Recent evidence has emerged about a forgotten civilisation during the second century CE in the eastern Mediterranean. Historians and Archaeologists have been engaged in a five-year study on the small island of Kaos (capital: Mayhem). The inhabitants of the island were mainly Greek speaking, although there was also wide use of the Latin tongue, as we shall see soon.

A short distance to the north-east of Kaos was the even smaller island of Antikos (capital: Duplicity), so called because the ideas of the Antikossians seemed very old-fashioned to the Kaotics.

The Tribes of Kaos and Antikos

Kaos at this time was a warlike place, with tribal rivalries and skirmishes all over the island. The largest and most warlike tribe was called the Tauries. This was because, when they went into battle (which was often), they wore masks in the shape of bulls’ heads on their faces, to make them look more ferocious.

Almost as large a tribe were the Lavories. They saw themselves as morally superior to the Tauries, partly because they weren’t quite as warlike in their approach. In battle, they demonstrated the purity of their thoughts by each wearing a soap-on-a-rope around their necks. This was less effective as a battle tactic, but the Lavories all agreed they felt better for doing it.

There were a few smaller tribes, too. No one was really sure what the Liberalies stood for, but everyone agreed they were very nice people. There is some sketchy evidence that an extremist, fringe breakaway group from the Tauries existed for a time. Called the Kippies, a combination of inbreeding and infighting led to their extinction almost as soon as they were formed.

Confined to the north of the island, the Peskies were so named as all their leaders were named after fish. Across the waters in Antikos, two arch-rival tribes occupied the north-east corner of the island: the Dupies and the Shinbonies. The Dupies were usually known by their nick-name: the Little Willies. This was because the Dupies worshipped an ancient, but tiny, god called William, who was only the size of an orange. The Dupies wanted to be considered part of Kaos, whilst the Shinbonies thought they should all join in with the larger tribe in the south of Antikos: the Begorrahs.  (Cultural note: lazy racial stereotyping was all the rage in the 2^nd century, under the so-called Davidson Doctrine. This was named after Jacobus Filius Davidus, a first century CE troubadour who lived under the shadow of a bigger tree than anyone else. )

Although the Tauries constituted well under half the population of Kaos, they generally held the upper hand in ruling over the affairs of the island. Although all the other tribes, except the Dupies, broadly agreed on matters of policy, the Tauries successfully applied a game of “divide and rule” to get their own way.

Kaos Weaponry

It has already been emphasised that the Kaotics were a warrior race. Their weapon of choice was the Three-Pronged Fork. This was originally developed as an ideal tool for scraping the fast-growing moss from the rocks and cliffs of the island. During the wet season, these mosses grew rapidly, blocking tracks and access around the island. During an early skirmish between rival clans, the Kaotics soon discovered that Three-Pronged Forks were also good for killing people, and their use as weapons quickly spread. They came to be known as the Weapons of Moss Destruction.

The Elders of the tribes often told of the times of the Great Manufacture of the Three-Pronged Forks. The Forks were made of iron, and there were no deposits of iron ore on Kaos itself. Instead, the ore needed to be imported from the island of Ferros, a two-day journey away by their primitive sailing boats. The Ferrotics were a hard-nosed people, always ready to strike a hard bargain. Their island was rocky and barren, and their crops often failed. The only commodity they would trade for their iron ore was food, and lots of it. Just before the Great Manufacture of the Three-Pronged Forks, the Kaotics had traded so much of their own food with the Ferrotics that there was widespread famine throughout the island. Many people, mainly women and children, died. The women, of course, didn’t matter. (Cultural note 2: misogyny at this time was, of course, de rigueur.) But the sorrow at the death of so many children stayed in the people’s memories for many generations.

The Dirk

One tribe, the Peskies, had adopted a different weapon from the rest: the dirk. This was named after the legendary Thespian called Dirkus, an erstwhile leader of a troupe of travelling players, who was born in the north of the island. He was often known – particularly by the womenfolk – as Dirkus Beauregardus, on account of his legendary good looks.

His troupe, the Circus Dirkus, travelled widely in the Mediterranean, performing their plays. (Eat your heart out, Will Shakespeare! Dirkus had a “Theatre in the Round” a millennium and a half before you were strutting your stuff in the Globe.)A favourite play was Medicus et in Domo, in which the great actor played Hippocrates, the legendary First Doctor. (No, it wasn’t William Hartnell.)  For stage props, they had the surgical knives used by Hippocrates, which were soon nick-named “dirks” after the great actor.

Many a fair lady fainted at the sight as Beauregardus pulled out his dirk on stage and held it aloft, glinting in the evening Mediterranean sunlight. (Cultural note 3: It’s well known that, in Classical Greek theatre, gratuitous smutty jokes were hugely popular. Just ask Euripides. “Euripides, I rip-a yours!” Who could forget – or even remember – the classic line by Chico in the Marx Brothers’ tribute to Classical Greek Theatre, A Night at the Hippodrome?) But I digress… (Cultural note 4: Whilst performing a particularly tricky surgical procedure, Hippocrates once pricked his thumb on his surgical knife. This was the moment of creation of the world-famous Hippocratic Oath. Yes, yes, I know! What did you expect? Wit and sophistication? We are talking second century here!) Dirkus died whilst on tour in Venice. Meanwhile, back on Kaos…

On Land and Sea

At first, the inter-tribal battles took place on land. The various tribes fought and slew each other with their Three-Pronged Forks, trampling all over the crops as they fought. The women of the island, who did all the hard work in the fields, cooked all the meals and cleaned and tidied up after their menfolk, got extremely annoyed by this needless destruction. So, gradually over time, the battles took place more and more in the shallow waters all around the island. They found their Three-Pronged Forks were quite good for catching fish, too.

The Tauries, at great expense, commissioned two great galleons with giant oars and galleys filled with captured slaves from the other tribes. The galleons were to transport the weapons to different parts of the shoreline for battles. But they found they only had enough Three-Pronged Forks to fill one galleon. Worse still, prolonged use of the Three-Pronged Forks in the salty seawater had gradually corroded the iron. Bits started falling off the now-rusty Forks and they became less and less effective as weapons. The Tauries were strongly committed to replacing the Forks. The people of Kaos were fearful of this. The great famine following the last trading with Ferros was still strong in their memories. All the other tribes, apart from the Little Willies, were against the idea of renewing the Three-Pronged Forks.

The Vote

The Tauries called all the people together, to get them to vote on who was best to lead them, thinking that they would consolidate their position once and for all. Unfortunately for them, the vote was ambiguous and left them weaker than before. It’s here that the historical record gets patchy. It seems that there was some other momentous decision that the leaders of Kaos had to make. What is known is that the Tauries themselves split into two camps, known as Brexitus Maximus and Brexitus Minimus.

Some historians believe this was to do with some Alliance with other islands in the area. But no record has ever been found of any plan by the Tauries to deal with this issue. One dissenting historian also believes that the Tauries were so desperate that they were led for a period by a woman! An even more unlikely tale is that the woman tried to cling on to power by holding fast on to the Little Willies. But mainstream opinion is that such tales are simply too implausible to be true.

Whatever the cause of the split, the Tauries were fatally weakened. This created the opportunity for the other tribes (except the Dupies) to forge an alliance and take over the running of the island. This alliance was known as the Koalition of Kaos.

The Aftermath

Notwithstanding the lack of information about the true meaning of the mysterious “Brexitus”, archaeological records are clear as to what happened next. Under the rule of the Koalition of Kaos, the renewal of the Three-Pronged Forks was cancelled, famine was averted, and peace and tranquillity reigned over the Island of Kaos for the next two hundred years. Such a long period of peace was, of course, of absolutely no interest to historians. This probably explains why the history of this early civilisation had fallen into obscurity for well over 1500 years.

(Literacy SATs Question: Why is Koalition spelt with the letter K? The answer is because the people of Kaos were GreeK, but they did not actually live in GreeCe. I would have thought that was obvious. You clearly haven’t been paying attention! Please see me after school for a remedial session of “Spelling and Punctuation for Idiots”. )

It has been some time since we heard about the Mr Men. Lots of exciting things have been happening! But first, there are some new Mr Men and Little Misses to introduce.

Mr Custard

Mr Custard lives in another land over the sea. His brain is made out of custard. You know, custard is sometimes a bit runny. Sometimes it’s thick. Mr Custard’s custard is thick. Very, very thick.

One day, when he was a little boy, his teacher wanted to teach him a new word. It was an adjective: a describing word. Mr Custard only knew five describing words: great, bad, fake, false and failing. When his teacher tried to teach him the new word, Mr Custard’s brain got hot. Very, very hot! Some of the custard boiled over out of his brain and flowed over the top of his head. Oops! Because it was so thick, it set very hard on his head. It has stayed there ever since!

The fright of the boiling custard made other changes, too. Mr Custard’s hands stopped growing and stayed very, very small. And Mr Custard could no longer say the word “cat”. From now on, he could only say the word “pussy” instead.

Apart from his brain and hands, the rest of Mr Custard’s body kept growing until he looked like a grown-up. He had a job building big buildings. He tried building them out of custard first, so that he looked better standing in front of them. But, slowly, slowly, the custard buildings sagged. They sagged more. Then, slowly, slowly, they fell down, until they were just gloopy puddles of custard on the ground! The people who lived in the buildings were not happy.

Then he had an idea. His daddy was very rich and had a lot of gold. So, Mr Custard made his buildings out of gold. Hurrah! He stood in front of the gold buildings. His custard head looked less silly. And the gold was all shiny too! Mr Custard smiled and waved his little hands in the air.

Mr Custard lives in a land called Merry-Ka. Which is a funny name, because it’s not really merry. Every 16 minutes, someone in Merry-Ka shoots someone else dead. No so merry!

Mr God

Mr God knew everything. He was so clever that sometimes he thought he was three people! Funny Mr God! But there was a problem. The people couldn’t agree what he looked like. Some people thought he looked like a cloud. Others thought he looked like a slice of burnt toast. Others even thought he looked like a dog’s bottom!

But they all agreed on two things. First, he must have long arms. Very, very long arms. Because he could hold the whole world in his arms! Clever Mr God! And they all agreed he was good. Very, very good. Even though, if he was so good and clever, he let bad things happen. Oh dear!

Little Miss I-Know-Best

Little Miss I-Know-Best had a daddy who was a vicar. Daddy’s best friend was Mr God. Daddy had told her that Mr God was born in a stable. When she was small, Little Miss I-Know-Best wondered about Mr God. When he was born, did he float down like a cloud from the sky? Or did he just pop up, like out of a toaster? She tried not to think about her third thought about how Mr God was born.

Daddy wanted to be more like Mr God. So he knocked down his house next to the church. In its place, he built a stable. He did not want it to fall down on their heads. So he built it strong. A strong stable. And he didn’t want it to be blown over by the wind. So he built it stable. A stable stable. Little Miss I-Know-Best lived in a strong and stable stable.

Daddy told Little Miss I-Know-Best about how clever Mr God was. As he was Daddy’s best friend, she listened to everything Daddy said, so that she knew best. Then she wouldn’t need to listen to what other people thought ever again! She would know best. And she wouldn’t have to keep meeting people. She hated that! Unless, of course, it was just to tell them what to do. She knew best!

Mr Fox-Up

Mr Fox-Up lived in a den. It was a special den where all the clocks were a hundred years slow! In Mr Fox-Up’s den, the people in Room Number Nine were still the rulers of the whole world. They had big ships, big guns and went around telling everyone else what to do. More often than not, they had told him where to go!

Mr Fox-Up had a special friend, Mr Ferrity, who was a ferret. Mr Ferrity followed Mr Fox-Up wherever he went. He also ran up drainpipes and up trouser-legs and went into all sorts of places he shouldn’t go. Mr Fox-Up didn’t seem to mind. He had an important job working for Mr Two-Face. He was in charge of one small rowing boat and a pop-gun. This was all that was left of the great armada in Mr Fox-Up’s den. But Mr Two-Face said Mr Fox-Up had broken all the rules. So Mr Fox-Up had to go. Nobody expected to hear from him again!

Mr Breaks-It

Mr Breaks-It is one of the Nasties. Most Nasties are Posh. Mr Breaks-It isn’t Posh. He grew up in a place called Cow-n-Silly State. The Nasties think is a wild and lawless swamp. A long time ago, Mr Breaks-It and Mr Two-Face fought to be leader of the Nasties. Mr Breaks-It lost. (Mr Fox-Up was, true to form, knocked out earlier in the fight.) Mr Breaks-It didn’t do much in our story for a long time. But we will meet him again soon.

Little Miss Traffic-Light

Little Miss Traffic-Light’s favourite colours are amber and red. Sometimes, but not very often, she pretends to like green, too. Some people who really like green said she had fibbed to people in the Voting House about liking green. Little Miss Traffic-Light is Posh, like most of the Nasties. She was given a present by her sister: a money-making tree. But this and some other money-making trees died while she was looking after them. Little Miss Traffic-Light is a bit like a mini version of Little Miss I-Know-Best, as you will see soon.

The Other Mr Men

You may be wondering by now: what happened to the other Mr Men from our earlier story? When we left them, Mr Two-Face had just sulked off as leader of the Nasties in Room Number Nine. At the end of the story, we asked the question: “Will there be more creeping and back-stabbing?” Oh yes, there was!

After Mr Two-Face sulked off, the Nasties needed a new leader. Mr Look-At-Me was the favourite, because he had been shouting “Look at me!” for so long. Mr Look-At-Me thought Mr Mad was his best friend. Everybody was very surprised when Mr Mad said he wasn’t, and stabbed Mr Look-At-Me in the back and said he wanted to be leader himself!

So, five people put their hands up to say “Choose me please!” Mr Mad, Mr Fox-Up, Little Miss I-Know-Best, who we’ve met before, all put up their hands. And there was Mr Crab, who nobody had heard of. So he walked sideways all the time so people would notice him. And finally, there was Little Miss Loathsome. All you need to know about Little Miss Loathsome is in her name. Yeugh! Enough said!

When the Nasties voted, nobody was surprised when Mr Fox-Up had hardly any friends and was told to go. Mr Crab and Mr Mad were nearly as unpopular, and off they went too! Mr Crab scuttled off sideways. And Mr Mad sneaked off in the middle of the night. This just left Little Miss Loathsome and Little Miss I-Know-Best. All the Nasties were very excited! There were now just two Little Misses left in the contest! Then Little Miss Loathsome said something loathsome about Little Miss I-Know-Best. So, she had to go. That just left Little Miss I-Know-Best to lead the Nasties.

What Little Miss I-Know-Best Did Next

First Little Miss I-Know-Best said “hurray!” Then she chose her team of helpers. She told Mr Pale-And-Thin and Mr Mad to go far, far away. Mr Mad went to work as a writer for Mr Monster. But Mr Pale-And-Thin set about getting lots of jobs. He didn’t mind what the job was, as long as it paid LOTS of money! Greedy Mr Pale-And-Thin! Just a few weeks ago, he got ANOTHER job as well! This one is writing for a newspaper. There he can say lots of nasty things about Little Miss I-Know-Best, because she sacked him. Nasty, spiteful Mr Pale-And-Thin!

The New Helpers

Little Miss I-Know-Best chose some new helpers. She chose Mr Hammond-Organ to replace Mr Pale-And-Thin. Mr Hammond-Organ spent all day playing sad songs about how we had no money. These songs were often in a different key from all the other Nasties. This made Little Miss I-Know-Best cross. She thought she would get rid of Mr Hammond-Organ soon.

Mr Hammond-Organ was a bit boring. Little Miss I-Know-Best wanted to make things a bit more exciting, like running through wheat. How exciting was that! So she had a thought. “I know”, she thought, “I’ll choose some helpers that no one could have guessed!” And so she did.

The people in the other 27 rooms of the Big House bought most of the things the people didn’t buy themselves. After she burns the bridge across the little stream – which hasn’t happened yet – the people would need to find some new people to buy them instead. She needed someone to help. “Ah!” thought Little Miss I-Know-Best. “I’ll choose someone that no one will ever trust again! That would be fun!” So she chose Mr Fox-Up for the job! Funny Little Miss I-Know-Best!

But her fun didn’t stop there. Oh no! She needed someone to make sure the bridge across the little stream was well and truly broken. So she chose Mr Breaks-It! “He has the right name”, she thought. “And it would teach Mr Two-Face a lesson for leaving me with all this mess to clear up.” Funny, funny Little Miss I-Know-Best!

But her best fun was still to come. She needed someone to talk to all the other leaders in the other lands, so that we could still be the best of friends. So she chose Mr Look-At-Me! Funny Little Miss I-Know-Best! What a joke! All the people in the other lands saw the joke too! They laughed and laughed until their sides ached and their heads turned to jelly! What fun!

Little Miss I-Know-Best smiled. What could possibly go wrong?

Next Time…

Next time, we will find out how Little Miss I-Know-Best got on with her new plans. Will it all be easy, like Mr Fox-Up and Mr Mad said? Would we still be friends with everyone? Will everyone think Little Miss I-Know-Best knows best? Watch out for the next topsy-turvy part of the story!

Regular readers of this blog will have worked out by now that I’m essentially a rationalist. I approach the world using logic and reason, checking of facts (as far as it’s practicable), updating my views in the light of new information. I’ve no time for superstition, religious or otherwise, in forming my views of the world around me. Or so I say.

So, just for a change, let’s put that all to one side for the moment. Let’s talk about magic. Or, more specifically, magic numbers, and one magic number in particular.

Magic Numbers in History

Over the whole of recorded history, and probably before, numbers have held mystical powers for people. The most mystical number to the Pythagoreans was the number 10. Pythagoras (580 – 500 BCE) himself thought numbers had souls and magic powers.

The most magical numbers in religion are three, four, seven, ten and twelve.

In Christianity, we have the Holy Trinity, Jesus rising after three days, the latter borrowed from pagan moon-worshippers. (Have you ever wondered why Easter wanders all over the calendar: the phases of the moon are the answer.) We have four Gospels and four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The creation myth (also in Islam and Judaism) famously uses the number seven: hence the days of the week. Then we have the Ten Commandments and Twelve Apostles.

The hajj in Islam requires pilgrims to walk seven times around the Kabaa (a pre-existing pagan ritual adopted by early Muslims). And there are many examples in other faiths. In fairy tales, we have three wishes and seven dwarves, to name just a couple of examples. An interesting overview is available on the Mystical Numbers website.

But I want to concentrate on a different number from all these. There’s a spoiler alert already in the title: it’s the number thirty seven.

2010 General Election

Most people know by now that, in 2010, David Cameron won a small majority of 12 in the Commons on 37% of the votes cast. Ever since the 1950s, winning parties in UK general elections have never commanded more than 50% of the vote. I think the lowest figure for majority rule was by Tony Blair’s New Labour in 2005. An attempt at a fairer electoral system, a favourite of the Lib Dems was, of course, scuppered by Cameron and co during the coalition government 2010-15.

EU Referendum

The magic number 37 crops up again in the EU referendum result. This can be summarized as follows:

One of the key requirements of government in a democracy is to defend minorities from “the tyranny of the majority”. May’s government seems to be doing a piss poor job of this right now, against the hysteria of the usual media suspects in particular.

UK Economy

As my earlier blog post Two Gamblers and a Pint of Lager explained, our magic number makes its appearance in one stark view of how lopsided the UK economy is. In round terms, the UK has:

Financial institutions around the world trade sums equal to the entire global annual output every 14 working days. In the UK, we trade our annual output every day and a quarter! I explained in my post The City: Paragon or Parasite? that this kind of trading is “socially useless”. (The then chairman of the Financial Services Authority used this phrase in 2009.) It’s a major source of financial instability and will inevitably lead to another large 2007-8 style crash one day. It leaves the UK uniquely vulnerable of the western democracies to an economic shock such as Britain leaving the EU or Donald Trump as President of the USA.

US Elections

Talking of which, I did analyse the US election result to see if our magic number 37 dropped out of the voting statistics. Sadly, it didn’t. But I did learn that the voters of America split as follows:

Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 2 million votes in the count. In the whole history of US presidential elections, five winning US Presidents have lost the popular vote, Trump by the third largest margin ever. (There were larger margins in 1824 and 1876.) Perhaps more shocking is that fact that Trump is not unusual in becoming President-elect with the endorsement of only about a quarter of voters.

So, no 37 here. But hang on… the share of the American voters who did not vote for Trump is (almost) exactly double the share of British voters (37%) who voted to leave the EU. Or, if you add the percentage of the UKIP vote in 2015 (10) to the percentage of Americans who supported Trump in 2016 (27), you get, yes, (hurrah!) our magic number 37.  Phew!

OK, the more observant of you (which is, of course, all of you!) will have spotted what I’ve just done here. I’ve scratched around and selected some arbitrary “facts” from a greater whole until I’ve got the answer I want.* Which is basically what evangelical religious apologists do when they’re trying to “prove” the will of God or Allah behind some natural phenomenon. Tsunamis, for example, being God’s wrath – that sort of thing.

And Finally

But here’s just one thing more I’ve remembered. What’s the body temperature of a normal, healthy human being? Why, yes! It’s 37 degrees! Spooky, or what? (What, probably…)

*and mixed “percentage of votes” with “percentage of electorate”.

This is a story bringing you news of the antics of some of the Mr Men today.

Mr Monster

Mr Monster was an ogre. Mr Monster was the most evil man in the world. He owned lots of newspapers and made himself very rich. With all his money, he was able to tell politicians around the world to do what he wanted. How did Mr Monster do this? He used some of his money to pay policemen to reveal secrets about the politicians. Then he threatened the politicians he would tell unless they do what he wanted. What he wanted was new ways to make himself even richer. That way, he could afford to bully more politicians. Clever Mr Monster!

Mr Mad

Mr Mad was mad. Mr Mad was delusional. He once worked for Mr Monster, so he knew ways to please him. He dreamed many dreams. These seemed very clever to Mr Mad. So he set about trying to make those dreams come true.

Mr Mad was put in charge of all the teachers. He went to their meeting, and they all laughed at him. This made Mr Mad madder. Mr Mad dreamed about how to get his revenge. He introduced many crazy schemes into the schools. He allowed people who, like him, knew nothing about teaching run schools. Some crazy things happened. How Mr Mad laughed! After a while, Mr Mad found that people did not want to become teachers any more. He also found that the teachers were leaving their jobs. Mr Mad scratched his head. What had he done? Silly Mr Mad!

Mr Look-At-Me

Mr Look-At-Me liked to be the centre of attention. Mr Look-At-Me found a good way to do this. He would say silly things, the first thing that popped into his head. People laughed at his silly things, so he would say more. Sometimes he would contradict the last silly thing. People still laughed and nobody cared that nothing he said made any sense. Funny Mr Look-At-Me!

When he was a very small boy, Mr Look-At-Me had birthdays like other children. When he was four, he decided he did not want to get any older. So he stopped having birthdays. Despite being big and the size of a grown-up, Mr Look-At-Me is still four years old. His mummy even failed to get him to learn how to comb his hair. “Look at me! Look at me!! Me! Me!! Me!!!” he said. The people stilled laughed. Funny Mr Look-At-Me!

Mr Slime

Mr Slime was made completely out of slime. Dark, green, gooey slime! Yeugh! Mr Slime hated everybody who was not like him. He wanted them all to stay where they were and not come close to him. Mr Slime’s slime smelled, a slimy sort of smell. The smell made people hate other people after they had smelled it. Mr Slime smoked all the time, to try to disguise the smell. Mr Slime drank beer. A lot of beer! He drank the beer to try to forget about the smell. People kept away from Mr Slime because of the smoke and smell. Slimy, smelly Mr Slime!

Mr Slime wanted everyone to think like him. Seven times he asked the people to vote for him. Seven times they said “no”. Mr Slime thought he had better find another way.

Mr Two-Face

People thought Mr Two-Face had two faces. But it was not really like that. Mr Two-Face just wanted everybody to like him. So every time he spoke, he tried to tell the people he was with what they wanted to hear. So Mr Two-Face kept changing his appearance. He was a bit like a chameleon, except he didn’t change colour. Only he did a bit: his face went pink whenever someone told him he was wrong. Mr Two-Face thought he was never wrong. He was, after all the leader of all the people in his room.

Mr Pale-And-Thin

Mr Pale-And-Thin was pale and thin. He was thin because he ate only a special diet called austerity. He was pale because spent nearly all the time indoors. He spent some of his time in his counting house, where he counted all the money. But he spent most of his time in his plotting house, where he plotted clever schemes to outwit the other people. He only ventured outside to visit places where people made things. There were so few of them now that it was getting harder and harder to find one. He wore a yellow jacket on these visits, to make him easier to see, because he was so thin. He also wore a hard hat, in case any of the people he had plotted against crept up behind him and hit him on the head. Poor, worried Mr Pale-And-Thin!

Mr Slightly-Grumpy

Mr Slightly-Grumpy was slightly grumpy. When he was younger, he had been very grumpy, and shouted a lot at his friends. Now that he was older, he had grown slightly less grumpy. But his friends were still wary of him. He said sensible things. But because he was grumpy, people didn’t take much notice. This made him a bit more grumpy. Grumpy Mr Slightly-Grumpy!

All the Mr Men were the best of friends, except for Mr Slightly-Grumpy, who just sat in another corner of the room and looked slightly grumpy.

The Big House

All the Mr Men in this story lived in a Big House. A very Big House! It had twenty-eight rooms, all of them big. What a Big House! All the Mr Men lived in the same room, Number Nine.  This room had once been a tiny cottage on the other side of a little stream. A long time ago, a bridge had been built across the stream and Number Nine became part of the Big House. At this time, the Big House had only nine rooms and the people were happy. Over time, more rooms were added and the Big House grew bigger.

At first, all the rooms in the Big House had big, strong locks. They made the people feel safe, but the locks were big and clumsy and took a long time to open. The people grew cross waiting for the doors to be opened. The people in some of the rooms took the locks away, so they could move about the house more easily. The people in Number Nine kept their lock, which was big and strong.

To make the Big House work properly, the caretaker had set some rules. One of the rules was that anyone could move to another room as long as they had work to do there. Where there were locks, these had to be undone to let in the people with work. There were other house rules, too. The leaders in Number Nine didn’t like some of them and asked if they could be excused. The caretaker said yes to some of these.

Before The Big Vote

After Mr Two-Face became leader of a group of friends called the Nasties, he found that some of his friends were really very nasty rather than just nasty. Mr Slime had his own friends, The Stinkies, who were nastier even than the Very Nasties. His own friends kept arguing and some were saying they would leave the Nasties and join the Stinkies instead. The arguments covered many things but, above all, they argued about whether to take away the bridge over the little stream and make Number Nine a little cottage again.

Mr Two-Face had a very clever idea. He would ask all the people in room Number Nine whether to keep the bridge and that would settle it and they could all be friends again. Clever Mr Two-Face! But Mr Two-Face had a problem. He had been telling everyone in all the other rooms for so long just how wrong they were with everything. Very suddenly, he said that they were all really his good friends and that he wanted to keep the bridge over the little stream. Straight away, Mr Mad and Mr Look-At-Me crept up behind Mr Two-Face and stabbed him in the back! Mr Two-Face was very cross and went very pink in the face. Oh dear!

Over the next few weeks, Mr Mad and Mr Look-At-Me shouted at Mr Two-Face and Mr Pale-And-Thin. And Mr Two-Face and Mr Pale-And-Thin shouted back. Mr Two-Face and Mr Pale-And-Thin made up lots of scary stories and Mr Mad and Mr Look-At-Me told lots and lots of fibs. They all got crosser and crosser. All the people got very confused. Mr Slime joined in by showing a picture which made people feel very sick when they looked at it. The people were even more confused!

The Big Vote

In the end, the people were so confused that just over half of them said they wanted to tear down the bridge to the other rooms. “Hurrah!” they said, “We won!” and rushed off to tear down the bridge. Some people brought matches and tried to burn down the bridge. But, whoops! What’s this? The wind changed and the fire spread to room Number Nine. There was lots of damage. Everybody blamed everybody else! Mr Two-Face said he didn’t want to be leader any more. Mr Monster smiled quietly to himself. His monstrous master plan was working out very nicely…

Next Time…

What will happen next? Will the fire spread to the other rooms in the Big House? Will there be any bits of room Number Nine left to live in? Who will lead the Nasties? Will Mr Mad and Mr Look-At-Me still be friends? Or will there be more creeping and back-stabbing? Will Mr Slime crawl back into his slimy hole? Or has his oozy, stinky smell made too many people into Stinkies too? Watch out for the next exciting part of Mr Men 2016!