was no way through. Or was there? A huge smile spread across Baby Harriet's face when she saw the police cars lined up ahead of her. She bounced and bounced up and down on her bottom... BOING! BOING! BOING! ...making the wheels of the pram spin until they were nothing but a blur. WHIRR!