The Luckiest Kid in the World: The brand-new comedy adventure from the author of The Day the Screens Went Blank

This is the first time I have ever told anyone the WHOLE story, so I hope I’m doing it right.

I bet you already know who I am because I became very famous this year. Maybe even the most famous boy in town.

And, if you’ve heard all about me and the strangest two weeks ever, you’ll probably be wondering why I did what I did.

I mean – what kid would DO that?

A kid who’s OUT OF HIS MIND?!

So, anyway, it’s this completely normal Thursday evening and Mum’s already walked into my room like three times to make sure I’m working on my school project. I’ve been researching it all week, and it’s all about what makes THE MODERN FAMILY.

We have to compare our family to families of the past, when everyone had a horse and cart or lived in a chimney or whatnot.

In the past, everybody was much smaller, like the size of a rabbit, I think, and they had names like ‘Forsooth!’ and ‘Hamlet’.

My name is Joe and I am not the size of a rabbit – I am average ten-year-old-kid size.

As I’m sure you know, I live in Didcot, which used to have a big power station, but now doesn’t, and also has a lot of people who used to work at the power station, but now don’t.

Didcot is famous because in the 1800s William Bradbery was the first person in Britain to sell watercress.

But enough of the important stuff; let’s get back to my family.

So my dad is five foot nine inches (175.259 cm!) tall, which is the size of seven and a half rabbits.

He is thirty-nine and has size nine feet and works in an office. Once a day he will remind us he used to be in a rock band called Samurai!, who played two gigs in 1996. One was at his school, and the other was in the local old people’s home, where they were immediately told to leave because no one had asked them to be there.

So Dad gave up being a rock star so he could follow his dream of working in an office all day every day. He sold his guitar and Mum says he’s never been the same since. He is a great dad who never puts any pressure on me to be the best at anything. ‘That’s good enough for me, Joe!’ he says sometimes. Though secretly I think that kind of attitude is why Samurai! never played a third gig.

My mum? She is five foot seven inches tall (170.18 cm!) and she drives a grey Ford Fiesta, which she bought when she turned forty and sold her old camper van.

Mum is like a lot of mums or dads in that when anyone asks if she’s a good cook, she always says: ‘I make a mean Bolognese!’

Mum’s trick is that she adds three dots of chilli sauce, and she once had this crazy idea that she could sell her spaghetti Bolognese from her camper van. But, after talking a lot with Dad, I think she realised that people in Didcot could make spaghetti on their own at home and add three dots of chilli sauce with very little bother, and also they would prefer not buying it out of a van. So now Mum works in an office like Dad. Working in an office is very much the family trade and I expect one day I will work in an office too.

Hundreds of years ago, families would be made up of one or two parents and around 350 children, who would all live in a small house with one bedroom next to a factory. They would all have to share one telly, I think, and very often lots of them would die from not having any windows or because the bed was too small or from soot or something.

I am lucky because I have my own bedroom and, thank goodness, my little sister, Mickey, has her own bedroom too, but poor Mum and Dad have to share one.

Sometimes, after school, I get to go to Nico’s Café on the high street, where Nico makes me two boiled eggs on toast while Mum takes Mickey to Robo Dance or Boogie Ballet. Mum says two boiled eggs are cheaper than a childminder. Don’t get me wrong, I also like burgers and hot dogs, but somehow Nico makes the best two boiled eggs on toast in Didcot. And, on his seventieth birthday last year, he made me a cake to celebrate!

I am usually the only person in there, and definitely the only one who orders two boiled eggs on toast, so Nico has time to tell me stories about Italy. Famous Italians include the Mario Brothers and a boxer called Rocky.

I am trying to grow a moustache like Nico, but I am ten and it is slow-going. Knowing my luck, Mickey will grow one before me, even though she is six and a girl and totally obsessed with pandas. Mum and Mickey’s teachers think everything Mickey does is amazing and they keep telling her she is ‘so advanced’. She could throw a pencil against the wall and everybody would applaud – seriously! But I can come top twenty in whatever video game I’m playing and level up with a ton of XP, and everybody just tells me that’s ‘nice’ and could I please not call them at work about this stuff.

So, anyway, I was trying to think of what to write about my family and I was starting to realise there wasn’t much to write about, apart from my sister always asking me to play and following me about all the time. But who wants to read that? That’s why I put in the watercress thing I told you, and the bit about Nico’s moustache.

But then just before bed I look out of my window, and I see this van parked outside. And it’s got these three people in the front with clipboards. And they’re all looking up at my window.

So, obviously, I think it must be the gas board or something. It doesn’t even occur to me that my life is just twelve hours away from completely changing for ever.

My dad sets his alarm for 6.47 a.m. every day so that he can hit the snooze button for twenty-five minutes. That means that every five minutes from 6.47 a.m. to 7.12 a.m. the whole house has to hear BAAAAH! BAAAAH! BAAAAH! from the really aggressive alarm clock he bought at the market because it was cheap.

My street is a friendly street where the people all do what I call ‘street humour’.

This is when people make a joke about something not very funny.

So, if you see someone washing their car, you have to say, ‘You can do mine next!’ and then you both do a big laugh.

Or, if you see someone cutting their grass, you have to say, ‘You can do mine next!’ and then you both do a big laugh.

It means someone on our street is always laughing, which I suppose is better than screaming.

Anyway, as I’m lying in bed, I can hear a few people laughing outside. Maybe someone tripped over and someone else said, ‘Enjoy your trip!’

‘Another day, another dollar!’ shouts Mickey, bursting into my room.

She’s shouting this because when Dad gets up every day he usually says, ‘Another day, another dollar!’ even though he is paid in pounds and has never even been to America.

But today we hear him say, ‘Who are all those people outside our house?’

Mum is peeking out of the front-door window when we get downstairs. Mum is someone who doesn’t like a lot of fuss, and she senses that soon there might be a lot of fuss.

That van is still outside and now there are even more people. Some of them are wearing headsets like Beyoncé and someone must have called the news because there’s a TV camera. The mechanic at number fourteen is pretending to work on his car, but really he’s staring at our house. The artist at number twenty-two is poking her face through the curtains. In fact, all the neighbours are watching our house in case there’s been a scandal or something and now we’re all going to jail.

‘Did you pay that parking ticket?’ asks Mum, and Dad says, ‘Of course I did!’

We are generally a very law-abiding family.

Then we watch as a man with a microphone opens our front gate and starts to walk down the path, followed by the TV camera.

‘Oh no,’ says Mum.