The Taylor TurboChaser. David Baddiel

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      He looked over. Their friend Janet was approaching, holding something that looked like a motorcycle helmet, with a toothbrush in the middle of it. Which is exactly what it was.

      It was, in fact, an old motorcycle helmet, with a little battery-powered motor at the side, attached to a small metal rod. That rod was then glued to a toothbrush, positioned round about where the mouth of the helmet-wearer would be.

      “Yeah?” said Rahul.

      “This new invention of yours …”

      “The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503. Yes?”

      “Is that what it’s called?” said Amy.

      “Yep.”

      “So are there … like … 502 other models?”

      Rahul thought about this for a second. “No,” he said. “Are there 206 other versions of your wheelchair, the Mobilcon XR-207?”

      “I don’t think so. Fair point.”

      “Anyway,” said Janet, “it doesn’t work.”

      Rahul frowned and took the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503 out of Janet’s hands. He pressed a switch on the motor. The rod vibrated: as did the toothbrush.

      “Yes, it does work,” he said, looking up.

      “No,” said Janet, who had started looking at her phone. “You said it would clean my teeth. Without me having to do anything. But that’s wrong. Because I still have to a) put toothpaste on the brush, and b) move my mouth around so that the brush gets to different teeth.”

      When Janet said these two points – a) and b) – she didn’t do what people normally do. She didn’t hold up two fingers, one at a time, or point to two fingers, or anything.

      She just said it. This was because Janet was one of the laziest people who ever lived, and preferred, whenever possible, not to do anything except look at her phone.

      Which, in fact, was why she had been very keen on the idea of the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503.

      “It doesn’t work!” said Janet.

      “It does!” said Rahul.

      “It’s meant to be an effort-saving device.”

      “Yes. To save you some of the effort of cleaning your teeth. Not all of the effort!”

      “I wanted to be able to clean my teeth and text at the same time!”

      Rahul sighed.

      “You’re just lazy,” said Janet, which was ironic.

      “No, he’s not,” said Amy. “And he’s going to make this wheelchair into something incredible, aren’t you, Rahul?”

      Rahul swallowed. “Well … I’ll try,” he said.

      Which was good enough for Amy.

      

      Amy was right: Rahul really was far from lazy.

      The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503 was only the latest of his inventions. It had been commissioned by Janet. By commissioned, I mean Janet had said, one day, “I hate cleaning my teeth every night, it’s so boring,” and Rahul had said, “I’ve got an idea,” and gone off, designed and made the machine, brought it back to school, and asked Janet to pay the costs of making it – eight pounds – which, so far, Janet had not paid.

      He had also invented:

      The Alarm Clock-to-Dreams Device 4446. (You may have noticed by now that all Rahul’s inventions have random numbers, to make them seem more like proper inventions. This was why he was so interested in the name of Amy’s wheelchair.) The Alarm Clock-to-Dreams Device 4446 was an alarm clock fitted with a recording microphone, so that when it woke you up, before it had a chance to vanish into your head, you could shout out what happened in last-night’s dream. Rahul was working on an upgrade of this invention, whereby the words would become animated pictures, immediately uploadable to YouTube.

      The Toast-Butterer 678X. (Rahul realised while designing this that to sound really like a proper invention, he needed to add letters AND numbers.) This was a knife attached to a toaster, which, when the toast popped up, would automatically start buttering it. This did require quite a powerful spring, because if the toast was only halfway out of its slot, the buttering would only butter the top half. Which was not only not as nice, it could also mean the butter would drip down into the toaster and make it explode. As a result of this happening the first time Rahul tried it, the Toast-Butterer 678X had been banned from Rahul’s parents’ kitchen.

      The All-Weather Brella 778Q. On the basis that the weather in Britain is quite changeable, and opening and shutting an umbrella over and over again can cause it to break, Rahul had created an umbrella into which he had built a sun roof (a polythene window with a zip, basically).

      The Snowman Life-Extender XJ59P. “Have you built a snowman that you’re really proud of? That you’ve spent ages on, and looked out of the window at after a hard and freezing morning’s building? Only for it to melt really quickly and depressingly into sludge? Well, worry no more! Because with the Snowman Life-Extender (bespoke-designed to fit your snowman, cooled to -3 degrees) you can keep your favourite snow guy alive for as long as you like (electricity bill permitting). Maybe he might even come alive and fly with you at Christmas to the North Pole! (Disclaimer: no guarantee this will happen.)” This is a direct quote from the press release that Rahul had written for the Snowman Life-Extender XJ59P. To be honest, he had written the press release for this one before creating the invention itself. But the invention, he always insisted, was on the way.

      The Coffee-Cube-Maker 7777T. This was a box with a funnel at the top, into which you poured instant coffee, and which would then – at the bottom – spit out the coffee as cubes. “What’s the point of that?” said Rahul’s father, Sanjay. This was generally not a question that Sanjay asked. Sanjay was 99 per cent convinced that his son was one day going to invent something incredible, and that the whole family would be rich. Thus, he funded Rahul’s inventions, and let him plunder the family business – a big retail warehouse called Agarwal Supplies, which stocked all kinds of stuff – for raw materials. But this one seemed to test him.

      “To have coffee as cubes,” said Rahul.

      “Yes, I see that,” said Sanjay. “But when you put them in СКАЧАТЬ