Apart from his sweet tooth, permanent hunger and rotten teeth, the biggest problem Sergeant Sid has is that he doesn’t have a lot to do.
Crime is rare in Ballyyahoo. So rare it hardly ever happens.
That’s why Sergeant Sid gets so bored. He gets so bored, he’s even bored being bored.
You probably know this already but being bored is not good for people, not just big people but little people too.
People who are bored have more time to make mischief and nobody wants mischief, especially in Ballyyahoo.
MAGGIE GETS CAUGHT
Sergeant Sid makes up the daftest crimes and laws anybody ever heard of and every week he thinks up a new one.
Nobody can ever guess what the new crimes are going to be, so someone always gets caught. This week it was the turn of poor old Maggie-Many-Cats.
On Tuesday it was lashing rain. It was raining so hard that you could feel the drops pinging off your face and the potholes were so full of water a small donkey could go swimming in them.
Maggie-Many-Cats was walking home from Kelly’s shop. She had no umbrella because one of her cats had curled up into a little warm ball and fallen asleep on it.
She loves her cats so much she’d rather get wet than wake him up but she had tied her scarf around her head to try and keep her hair dry.
Her scarf was falling off her head with the weight of the rain and her hair was dripping down her face and she was cursing her own soft heart when she struggled up the lane with her shopping.
She had no shopping bag because another of her cats had chosen it as a sleeping place and so was carrying a head of broccoli, a few carrots and a couple of onions in the large pockets of her coat when she saw some she dreaded meeting – Sergeant Sid.
“Good morning, Maggie, it’s a grand day,” he said, even though the rain was dripping off his cap and down his nose and his uniform was soaking wet.
“Oh morning, Sid, nice day if you’re a tadpole,” said Maggie.
“Well now, Maggie, if I was a tadpole I wouldn’t fit in my uniform, would I?” said Sergeant Sid, who doesn’t understand what a joke is and if he did would probably make it a crime.
“Where you above in the shop, Maggie?” he asked, looking closely at her pockets and wondering if there was any room for any cake, sweets or crisps in either of them.
“I was, Sid, I’m after getting a few vegetables to make myself a nice big bowl of soup to get the heat into me.”
“I see and I suppose you’d be having something nice for afters.”
“I would indeed, I was thinking about having a nice big crunchy apple from my tree. It’s been a great year for the apples and they’re as sweet as heaven.”
“Would you not be thinking about baking that nice big crunchy apple into a pie, and maybe smothering it in lashings of hot custard?” asked Sid, who was feeling quite hungry.
Sid had his sandwiches stolen by a large, squawking squawk-bird that same morning.
Squawk-birds are a bit of a problem in Ballyahoo. They regularly steal food from people’s hands. In Ballyyahoo they call it being squawked!
The squawk-bird had swooped with his mouth open and had snatched Sid’s lunch and soared away into the sky before he could arrest it and charge it with theft.
SID GOT SQUAWKED
Sid wasn’t happy about having his lunch stolen. In fact he was very annoyed. Sid has a very big appetite and if he’d a mind to he could swallow large bars of chocolate and hoover up whole six packs of crisps in one go.
Today, Sid was so hungry his stomach was rumbling. Sergeant’s Sid stomach doesn’t just make an ordinary rumble.
If you want to know what it sounds like try imagining capturing a storm, putting it in a metal bucket and shaking it about.
If you can imagine that, then you know what Sergeant Sid’s stomach sounds like and you’ll also know why Maggie wanted to plug her ears.
There’s always problems when Sergeant Sid gets hungry so as Maggie tried to get away.
“Well now Sid, I’d better be going, the cat’s need feeding and I have to start the soup before the cold gets into my bones and I get an attack of the old stiff-bones.”
“Not so fast, Maggie, I have reason to believe you have committed a crime! I will have to detain you under The Suspicious-looking Persons of Ballyyahoo Act.”
And if you want to know what happened next all you have to do is click right here.
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