And that was quite true, of course. Old Bert Nettle had driven the steamroller for ages, and he was the only council workman who bothered to keep J22 brightly polished. He was very old-fashioned himself, with droopy grey whiskers, a big silver watch on a chain, and a moleskin waistcoat.

  The mayor had a think. ‘Old Bert must be about seventy,’ he said. ‘Time he retired, for his own good. It can’t be very healthy, what with all that smoke and oil. And we could give him a nice gold watch.’

  Old Bert heard about this later in the day, when he drove J22 in from a spell of road rolling. He was horrified. What they didn’t realize was that Bert’s one interest in life was working on the old steamroller.

  Bert went home and went to bed early, after damping down the fire in J22. Half the shelves in his little kitchen were full of polish tins and special steamroller grease.

  J22 stood in the dark council garage with the dustcarts. The church clocks all round Blackbury struck midnight.

  There was a sizzle, and a clank from the firebox. Very, very slowly, the old steamroller’s flywheel began to turn. Then it gave a triumphant chuff and chugged forwards.

  Crash! went the garage door as J22 smashed through it and ran through the empty streets. People threw open their bedroom windows in amazement as the steamroller trundled past with sparks coming out of its chimney.

  Old Bert woke up as the steamroller clattered down the High Street.

  ‘This is a rum do!’ he thought, tugging on his trousers. ‘Someone’s stolen my steamroller.’ Two minutes later he had leapt on his bicycle and was pedalling furiously after J22, which was heading for open country.

  After a while it was easy to see where the steamroller had been by looking out for flat hedges, lamp posts, and . . . well, in one place there was a telephone box that was about fifty yards long and one-eighth of an inch thick!

  By breakfast time, Bert was high up on Even Moor, north of Blackbury. It was already very hot, and he couldn’t find the steamroller tracks any more. He’d just sat down for a rest when a police car pulled up beside him. The mayor was sitting in the back.

  ‘What on earth’s happening?’ he asked. ‘The police are everywhere! Have you seen the steamroller?’

  ‘No,’ said Bert. ‘But I think it was heading in this direction.’

  ‘Dangerous thing, stealing steamrollers,’ said Chief Inspector Jones, who was driving the car. ‘Hop in, Bert.’

  ‘It’s daft, I know,’ said the mayor, as they drove away. ‘But some people who saw it go past said there wasn’t anyone driving J22!’

  ‘What puzzles me is there was hardly any coal or water on board,’ said Bert. ‘She should have run out of water hours ago.’

  Now remember, this is Gritshire. If it was anywhere else people would start making all kinds of odd explanations, but in Gritshire – and particularly around Blackbury – strange things happen every day and people are more sensible.

  ‘Magic . . .’ said the mayor. ‘Oh dear!’

  ‘She must have heard the surveyor say she was going to be scrapped, so she ran away,’ said Bert. ‘Poor old girl.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but supposing she runs someone over,’ said Chief Inspector Jones. They all thought about the telephone box.

  Most of Even Moor was bare and windswept, with little woods of gnarled trees here and there. There was nowhere for even a small steamroller to hide.

  Then they saw it. J22 was on the edge of one of the woods, plucking branches off the trees with what looked like a trunk and stuffing them into her firebox, for all the world like an elephant eating. As soon as she saw them, she gave a hoot and puffed away between the trees.

  ‘Good heavens!’ said the mayor.

  ‘That thing like a trunk was the extension water hose,’ said Bert. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Chief Inspector Jones, ‘call me a coward if you like, but I’m not sure I fancy coming face to face with a mad steamroller. I think we had better get reinforcements.’

  An hour later there came a report from the little village of Stoke Cangle, just north of the moor. A steamroller had pushed down the wall of the coal merchant’s yard and had stolen a ton of best anthracite. The coal merchant was very angry because the roller had carefully picked him up on the end of its hose and sat him on the roof of his house.

  Further north the pursuit party caught up with J22, sucking up water from a pond by the road.

  The chief inspector had called up a large breakdown wagon with a big crane on it, and there were several lorries loaded with equipment. Bert was a bit upset by it all.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, PC Peddle is going to try and hook a chain round the roller’s back axle so we can tow it to Blackbury,’ said the chief inspector.

  ‘And then poor old J22 will be broken up for scrap,’ said Bert, shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. We used to roll out Blackbury’s roads together when the town was hardly more’n a village. I recall one Christmas, 1924 I reckon it was, when we took the Bishop of Blackbury and all the choristers round carol singing because the snow was so deep.’ He blew his nose, overcome with emotion.

  The mayor patted him on the back. ‘Never mind,’ he said kindly, ‘you’ve got to remember, Bert, this is 1973. Steamrollers are not fashionable any more. But we shall get a nice new diesel one and, I’ll tell you what, you can have the first drive on it.’

  Bert looked slyly at the mayor. ‘It’ll be a dangerous job, putting a hook round her ankle – I mean axle. You’d better let me do it. J22 knows me, after all.’

  The chief inspector looked a bit doubtful, but he let Bert walk towards the roller, which was still slurping water out of the pond. J22 began to puff uneasily as he approached, but he patted one big wheel and said, ‘Easy now, girl.’

  Then before anyone knew what was happening, he leapt aboard the roller and pulled a big lever. Steam hissed in all directions, smoke filled the air and J22 rumbled off up the road. All the astonished people could hear in the din was Bert laughing and shouting: ‘Go back to be retired? Not us!’

  Of course, steamrollers don’t move all that fast, but they are very difficult to stop. No one felt inclined to try, anyway. So, the two of them chugged down off Even Moor and headed north.

  Bert found he didn’t have to steer. J22 was steering herself perfectly, and even stopped when Bert wanted to get down – to buy a pound of sausages in one place, and a packet of tobacco in another – as neatly as you like.

  The big flywheel spun round, the great road wheels trundled, and Bert sang as he fried sausages on J22’s firebox. He didn’t know where they were going, but he felt very happy.

  But the mayor and the chief inspector, back in Blackbury, were very worried.

  ‘Officially, of course, Bert has stolen the steamroller,’ said the mayor. ‘Of course, we wouldn’t do anything about that. But I think they should be stopped, for his own good.’

  ‘They’re still heading north,’ said the chief inspector, looking at the map. ‘I wonder where they’re going? By this afternoon they should be driving through the town of Dewley. Perhaps we could stop them there, but how do you stop a steamroller?’

  ‘With another one,’ said the mayor. ‘They’ve got one of those new diesel rollers in Dewley. If they parked that across the road, that’d stop them and no mistake!’

  So, when J22 chugged through Dewley, Bert saw the other roller. It was big and green, and looked very heavy. The mayor and a lot of worried-looking people were standing behind it.

  Bert shook his head and pulled the brake lever. But J22 chugged on, and only sizzled to a halt a metre away from the roller.

  ‘Look, Bert, you’ve made your point,’ cried the mayor. ‘Why don’t you come down now, there’s a good chap.’

  But J22 was moving again . . . Boing! The two rollers met with a crash that shook J22 all the way to her pressure gauge. The man on the green steamroller laughed nastily. It was obvious the big roller wasn’t going to move – in fact, it was pushing J22 backwards.

  Then J22 hooted with three long blasts. The green roller stopped and whistled, which puzzled its driver, because he hadn’t touched anything. Everyone gasped as the green roller started to back away very politely.

  J22 hooted again, revved up a bit to make sure everything was all right, and trundled on. The mayor had to leap out of the way.

  Soon J22 was thundering along with a crowd of angry people chasing her. Bert was quite bewildered by the whole thing. It seemed as though J22 had asked the other steamroller to get out of the way.

  Since J22 wasn’t too fast, even at top speed, the crowd behind was catching up. She was heading towards a pair of big iron gates, set in a wall just the other side of the town. It was a good job they were open, because she whizzed straight through and on up a wide gravel drive that led to a great big country house.

  There were stone sheds built round it and standing outside them were – steamrollers.

  There were dozens of them: big red ones, traction engines in all colours, showman’s engines with glittering canopies and polished brass thingummyjigs – all with steam up. The air was full of the smell of hot oil.

  A tall thin man in a very expensive suit came hurrying across the yard to J22, who had stopped. He put his glasses on and, ignoring Bert, peered at her excitedly.

  ‘I say,’ he said. ‘I do believe this is a double cylinder brass-boilered J-model roller from the old Snobbut and Munchapple factory!’

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Bert, surprised to find someone who knew so much about steamrollers. The tall man shook him warmly by the hand.

  ‘I’m Lord Hugh, of Dewley,’ he said. ‘And this is my new Steam Engine Museum. We’re opening to the public tomorrow. I could just do with this machine to complete my collection. I must say it’s in splendid condition. How much do you want for it?’

  ‘Well I—’ began Bert, but just then the mayor and everyone caught up, and began talking at once.

  Lord Hugh took them all indoors and, after a large tea of strawberries and cream, the mayor found himself holding a cheque for quite a lot of money – certainly enough to buy a diesel roller for Blackbury – and J22 was being driven off to Lord Hugh’s workshops to be given a good clean-up.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Lord Hugh, ‘there just aren’t enough people around now who really understand steamrollers. I’ve been looking for a chief mechanic for months.’

  ‘Well now,’ began Bert, modestly, and very soon – you’ve guessed it – he was fitted out with a uniform and got the job. Everyone else went away happily, if a little puzzled. But Bert went to look at J22 before he went to bed.

  The old steamroller was in a big shed with a lot of others and looked quite at home. So, he just said, ‘Goodnight,’ and shut the door.

  The Money Tree

  Mr Rupert Wrist’s wife wanted a television set.

  That was a bit of a problem for Mr Wrist. He was an assistant joke writer in a matchbox label factory and, believe me, jobs like that are interesting but not very highly paid.

  ‘I’m fed up with having to go and watch Mrs Jones’s down the road every time there’s something good on,’ said his wife.

  Then one day, Mr Wrist saw a little advert in the paper. It said:

  Make Money In Your Spare Time!

  Yes, You Can Make £££s for just a Few Hours’ Work a Week

  Send a £1 postal order for details.

  Feeling a bit of a Charlie, Mr Wrist sent off a £1 postal order and then forgot about it. But about a week later a very small parcel arrived. Inside was one seed, and a label saying ‘Plant In A Damp Place’.

  ‘You’ve wasted your money,’ said Mrs Wrist when he told her.

  Rupert Wrist shook his head. ‘The paper said you could make £££s for just a few hours’ work, so it must be true. Anyway, I’ve planted it by the compost heap.’

  ‘Just so long as it doesn’t turn out to be one of them giant man-eating runner beans like in that horror film we saw,’ said Mrs Wrist. And that was that.

  For days afterwards Mr Wrist used to go to look at the patch of ground as soon as he got home from work. But nothing grew, except weeds, and pretty soon he got fed up with it.

  One warm evening he was taking a stroll among his cabbage plants and watching the sunset when he heard a faint rustling noise.

  The seed had sprouted. A spindly green stem was swaying above the weeds. As Mr Wrist watched, it unfolded another thin leaf and grew at least another inch.

  ‘Here, Rita, come and look at this,’ he shouted to his wife.

  By the time Mrs Wrist arrived the plant was three feet high and throwing out leaves in all directions. It filled the garden with a strange crackling noise, rather like someone wading through tissue paper.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Mrs Wrist, shivering. ‘It’s definitely got a nasty look about it to me. Next thing we know it’ll be crawling across London and tearing down Big Ben, like the thing in the film.’

  ‘What I want to know is, how can you make money with it?’ wondered Rupert Wrist, lighting his pipe. ‘I know a bloke at work whose brother makes a bit of money growing mushrooms in his cellar. Or cut flowers. We could sell cut flowers. But this looks more like a bush.’

  The stem was now ten feet high and had stopped growing upwards. Instead, it was sprouting a crown of branches. They grew and spread across the night sky until the Wrists were standing under a large tree.

  ‘Apples, perhaps. Or pears. Or even peaches,’ thought Mr Wrist.

  ‘If we wake up dead in our beds don’t blame me,’ said Rita.

  But neither of them got much sleep that night. They lay in bed staring into the darkness and listening to the little crackling and popping noises in the garden. Finally, Rupert could stand it no longer. He leapt out of bed and opened the window.

  The tree was in flower. Giant, intricate blooms gleamed in the moonlight. They were beautiful.

  ‘It’s cut flowers, then,’ he thought. ‘Well, they certainly look nice. Perhaps I can sell them to a florist.’

  The flowers had a scent. He went back to sleep with it filling the room. ‘Funny,’ he thought before he dropped off, ‘it doesn’t smell like you’d expect. Smells a bit like . . . um . . . like banks.’

  In the morning the tree jingled in the breeze. Its boughs were bent under the weight of its fruit. Most of the flowers were gone. Mr Wrist went out in his dressing gown to look at it.

  Something hit him on the head. There was another gust of wind, and fruit rained down on all sides. Except that it wasn’t exactly fruit.

  ‘It’s money! Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!’ gasped Rupert, sitting down.

  Coins kept falling off the branches. Most of them were 1p and 2p pieces, but there were several 50p coins that were almost ripe.

  He staggered into the kitchen and tugged his wife through the door. ‘You won’t believe me if I tell you, so come and look,’ he said.

  They stood looking up in wonder, ankle deep in money. True, some of the coins were a bit speckled and most of them were copper. But it was still a good crop.

  Mr Wrist didn’t go to work that day. Instead, he counted money. There was £20.13 already ripe. Next morning another £25 was tinkling on the branches.

  ‘It’s a pity there isn’t more silver,’ said Rita. ‘It’s no fun having to cart all this to the bank.’

  ‘Hmm, I was thinking about marrows,’ said Mr Wrist, lighting a cigar.

  ‘Marrows? What about them?’

  ‘Well, if you want bigger marrows, you feed the plant. With fertilizer and . . . er . . . manure and so forth. Shall we try?’

  So he bought a bottle of Gianto Wonder Plant Food and poured it around the tree.

  Next morning there was quite a heavy crop of 5p coins. And there was one large bud which slowly opened to reveal, still crinkled and slightly damp, a £1 note.

  ‘We’re on the right track,’ said Mr Wrist. ‘Still, when you get down to it, 5p pieces are a bit tiring to pick up.’

  So that evening he put two bottles of Gianto and a barrow-load of horse manure around the tree.

  Next day’s crop was mainly 50p coins, though perhaps some of them were a bit weedy-looking. There were several slightly smudged £1 notes.

  ‘I should leave well alone. Overfeeding it might be bad,’ warned Rita.

  ‘I’m not asking for much. All I want is one crop of fivers, just one. I don’t care if it goes back to 1ps after that,’ said Rupert.

  He used an old tin bath as a mixing bowl and prepared a special mixture of twenty-seven different plant foods.

  ‘Right,’ he thought, as he went to bed, ‘that should do it.’

  All night long the money tree shook and shivered.

  In the morning there was but a withered stump and one blackened branch bearing a rather inferior and dull penny.

  The Wrists watched it gloomily. It fell off.

  ‘Bang goes all hope of being a millionaire. I wonder if my old job’s still going?’

  He wrote to the advertisers, and they wrote back a rather sarcastic letter saying that what they had sent him was a mushroom-growing outfit, nothing more, and if they knew how to grow money they wouldn’t waste their time selling mushroom kits, would they?

  There was just enough money left for a television set, so they bought one. And Mr Wrist planted the last penny.

  About a week later he was moodily tying up his dahlias when he saw the penny sprout. Up came a little plant, no higher than his knee. It produced a couple of sweetly scented daisy flowers which blossomed for a few hours, and then it shrivelled up.

  Mr Wrist sighed and went and mowed the lawn. It seemed just about the best thing he could do.

  The Blackbury Thing

  Very late one night, Police Constable Ronald Biddle, Gritshire Constabulary, was proceeding along the quiet, foggy streets of Blackbury when he heard a funny whistling noise.

  ‘’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo, what’s all this ’ere,’ he thought, staring up into the frosty sky. Up among the stars shone a red dot. And it was growing bigger.