One of the joys of being the local vicar, is being invited into schools to take Collective Worship. For the school year 2015/16, I wrote a series of connected stories featuring a 10 year old boy called Maximillian Arthur Jones, and a character from his favourite books. Captain Stupendous, Space Detective. The stories were told every month in the week before a family service, and connected in some way to what was going to happen on a Sunday.
Put your mind back to being at Primary School, and prepare to meet
Captain Stupendous Space Detective
Meet Max
Max thinks he has a great name, because Max is not his whole name
Maximilian Arthur Jones, that’s his whole name.
But most everyone calls him Max.
Unless he won’t get out of bed, or if he’s late for tea, or if he’s annoying his little sister.
Then he’s called Maximilian.
But today, like most days, he’s just called Max.
Ever since he was a very small boy Max and his family had lived in a big house with a big blue front door. Max had had a great bedroom, with a bed, a wardrobe, and lots of posters on the wall. All of the posters were pictures of Captain Stupendous Space Detective, the Galaxys greatest space detective. Solver of crimes, righter of wrongs, the most incredible detective in the whole universe. Max was going to be a space detective when he grew up.
But now Max didn’t have any of his Space Captain Stupendous posters on the wall of his bedroom, because Max, and his mum and his dad, and his little sister Phoebe have had to move to live with Max’s grandma.
Max loved his grandma very much, but he didn’t like his new home. It was too small, the front door wasn’t blue, and now Max had to share a room with his sister. And that was why there were none of his posters on the walls.
Max sat at the kitchen table and swung his legs back and forth under his chair. He had finished his homework, there was nothing he wanted to watch on the TV, and none of his friends lived near his new house.
Grandma walked into the room with one hand very obviously holding something behind her back. ‘Are you OK Max?’ she asked.
‘I can’t find anything to do’ replied Max.
“I thought as much’, said Grandma , ‘so I’ve made something that might keep you busy for a little while’. And with a flourish she placed a large sheet on the table in front of Max.
Max’s Grandma had made a wonderful new poster – there was a picture of Space Captain Stupendous. To one side of the poster there were 10 circles, and at the top in big space letters were the words – Captain Stupendous, Space Detective!.
Max looked up at his Grandma. ‘Wow! This looks fantastic, what’s it for?’ Max asked.
‘It’s for a mission, a dreadfully difficult assignment’ answered Grandma. ‘It involves finding clues, answering riddles, and solving puzzles. Just like Captain Stupendous, Space Detective’
‘Brilliant!’. Said Max. ‘What are all these circles on the poster, are they planets?’
‘Not exactly’, said Grandma’, ‘they’re for stickers. You get a sticker each time you answer a riddle. We’ll put the first sticker in to say that you’ve accepted this mission – if you’d like to do that.’
‘Oh yes’ shouted Max, ‘I’m ready to start right now.’
Max was so excited he couldn’t wait to begin. This was his first ever mission, and Max wondered what he was going to have to do. Would he be rescuing a space Princess. Maybe fighting the evil robot aliens of Taaal. Or working out who stole the crown jewels from the distant Diamond planet.
Grandma smiled at Max. She gave him a sticker which he stuck in one of the white spaces. Max grinned as he looked at the poster.
‘My first sticker’, said Max. ‘What do I do now?’
‘It’s time to start your mission. Here’s your first clue’ Grandma said. ‘What is brown, has a head, and a tail, but no legs?’
Max scratched his head – ‘What is brown, has a head, and a tail, but no legs.’ he repeated quietly.
This was going to be difficult, he was going to need all the skills of Captain Stupendous. Space Detective to complete this mission.
Max sat on his chair looking at the pile of books that sat on the desk in his room. As he had to share his room with his sister, there really wasn’t much room for his desk, but he had told his mum and dad that he really couldn’t do all his work on his grandmas kitchen table. There were books about riddles, and books of unusual facts, and all of Max’s books about Space Captain Stupendous, the Galaxy’s greatest space detective. Max was hoping that somewhere in one of the books he would find the answer to a really important question.
Grandma had given Max a poster with a picture of Space Captain Stupendous surrounded by 10 circles, one of which had a sticker that said ‘Mission Accepted’, and his Grandma had promised him different sticker each time he could solve a riddle that she gave him.
‘What is brown, has a head, and a tail, but no legs?’ Max said it over and over again in his head. This was his first riddle, but Max had spent ages trying to work out the answer, but he’d had no luck so far.
Max stood up and pushed his chair back under his desk, he stepped carefully over his sisters toys that were all over their bedroom floor, and went downstairs.
When Max walked into the sitting room, he found his dad watching the TV.
‘What’s on?’ asked Max
‘Football’ his dad replied, ‘City are playing United, it’s going to be a great match’.
Max had never really been very interested in football. He was more interested in space. And detectives. And especially space detective Captain Stupendous. But he wasn’t having any luck working out the answer to his riddle.
Max sat down next to his dad and watched as the two teams shook hands before the game started. The two captains went to shake hands with the referee, who took something out of his pocket and showed it to the two captains before throwing it in the air. When it had fallen on the ground all three of them examined it closely before standing up and pointing before the teams ran off to two different ends of the football pitch.
Max looked confused. ‘What happened there dad?’ he asked.
‘They’ve tossed the coin to see who starts the game’ replied his dad
Dad took a two pence coin out of his pocket, and showed it to Max. ‘One captain chose heads, and the other tails, whichever one wins gets to start the game’ he said.
Max took the coin in his hand and looked at it carefully. On one side was a picture of a head with a crown on it, and the other side what might have been a collection of three tail feathers.
Dad was leaning forward as the referee blew his whistle, and the game began. Although Max wasn’t really that interested, he couldn’t think of anything better to do, so he sat with his dad and watched as the game progressed.
The team in Red seemed to be getting a lot of the ball, and every now and then the noise of the supporters grew louder and louder each time they took the ball nearer to the other teams goal. All of a sudden dad lept into the air’
‘Yes!’ he shouted, ‘one nil to city!’
Max wasn’t as excited as his dad but he could see why his dad was. The longer he watched the game the more interesting it became. Max was particularly impressed with one of the players who the commentators said was only 17. ‘Seventeen!’ thought Max, ‘that’s only a few years older than me. He heard the commentator say how this young man had wanted to be a footballer from when he was only 8 years old, and had spent his time at school playing football every time he could.
Max wanted to be a Space Detective like Captain Stupendous, and he was more than 8 years old. Max thought that he should spend as much of his time as possible being a space detective if that’s what he wanted to do when he was older, but it wasn’t much good if he couldn’t work out the riddle.
Max looked down again at the two pence that was still in his hand. ‘A head and a tail’ said Max excitedly, ‘and it’s brown, and it definitely has no legs’. The coin – it was the answer to the riddle.
Max ran out of the room and into the kitchen where his grandma was sitting at the table.
‘A coin’ said Max ‘that’s the answer! What is brown, has a head, and a tail, but no legs. It’s a coin!’
Grandma smiled and took something out of her bag and placed it on the table in front of Max
“This is the next planet sticker for your Space Detective Mission Map poster’ she said.
Max grinned ‘Fantastic! He said, ‘when can I get another one?’
‘As soon as you like’ replied Grandma, ‘but you’ll have to solve the next riddle.
Max did a little dance ‘Easy!’ he said, jumping up and down.
‘We’ll see’ said Grandma ‘The next riddle for you to solve is this. What lives in the corner but travels the world?’
Max looked confused. What lives in the corner but travels the world? This next riddle would be impossible to solve, unless Max could think just like Captain Stupendous!
When Max and his family had left their old home to move in with Max’s grandma, there had been some difficult decisions to make.
‘There’s just not as much space’ Max’s mum had said
‘You’ll need to share a room with your sister’ his dad had added.
‘It’ll be a bit of a squash’ his mum had said, ‘but it’ll be better for everyone in the long run.’
Max wasn’t quite so sure. It certainly didn’t feel like it was better, at least not yet. There wasn’t enough room for all his things in the new room that he and his sister Phoebe were now sharing, so some of his things had stayed packed in boxes that were stacked in the small garage that joined on the side of his grandma’s house. Whenever he wanted to take one of these things out, he needed to
swap it for something he already had in the bedroom to make sure that there was still enough space.
Max was in the garage looking through boxes, searching for his Captain Stupendous Space Detective action figure set. Max hummed the Captain Stupendous theme tune while he looked. He still had the riddle that his grandma had asked him going round in his head.
‘What lives in the corner but travels the world?’
The reward for finding the answer to the riddle was a sticker, Max really wanted to get another sticker on the poster of Captain Stupendous his Grandma had made for him. He had two stickers already, one said ‘Mission Accepted’, and the other was a planet with a number ‘1’ on it, but he just couldn’t work out the answer for this riddle. So in the meantime, he was looking for his action figure. Maybe having Captain Stupendous, the greatest Space Detective in the whole galaxy, would give him inspiration.
Max heaved a pile of books away from on top of a box labelled ‘bedroom toys’, and carefully placed them down on the workbench in the corner of the garage. Despite going really slowly, one of the books toppled onto the floor and fell open producing a cloud of dust. Max put the rest of the pile down and went to pick up the book. It had fallen over on a page that said ‘Belgium’, and there in neat little lines were row after row of postage stamps. Max turned the pages over. There was Cameroon, then Denmark, and France and Italy. Lots of countries, some just the one page, and some two, three or more. Each page was full of postage stamps. There were pictures of waterfalls, of people, of steam trains, of buildings, all sorts of things. Near enough every one of the stamps had a number printed on it. Some were in English, but most were in other languages that Max didn’t understand.
Max put the book to one side, and after having found his Captain Stupendous action figure in the box that had been underneath the pile of books, he went back into the house carrying his toy in one hand, and the stamp book in the other.
Max found his Grandma sitting in the kitchen filling in a crossword in the newspaper. She looked up and smiled when she saw what Max was carrying.
“That book was your Grandfathers pride and joy” she said. “He had friends all over the world, and they would send him letters and postcards all the time. Every time he looked through that book it would remind him of all the friends he had made. Why don’t you sit down here and we can both have a look through it”
Max sat on chair next to his Grandma and put his Captain Stupendous action figure down on the table. He opened up the stamp book and began going through the pages.
Grandma had a story about every stamp. For each one, there was a friend of Grandpas who was responsible, and after a while with Grandma explaining every stamp, every country and every friend, they had reached the last page of the book.
Just inside the back cover, there were a handful of letters. Grandma took them out laid them out on the table in front of her. “Your Grandpa didn’t have time to take the stamps off those envelopes” said Grandma sadly. “Maybe we should do that for him”
Max nodded enthusiastically, and began looking over the envelopes. In the middle of each one was Grandpas name and address, and there in the top right hand corner was a brightly coloured stamp.
“What lives in the corner, but travels the world”. Max repeated the riddle over and over again in his head. A stamp! That had to be the answer, a stamp.
“It’s a stamp” said Max triumphantly, “the answer to the riddle, what lives in the corner but travels the world”
Grandma smiled. “Absolutely right” she said “With Grandpas stamp book in front of us, I wondered how long you would take to work it out”
She reached into a pocket and took out a sticker with “Riddle Number 2 Solved” printed on it, and handed it to Max.
“Well done” she said, “but there’s no stopping now. To get your next sticker you have to answer this question “Feed me and I live, give me drink and I die. What am I?”
Max picked up his sticker in one hand and his action figure in the other and raced out of the kitchen. The mission was on, surely with all the detecting power of the Captain Stupendous Space Detective ready to help, he’d have this riddle solved in double quick time.
When Max and his family had to move out of their home and in with Max’s grandma, Max had thought that he would miss everything about his old home, and the new house had nothing good in it at all. The garden in this house was not very big and there was no room for a climbing frame. Max missed his old garden where there had been a huge climbing frame, and a football goal, and a playhouse for his sister. But maybe there were some exciting things in the new house
The first exciting thing was the Captain Stupendous Mission Map. Max’s Grandma had given Max a poster with a picture of his favourite character, space detective Captain Stupendous. Round the outside of the poster were 10 spaces, 3 of which had stickers on. Grandma gave Max a sticker every time he solved a riddle that she asked him.
Max had managed to work out two of the riddles, but this third one was a real humdinger. Max ran through the riddle in his head – ‘Feed me and I live, give me drink and I die. What am I?’ It just didn’t make any sense – everything needs food and drink to live, so how can anything live if it’s fed, but die if it was given a drink? Max looked up at his Captain Stupendous poster – this would be impossible even for the galaxies greatest space detective.
Max trudged out of his bedroom and walked slowly down the stairs mulling round the riddle in his mind. By the time he got to the the bottom stair he was thinking about so many different answers that he nearly tripped and fell over something that had been left in the hall. Max looked down at his feet and saw a tree. For a moment he was completely confused. Why on earth was there a tree lying in the hall of the house? Of course, it was nearly Christmas, and Grandma had been out with Phoebe to buy a tree, they had told him they were going earlier that morning.
Max was a little bit disappointed. In their old house, they had the space for an enormous tree that had sat in their sitting room and just about touched the ceiling. Max and Phoebe had spent hours putting up the decorations it was so big. Max thought that this tree was so small that it wouldn’t take any more than thirty minutes to dress this tree, and that would be Phoebe on her own.
Max slouched into the sitting room and slumped onto the sofa. Christmas just wouldn’t be the same with a small tree. Where would all the presents go? Max thought that maybe this year there weren’t going to be many presents.
Max’s mum walked into the sitting room.
‘Are you OK Max?’ she asked
‘Christmas is going to be different his year isn’t it?’ said Max, ‘It’s not the same with less room.’
Max’s mum smiled.
‘It’ll be great’ she said. ‘And after all, it all started when there wasn’t any room at all’
Mum opened a small box that was sitting on the coffee table and took out two figures.
‘These are Mary and Joseph’ She explained.
‘They look like dolls’ said Max
‘They are’, said mum’ but these are travelling dolls. In Mexico they have something called Posada. It’s a really old tradition, where young people dress up as Mary and Joseph and travel from house to house asking for a room for the night and telling people about the approaching arrival of Jesus. They do it in the few weeks leading up to Christmas every year. Instead of dressing up as Mary and Joseph we use these two dolls, and they go to different peoples houses where they are given a room for the night. Tonight they’re staying with us’
Max grinned.
‘I suppose there’s room for them’ he said. ‘After all, they are only small’
Max picked up the Mary and Joseph dolls. He knew the story of the first Christmas and how the real Mary and Joseph had not found any room for them to stay in Bethlehem. His Grandmas house may be small, but it was cosy and warm, especially when the fire in the sitting room was blazing away like it was now.
Max looked at the fire and jumped to his feet. Fire! Of course. If you wanted to keep a fire going you had to put more wood on it, and feed it. If you wanted to put it out you could pour water on it. Feed me and I live, give me drink and I die – Fire was the answer.
Max ran out to the hall to tell his Grandma who was watching Phoebe decorating the tree.
‘Well done Max’ said Grandma, ‘I’ll have to give you another sticker. There’ll be another one waiting for you when you’ve answered the next riddle. What starts with a T ends with a T, and has T in it?’
Another sticker. Another riddle. Another task for Max and Space Detective Captain Stupendous. Max couldn’t wait.
“Space Detective Captain Stupendous stood on the bridge of his Spaceship, ‘The Fantastic’ and looked grimly into the viewing screen. There in front of him was a green scaly warrior from the planet Jarg, steam gently rising from his mottled face.
‘It’s taken me some time’ said Captain Stupendous, ‘but I now know the truth about the missing Jargian jewels.’
‘Tell me the troooth’ said the Jargian, ‘whooo stole my royal sceptre and crown?’.
‘The Emporer of Cathalia’ replied the Captain. ‘He intended to become ruler of Jarg, and with your sceptre and crown, he might just have done it. Now I have captured him though, he will spend many years on the prison planet with plenty of time to think about his crimes.’
‘Gooooood work’ said the Jargian. ‘You troooly are the galaxies greatest space detective!'”
Max shut his book, sat back in the armchair and whistled. Wow! He’d only been given the new Captain Stupendous novel for Christmas, and he’d finished it within a week. All three hundred pages of it. It had been as exciting a story as Max could remember, and right up until the end he still couldn’t work out who had stolen the jewels. When Captain Stupendous had explained it though it all seemed really easy. All the clues were there, you just had to notice them.
It was nearly as difficult as the riddles that Max’s grandma had given him. Now he had four stickers on his Captain Stupendous poster, and he wanted to solve the latest riddle so that he could get another one. ‘What starts with a T, ends with a T and has T in it?’
Ridiculous. It could be anything. Max had even started looking though some of his old Captain Stupendous books to see if he could get some clues on how to solve a mystery. Unfortunately it hadn’t done him much good and he still had no idea. No idea at all.
Max looked up from his book. The sitting room looked a little sparse and empty now the Christmas decorations were down. There was hardly enough space to put up all the cards from friends and family, especially all the people they had left behind when they moved out of their old house. They had sent messages wishing Max and his family an excellent Christmas, and saying how much they missed them. Max felt sad. He missed them too.
Max sighed and went to stand at the window. It was cold and wet outside. There was supposed to be snow coming, which Max thought might be fun. Then at least he could build a snowman, or maybe throw a few snowballs at his sister Phoebe. But the snow hadn’t come, and now it was just miserable. Max trudged through into the kitchen and found his grandma sitting at the kitchen table doing a crossword. Max thought playing on his playstation would have been more fun than crosswords, but it wouldn’t connect to the small TV that sat on its own in the corner of the living room. Back in his old house there had been a huge flat screen telly.
‘Are you OK Max?’ She asked.
‘I’ll be alright’ replied Max, ‘just missing some of my friends. And I can’t work out the latest riddle.’
Grandma smiled at him. ‘Don’t you worry’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’ll get it. How about some hot chocolate, that always makes me feel better? And I’ll have a cup of tea.’.
‘That would be great!’ said Max.
Grandma stood up and went to fill up the kettle. In Max’s old house they had had an electric kettle that you pressed a button on the side and after a few minutes of bubbling away, it made a small ‘ding’ and clicked itself off when it had finished. Grandma had an old fashioned kettle that was put on the cooker, and made a whistling noise when steam came out of the spout when the water had boiled.
Max watched his Grandma as she poured the hot water into his favourite Captain Stupendous mug, mixed in some milk and hot chocolate powder, and placed a few small marshmallows on the top. Max loved marshmallows.
When Max’s mum made a cup of tea she put a tea bag into the cup and poured the water on top. Grandma said that she knew how to make tea properly though. She put a large spoonful of tea out of a box into the teapot, boiling water was added next, and then a few minutes later she poured herself a cup of tea through a strainer to male sure that no bits of tea ended up in the cup. Milk was already in the cup. Grandma always put the milk in first. It makes better tea she said.
Max furrowed his eyebrows as he watched.
‘A teapot’ said Max ‘we didn’t have a teapot in my old house. I like a teapot for tea.’
Max’s eyes widened. ‘A teapot for tea. Teapot. That begins with ‘T’ and it ends with ‘T’ and has ‘T’ in it! That has to be the answer to the riddle!
‘Brilliant!’ Said Grandma. ‘Im sure you’re getting more like Captain Stupendous every day. I’ll go and get the next sticker for your poster, and while I do that, you can think about this. What gets wetter as it dries?
Max had written a list of all the things that had changed since his family had needed to move from their home to live with his Grandma. There were two columns in the list. On one side he had written all the things that were better, and on the other side all the things that were worse. Max had tried to be as positive as he possibly could, but despite his best efforts there were far more things on the ‘worse’ side than there were on the ‘better’.
Maybe the worst thing was that he didn’t have his own room to sit in to read his books, so he had started taking a small torch to bed with him. He would pull the duvet up over his head and hold the torch in place under his chin so if he manoeuvred himself carefully into the right position he could just about read a few pages of Captain Stupendous every night. Max was reading the new Captain Stupendous book he’d been given at Christmas for the second time. He was carefully remembering all the best clues to see how the galaxies greatest space detective had managed to solve an intergalactic crime.
Max wondered if Captain Stupendous had a grandma who had given him riddles to solve when he was small. What clues would he need if his grandma had said ‘What gets wetter as it dries?’. Max had decided that Captain Stupendous would have started with as many wet things as possible. So Max had done the washing up. He’d watched the rain out of the living room window from safely inside the warm cottage. He’d watered the small herb pots in the kitchen. Nothing had given him any ideas at all.
That morning grandma had suggested that he and Phoebe might like a trip to the swimming pool in town. Max knew that he would find an enormous amount of water there. Dad had said that it was an Olympic sized pool, which meant that it was longer and wider than some others. So much water – surely an excellent place to solve the riddle.
So Max was now swimming up and down the pool. It had taken Max ages to learn how to swim. He’d had lessons when he was a bit younger, and although he’d found it a hard to get the hang of moving his arms and legs the right way, now it wasn’t just easy. It was fun. Max done breaststroke one way, the front crawl another, and then backstroke. Phoebe had her armbands on and was in the shallow end with grandma. Max thought that Phoebe was splashing about too much, and should have tried a bit harder to swim properly. She was doing the doggy paddle, and was hardly moving at all. Max just swished back and forth, up and down, thinking about the riddle.
All too soon grandma was standing by the side of the pool with Phoebe holding onto her hand.
‘Time to get out Max’ she said.
“Already?’ asked Max. ‘I could keep on swimming for ever!’
Grandma smiled at him. ‘We’ve been here for nearly an hour and a half. Phoebe is tired and we really must go home for some tea.’
Max pulled his goggles up over his head as they walked back to the changing rooms. When they got to the lockers where Max had left his clothes, he took the small key on the rubber band from round his ankle, and unlocked it. He carefully carried his belongings to a cubicle, pulled the curtain across and begun to get changed. Getting his feet dry was the most difficult. He had to stand on one leg and dry the foot on the other leg, and then put on a sock and a shoe. He nearly toppled over a couple of times, but eventually he was dressed and ready to go home.
Max met Grandma and Phoebe in the reception area at the front of the swimming pool. Phoebe had a packet of chewy sweets in her hand, and Grandma was holding a small bag of chocolate coated mints that were Max’s favourite.
‘Have you remembered everything?’ asked Grandma.
‘I think so’ said Max. “I put my wet swimming trunks into the bag, along with my towel. You wouldn’t believe how wet the towel is grandma!’
Grandma didn’t say anything, but looked back at Max with a smile in her eyes. Max looked back. What had he said that made her give him that look? He thought about what he had just said. Swimming trunks. Bag. Wet towel. That was what a towel was for. Making wet things dry – and getting wetter as it dried.
‘I know the answer to your riddle grandma’ exclaimed Max’. ‘A towel gets wetter as it dries. If we hadn’t come swimming I’d never had got it!’
‘Well done’ said Grandma.’ When we get home I’ll find another sticker for your Captain Stupendous poster. You can think about the next riddle while we’re in the car. What has a face and two hands, but no arms or legs?’
Max grinned from ear to ear – a face with two hands but no arms or legs, it sounded like one of the aliens that Captain Stupendous has met. Max knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d solved the next riddle.
Max stood in front of the small wardrobe in the bedroom that he shared with his sister Phoebe, and examined the contents. Max wasn’t really that interested in clothes, although he did have a Captain Stupendous t-shirt which he thought he looked really good in. He’d worn it loads of times though, and now it was beginning to look a little faded. Max thought that the best thing about the wardrobe was the inside of the doors. On one side were pictures of Captain Stupendous, some aliens and the Space Detective’s space ship, the ‘Fantastic’. On the inside of the other door, fixed with sticky tape at each corner, was the Captain Stupendous poster that Max’s grandma had made for him.
Grandma had challenged Max to use all of Captain Stupendous Space Detective’s super detection skills to work out the answers to riddles that she was giving him. Every time he solved a riddle, grandma gave Max a sticker to put on his poster. Max now had 6 of them. One said ‘Mission Accepted’, and the others had a picture of a planet on them and were numbered from 1 to 5.
‘What has a face and hands, but no arms and legs?’ That was the current riddle. Max had drawn an alien that had a huge smiling face, with two hands that came straight out from its head. They had ended up looking a bit like ears, and when Max had shown grandma she had laughed and said that it was an excellent picture, but it wasn’t the answer to the riddle. So now Max was deciding what he was going to wear to school.
Today was World Book Day, and Max had been discussing with some of the other children what they were going to dress up as. It seemed that lots of them were going as wizards and witches. The twins in his class had decided that they were both going to be Alice In Wonderland, which was a bit confusing. Max’s sister Phoebe had been dressing up in something different every evening that week, as she couldn’t make her mind up. This morning she had put on a swimming costume and bits of red wool that she’d glued onto a swimming cap as she had chosen to be Ariel from the Little Mermaid. Max thought that was cheating a bit as The Little Mermaid was a film, but Phoebe had indignantly showed Max her Little Mermaid colouring book, and Max knew that it was no use arguing.
Max had put on his Captain Stupendous t-shirt. He didn’t have a space suit, but he had made a helmet from a cardboard box with the front cut out and covered it with silver foil. That was going to have to be good enough. He was sure he’d be the only boy in the whole school who was dressed up as a Space Detective.
When he arrived, Max had sat down in his class and looked round at all the other children. The twins both had pigtails and were carrying matching grinning cats. Marcus was wearing a pointed wizards hat. James was struggling to hold on to a huge beachball that he had painted to look like a peach. Max grinned. He couldn’t wait for assembly so he could see what everyone else in the school had dressed up as. He was sure that his class would look better than all the others.
That morning everything seemed to take so long. Max normally enjoyed his numeracy lessons, but this morning it felt like it was taking forever. Max had stared at the numbers on his worksheet for ages, and then looked up at the large clock on the wall. The hands on the clock face might well have been absolutely stationary. Max thought that maybe he had entered into some kind of space vortex where time stood completely still and the clock didn’t move.
Max looked back up at the clock again – and as he did so there was a barely audible click as the longer hand on the clock moved round from one minute to the next. ‘Phew’ thought Max, ‘time hasn’t stopped! If only I could get those two hands to move a bit faster, assembly would be here in no time at all.’ Max really concentrated on the clock. Maybe if he thought hard enough he could force it to go faster. Max stared at the minute hand, and then he stared at the hour hand, and then he stared really hard at the whole clock face. ‘Of Course!’ he said, a little bit louder than he had intended to.
‘Are you OK Max?’’, asked his teacher
‘Sorry Mrs Johnston’, replied Max,’ I just worked out the answer to a question’.
‘I think everyone has worked out the answers to questions this morning’, said Mrs Johnston, ‘ everyone else has managed to keep quiet about it though. No more talking until assembly please.’
Even though assembly was excellent, the day couldn’t end soon enough for Max. As soon as he got home he ran through the front door shouting ‘A clock, a clock!’.
Grandma looked up from her table as Max burst into the kitchen. ‘Do you want to know the time Max?’
‘No!’ said Max, ‘A clock has a face and hands but no arms or legs’
‘Well done,’ exclaimed Grandma, and she handed Max a sticker from her handbag. ‘I think this one will take you even longer. What goes through towns and up and down hills but never moves?’
Max thought that he would never take his Captain Stupendous outfit off. He had solved a riddle when he had it on, so surely if he kept wearing it, he’d have an answer in no time at all.
If there was ever a moment for Captain Stupendous, Space Detective, to swoop down in his space ship The Fantastic and take Max away for a thrilling adventure in a far off galaxy, this was it. Max and Phoebe were both slumped in the back of the car. Dad was driving and Mum was sitting in the other front seat holding a large ringbound map. It was open at a page that mum had said showed the route they needed to go. Phoebe had made everyone laugh when she said it looked more like different coloured spaghetti glued onto the page. That was at least half an hour ago, and now when the only sound was mum and dad discussing which way to go, the journey was just plain dull. Not even thinking about the riddle that grandma had asked him seemed interesting – ‘‘What goes through towns and up and down hills but never moves?’. He’d thought about it so much that now even that seemed boring.
Max stared out of the window and imagined what it would be like to be zooming through space with Captain Stupendous. Maybe he would be the pilot of The Fantastic, punching buttons and flicking switches and watching as the colours on the display screen swirled around like the lights on a fairground ride.
Max grinned to himself as the countryside sped by. It would be brilliant if he really could be the pilot of a spaceship. Max wondered if Captain Stupendous needed a space map to find his way round the galaxy. It wasn’t as if there were any roads in the sky, or signs that read ‘Jupiter – 1 million miles’.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ asked Phoebe.
‘Not long’ replied Mum. ‘We’re about 3 or 4 miles away. Ten more minutes and we’ll be there.’
It was probably more like 20 minutes before they finally arrived. Max whistled to himself as the car pulled up at the side of the road next to a large cottage with a thatched roof. As Max jumped out he was careful to dodge the puddles that were lying on the ground next to the car. He looked up and down the road. Dad had parked the car just behind a shiny pink mini. It was the only other car on the road, and looked completely out of place.
‘Your Aunt Sandy loves her car’ said Dad. ‘But she’s not the shy retiring type. I’m sure it’s great fun to drive, but I think I’d be a bit embarrassed to be seen in it.’
‘You should see Captain Stupendous’s spaceship The Fantastic’ said Max, ‘It’s bright red with two green stripes running from the nose to the tail. And it’s huge! It’s enormous! I’d love to be flying that.’
Dad grinned. ‘You wouldn’t have any trouble parking it’ he said, and held the garden gate open for mum, Max and Phoebe to go through.
Aunt Sandy was standing in the doorway and Phoebe ran towards her, threw her arms her aunt, and screamed. ‘Auntie!’
‘And it’s great to see you too’, said her aunt. ‘Come inside, I’ve made cake window cake.’
‘Window cake?’ asked Phoebe. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s squares of sponge cake which has marzipan wrapped round it, and when you slice it up, it looks like a window.’ explained Aunt Sandy. ‘And it’s delicious!’
Everyone moved into the house and Mum and Dad and Aunt Sandy went into the kitchen, while Phoebe and Max disappeared off into the living room. Dad had told Max that Aunt Sandy didn’t have a TV as she thought it ‘rotted the mind’, so Max had come prepared. He had brought his school rucksack, but it didn’t have any homework in it. Instead he had packed the first six Captain Stupendous novels, the’ Enormous Captain Stupendous quiz book’ and the ‘How to Fly a spaceship, a handy guide to The Fantastic’.
Max piled his books on the table in front the sofa and sat down on the floor. He looked up to see Phoebe flitting around the room like a moth round a light bulb. She was dodging chairs and sofas as she went from wall to wall examining the frames that were hanging up. Each and every one of them contained a map of some sort. One was titled Australia. Another Hertfordshire. And yet another Middle Earth. Max had heard of Australia, but he didn’t know where Hertfordshire was. Or Middle Earth for that matter. Max stood next to Phoebe by one of the walls and looked more closely at the map in front of him.
‘That’s Canterbury’ said Aunt Sandy who had walked into the Living room carrying two glasses of lemonade.
‘What’s this red line?’ asked Max, pointing at the map.
‘It shows a journey that some people make when they travel to the Cathedral in Canterbury – it’s called a pilgrimage.’
Max stood there staring. He put his finger on the red line and traced it along its route saying the place names that the red line moved through.
‘Whitstable. Faversham. Chartham.’
Aunt Sandy put the drinks down on a table and joined Max by the map. ‘When people first went on a pilgrimage they walked through fields and waded through streams. Now there are roads that go through those towns. And through the fields. And now there are bridges over the rivers and streams.’
Max smiled broadly at his Aunt. ‘Yay! he said, ‘That’s it. Roads are what goes through towns and up and down hills, but they never move! Can I borrow your phone I need to ring Grandma’
When Grandma answered the phone she sounded a little surprised to hear that it was Max
‘Are you OK Max?’ she asked.
‘Of course’ Max replied, ‘ I’ve worked out the answer to the riddle – it’s a road’
‘Well done!’ exclaimed Grandma. ‘There’s only two more riddles left. I think you’ll find this one really hard though.’
Max hear the rustling of paper on the other end of the phone line, and then Grandma spoke again ‘When you have me, you feel like sharing me. But, if you do share me, you don’t have me. What am I?’
Max couldn’t wait to get home to get the next sticker for his Captain Stupendous poster. Just two more riddles to work out and he’d be done. This was nearly as good as actually being a Space Detective!
Max stood and stared open mouthed through the window outside the bookshop. Inside was a table piled high with Captain Stupendous books. It was exciting to see so many of them, even though Max was certain that he owned every one of them. The thing that had really made Max look longingly through the window was the cardboard cut-out figure that was standing next to the table. It was Captain Stupendous Space Detective, and was nearly as tall as Max himself. Max wondered if there was any chance he might be able to buy it. It would look great in his bedroom.
Phoebe ran up behind him and poked him in the back. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Look at that’ said Max, pointing at the cardboard cut out. ‘Do you think mum and dad might give me my pocket money early this month? We could put it on our room’
‘Nah’, said Phoebe. ‘I don’t want that silly thing in my room anyway. Come on’.
She started pulling at his sleeve. ‘Mum and dad are waiting for us.’
The whole family had gone into town on a shopping trip. They had ended up at the big shopping centre that they had gone to before they moved house to live with Max’s grandma. It had taken far longer to get there as they now lived further away. Usually Max hated shopping, but this time Max had been really pleased to go. It was as if they had never had to leave their old home, and they were back doing the same things they used to do.
Max, Phoebe, Mum and Dad walked together towards the big department store that was at the other end of the shopping centre. As they walked Max imagined what it would be like having the Captain Stupendous cardboard cut-out in his room. It would look absolutely fantastic! It might even help him in his own detective work solving the riddle that his grandma had asked him.
‘‘When you have me, you feel like sharing me. But, if you do share me, you don’t have me. What am I?’
As much fun as it might be having the cardboard cut-out, only the real Space Detective in the flesh could possible work this one out.
As the four of them arrived at the department door mum started digging around in the bag she was carrying. She pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it.
‘OK’ she said, ‘here’s the list. Balloons, Decorations. Plates, Tablecloths, Candles. We can get everything in this place. They even have a food shop in the basement that sells the most fantastic party food.’
‘Party food!’ exclaimed Phoebe, ‘I love parties – it’s not my birthday for ages though. Whose birthday is it?’
‘It’s your grandma’s’ said Dad. ‘But it’s really important that we don’t tell her, as it’s going to be a surprise.’
They walked into the shop and when they got as far as the escalators, Phoebe and mum went up, while Dad and Max got on the down escalator. As they glided down Max looked out over the side down onto the floor below. When the arrived at the bottom Dad stepped off the escalator and picked up a basket.
Max and Dad began walking up and down the rows of food, picking up all the things that were grandma’s favourites.
‘Dad’, said Max.’This is going to be a really hard thing to keep as a surprise. We’ll have to hide all these things somewhere in the house. And how will we stop Phoebe from telling Grandma what we’re doing?’
Dad turned to Max as he picked up a tin from one of the shelves ‘Don’t you worry’ said Dad. ‘I’m sure she’ll manage’. He looked at the tin he was holding. ‘Snails in garlic butter – I never did understand why Grandma liked these’ he said. ‘I think they’re more like oily slugs.’
On the way back home, Phoebe told Max all about the bits and pieces she and mum had bought in the department store, and Max told Phoebe about the tinned snails
‘Yuck!’ said Phoebe.
Max grinned. ‘Whatever you do, you musn’t tell grandma’, he said.
Phoebe looked slightly cross. ‘Of course I won’t’ she replied. ‘I know how to keep a secret.’
Max and Phoebe had helped put up balloons and streamers, and they’d both been persuaded to make cupcakes. Max thought they must have made at least a hundred of them. Mum had put lemon icing on each one, and then Max and Phoebe had taken it in turns to add a candle.
Now Max was standing at the window, looking out on to the street, waiting to see Dad’s car pull up outside. He had put on his Captain Stupendous Space Detective corps badge – as he had declared himself the official Birthday Surprise Officer.
‘They’re here’, Max shouted as he spotted the car at the end of the road. Max and Phoebe hid behind the sofa, waiting to hear Grandma coming in.
There was the scratch of the key being put into the lock, footsteps approaching the living room, and as the door swung open, Max and Phoebe jumped and shouted ‘surprise!’. Grandma smiled from ear to ear. ‘My word’ she said, looking around the room at the decorations. ‘Is all this for me? I had no idea.’
‘We kept it a secret’, said Max. ‘It was really hard as I so wanted to tell you. But if I had done, it wouldn’t have been a secret any more’
Grandma smiled back at Max – ‘I think you’ve answered the riddle’, said Grandma. ‘When you have me, you feel like sharing me. But, if you do share me, you don’t have me. What am I? – A secret.’
‘Wow’ said Max. ‘I solved the riddle without even knowing I’d done it! I really am a proper Space Detective!’
‘Just one last one to solve now’ said Grandma. ‘This is the final mission riddle. What has a spine but no bones, is both many and one? Why not have a think while we all can enjoy those fantastic looking cakes,’
Behind the TV in Grandma’s living room, there were three floor to ceiling sets of shelves stuffed full of books. In some places they were arranged in alphabetical order. Every now and again there hadn’t been enough space to fit in a book or two, and they were jammed in on top of the others. Max loved looking through them and reading the titles.
‘The Flora and Fauna of Tasmania’ said one. Max had asked his Grandma what flora and fauna were.
‘Plants and animals’, said Grandma
‘Oh’ said Max.’ And what’s Tasmania?’
Grandma had smiled, ‘It’s an island near Australia.’
‘The Shah of Iran’ was right next to ‘Shaming the dragons’, which in turn sat beside ‘The Shards of Steel; an Inspector McGuinness Mystery’. Max wondered if they were really in the right order, and decided that they probably were. Even if they weren’t, most of them looked as if they hadn’t been read for years anyway.
When Max had first been given his Captain Stupendous Space Detective poster by his Grandma, he had thought that he’d probably find all the answers to the riddles somewhere in the books on these shelves. He’d begun with the very first book on the far left hand shelf that was right at the top. He’d needed to climb on the rickety wooden stool from the kitchen to reach it.
‘Aardvarks at home’ turned out to be more interesting than the title had suggested. But it hadn’t been any help in working out the first of Grandma’s riddles whatsoever. So Max had given up on these books, and stuck to re-reading all of his Captain Stupendous stories. After all, the galaxies greatest Space Detective clearly only needed his natural skills and abilities to solve the most difficult crime.
Now though Max was sitting back up in his room staring at the final empty round circle that stood out among the sea of planet stickers on the poster. Nine spaces filled. Just one left. And this one was taking him ages.
‘What has a spine but no bones, is both many and one?’ Max thought that he’d worked it out by the following morning.
‘It’s a book’ Max had announced to Grandma. ‘That has a spine but no bones!’
Grandma had pursed her lips a little, tilted her head to one side, and then slowly shook her head.
‘No’ she said. ‘But you’re heading in the right direction.’
Max had thought he’d known what she meant. In his book ‘Captain Stupendous and the Lazanene Connection’, the Space Detective had been looking for a stolen laser gun, and had spent most of the story searching one particular planet, only to find that the gun was hidden on the planet’s moon.
‘I need to go and look all through those shelves again’, thought Max. ‘If I’m close with ‘book’, then the right answer must be nearby’
Max took one last look at his riddle poster, closed the door of his wardrobe, and went downstairs.
Max stood in front of the books on the living room shelves, and wondered how many there were. He counted thirty two on the first shelf. And there were three sets of six shelves. Max tried working out the sum in his head, and got as far as it being more than five hundred before deciding that actually, the answer to the question ‘how many books are there?’ was ‘a lot’. His eyes flicked from boook to book. There was ‘The Flora and Fauna of Tasmania’, and a bit further on, lying on it’s side was the book of postcards that belonged to his granddad. Max had put in on the shelf shortly after it had helped him answer one of the other riddles.
After ten minutes or so of reading titles, taking books off a shelf, flicking through the pages, and placing them straight back again, Max took a step back and looked round the living room. When Grandma had said he was heading in the right direction, maybe she meant that the answer to the riddle was close to where the books were. Max could see the TV – but that didn’t have a spine at all. Then there was a small coffee table with a pot plant which had big waxy green leaves. That obviously wan’t right either. Neither was the sofa, or the cushions, or the big floor lamp, or even the pictures of various family members that smiled down from the mantelpiece above the fireplace.
‘Impossible’, thought Max, and walking over to the sofa, slumped down between the cushions with a sigh.
Max looked to his side at the coffee table where the pot plant sat. Just behind it, Max spotted yet another book. He hadn’t seen it when he’d been at the shelves, as it had been hidden by the huge leaves of the plant. He reached over to see what the it was called. Maybe he’d be able to put it back in the right place on the shelves. He wouldn’t get a sticker for his poster, but maybe he could persuade Grandma that he deserved one of the chocolate buscuits she keot in the tin on top of the fridge.
Max read the title – ‘Holy Bible’. Max knew a litle bit about the Bible. It was about God, and had some bits of stories about kings and fighting and giants and huge boats. There was lots about Jesus, who Max thought sounded quite interesting. Jesus had told great stories, and was always walking around healing sick people. Max thought it would have been fun to have met in.
Rather than put the Bible away, Max open it up at the beginning, and read the first page.
There was a list of various names, and each one had a page number next to it. Above the list Max read ‘Books of the Bible’.
‘How can one book have loads of books inside it?’ thought Max. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ Max counted the names of the books. There were sixty six, some of which were easy to read, like Kings and John. One had three ‘k’s in it.
‘Habakkuk’ said MAx out loud. He thought it sounded like an alien race that Captain Stupendous might meet in his adventures round the galaxies.
As Max turned over the pages of the Bible, without really reading anything, he thought about the riddle again, but this time with growing excitement
‘What has a spine but no bones, is both many and one?’
This bible was a book. It had a spine, but no bones like all books do. But the bible was also lots of books – it was many and it was one!
Max couldn’t wait to find his Grandma. He rushed into the kitchen nearly knocking Phoebe over in the process.
‘Done it!’ yelled Max, ‘The final answer to the final riddle is the Bible!’
Grandma turned round from where she was rolling out some pastry and slowly walked to the sink to wash her hands.
Max could hardly control himself. ‘Am I right Grandma?’ he asked. ‘I must be, I really must be.’
Grandma dried her hands on a small towel, and looked Max right in the eyes.
‘Well done’, she said. ‘You’re absolutely right.’
She opened the drawer on the underside of the kitchen table and took something out. It was the last sticker, and had the words ‘Mission Completed’ written across it in big capital letters.
‘Here you go’ said Grandma. ‘You’ve worked them all out, every last one.’
Max took the sticker that Grandma handed to him. He had finished the Mission, which was great, but now it was over, and Max felt a bit downhearted. How could he be like Captain Stupendous Space Detective if he didn’t have any riddles to solve?
Grandma sat down on a chair at the table and picked up the bible that Max had brought with him into the kitchen.
‘Have you ever read through this? she asked.
Max shook his head.
‘It’s not exactly like your Captain Stupendous books’, she said, ‘but it’s really exciting, and there’s a big mystery to solve as you read through it.’
A mystery. Max could solve mysteries. After all, hadn’t he completed every last one of the riddles that his Grandma had asked? After that, surely solving the mystery in the Bible would be easy!