Happy Christmas Hammy the Wonder Hamster Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Bethany brushed her hair and worked her way back towards the stage, glancing from side to side in the hope of catching a glimpse of Hamilton. Parents were taking their seats and leafing through their programmes. Children were in organized groups of stars, angels, snowflakes, robins and carol singers. She slipped her hand into her pocket, hoping desperately that Hamilton might have jumped back in without her noticing, but there was nothing there except a tissue and a pound coin.

  Hamilton! Please! she thought. Where are you?

  Have you read all of Hammy’s adventures?

  HAMMY THE WONDER HAMSTER

  HAPPY CHRISTMAS, HAMMY THE

  WONDER HAMSTER

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2009

  Text copyright © Poppy Harris, 2009

  Extracts from ‘How Far is it to Bethlehem?’ by Frances Chesterton appear on pp. 80–82

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193798-4

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  HAMMY’S TOP TEN CHRISTMAS TIPS

  HAMMY’S FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS GIFTS!

  HAMMY’S CHRISTMAS CROSSWORD

  To Thomas and James

  ‘Now that it’s December, Hamilton, we might have snow,’ said Bethany as she looked down from her bedroom window. ‘It’ll be beautiful. I hope it snows soon.’

  Hamilton, her white and gold hamster, had perched on the windowsill. He looked up as if hoping to see a few soft flakes twirl down from the sky. Hamilton had never seen snow apart from in pictures and on television, but he was looking forward to seeing it for real.

  Hamilton was no ordinary hamster. He had chosen his own name, for a start. Some people, like Bethany’s little brother Sam, called him Hammy, but Bethany always used his proper name. He knew whole books full of information. He understood speech in hundreds of languages (including Rabbit). He knew all about mathematics, computers and engineering, and was particularly interested in aeroplanes. One thing he didn’t know was how he came to be so intelligent. He didn’t know that he had a tiny microchip – a microspeck – stuck in his cheek pouch.

  It had happened like this. A brilliant young scientist called Tim Taverner had made the microspeck for putting artificial intelligence into a computer, but it had been accidentally thrown into a waste-paper basket and ended up in some hamster bedding. Hamilton’s hamster bedding. So the artificial intelligence hadn’t gone into a computer at all. It had gone into Hamilton, and he was making very good use of it.

  Only Bethany and Hamilton knew how brilliant he was. They felt it was best to keep it secret, even from Bethany’s best friend Chloe.

  Bethany shook her dark hair back from her face. ‘I went out for school in a hurry today,’ she said. ‘I didn’t open my advent calendar. Do you want to help?’

  With Hamilton’s claw and Bethany’s fingernail, they opened the tiny cardboard door. Behind it was a picture of a curvy white figure with snowflakes all around it. Hamilton looked more closely with his head on one side and decided it was a number eight wearing a hat.

  ‘It’s a snowman,’ said Bethany, and picked Hamilton up. ‘You make a snowball and roll it round and round in more snow until it’s big enough for the body, then make a smaller one for the head.’

  Hamilton balanced neatly on her fingertips and stretched to get a better look at the picture. Yes, he could see how it was done. If people could make snowmen, he’d like to have a go at making a snow hamster.

  For the last week or two, Bethany had been telling him about Christmas – there was a lot to learn. First of all there was Mary, Joseph, Jesus and the stable.

  Hamilton had looked very carefully at pictures of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, and was surprised, and a little indignant. Where was the hamster? There must surely have been hamsters in Bethlehem in those days. They probably would have lived in the desert, and so could have followed the Three Wise Men – but nobody ever seemed to put one in the Nativity scene. There were donkeys, camels, sheep, cows, sometimes dogs, and perhaps even a mouse, but never a hamster. He had used Bethany’s phone to text her a question – Y IS THERE NO HMSTR IN STABLE?

  Bethany had thought for a moment. ‘I expect it’s hiding in the manger,’ she had said. ‘It’s keeping the baby company.’ That had sounded perfectly reasonable to Hamilton. Maybe the hamster had given itself to the baby as a present.

  But all the Christmas information didn’t stop there. Oh no. There were presents, and somebody called Father Christmas or Santa Claus. There were parties, decorations, cards, holly, carol singing, special things to eat, grannies, uncles who fell asleep in front of the television and even more presents. Oh, and there were crackers, except that these crackers weren’t something to eat – and they didn’t crack, they banged and had presents inside. Amazing! Children could even hang up a sock, and find it filled with little presents in the morning – except that at Christmas it wasn’t called a sock, it was called a stocking. It was all very exciting.

  That reminded him – what could he give Bethany for Christmas? He climbed on to her phone.

  WHAT WOULD U LIKE MOST OF ALL 4 CHRISTMAS? he texted.

  Bethany smiled and stroked him. ‘I’d love to have snow,’ she said. ‘Lots of snow, on Christmas Day. That’s called a white Christmas, but it hardly ever happens.’

  It might happen this year, thought Hamilton. If Bethany wanted snow for Christmas, there must be some way of getting it for her. It wouldn’t be easy, but he would enjoy the challenge. There must be a way… He was thinking hard about this as Bethany turned at last from the window and picked up a small, flat pillowcase. Not being sure what it was for, he twitched his nose and whiskers at it and looked at her with his head on one side.

  ‘I’m decorating a cushion cover,’ Bethany s
aid, smiling at Hamilton’s inquisitive expression. ‘I’m making it for Chloe, as a Christmas present. I know it doesn’t look much yet, but I’m going to put ribbons across it, and write her name with fabric pens, then I’ll fill it with stuffing to make it soft.’

  She saw the surprise on his face, and added quickly, ‘That’s a kind of soft, fluffy material, Hamilton. It’s not the stuffing you put in a Christmas turkey.’

  Hamilton was extremely glad to hear it. He climbed up on to the cushion and decided that Chloe would be getting a very special Christmas present. And she wouldn’t be the only one. Somehow, Bethany would get her wish.

  The next morning, when everybody was out, Hamilton was on a mission. He searched all round Bethany’s bedroom, then he scurried across the landing to her little brother Sam’s room but still couldn’t find what he was looking for. Finally, he ran to Mum and Dad’s room and found in the waste-paper basket the very thing he wanted – a newspaper!

  Hamilton loved newspapers. He read quickly through the stories, did the Sudoku and the crossword in his head, then turned to what he really needed – the weather forecast.

  Unfortunately, it was most disappointing. The forecaster said that there would be snow before Christmas and snow after Christmas, but that Christmas itself would be green, not white. There wouldn’t be a single snowflake, an icicle or even a touch of frost on Christmas Day.

  Hamilton didn’t like that forecast at all. With any luck, the forecaster had got it wrong. There was a television in the room with the remote control lying on a low table, just where he could reach it. Hopefully, he flicked through the channels and found a programme with three boring people sitting on a settee talking nonsense, a cartoon that he found very silly and a man painting a front door, then, finally, he found a weather forecast.

  The weathergirl was smiley and cheerful, but she didn’t give Hamilton any hope. She said that it would be too wet for snow, then too warm, then it would be very cold, but the wrong sort of cold for snow.

  ‘There may be some snow in December,’ she said at last, ‘but I’m afraid we’re not expecting a white Christmas this year.’

  Hamilton stood on the remote to switch it off and glared at the television. If Bethany wanted a white Christmas she would have one. All that was needed was an intelligent hamster and something as snowy as possible.

  A box of cotton-wool bobbles sat on the little table on Mum’s side of the bed. That would make a good start! Hamilton tugged one from the box and scampered back to Bethany’s room with it, where he tucked it behind the wardrobe. He’d never seen anyone do any cleaning there, so it would be safe. One bobble would make – oh, about five snowflakes, he thought.

  While Hamilton was planning a white Christmas for Bethany, somebody else was making plans too. In the city was a university, and in the university was a laboratory with computers, microscopes and gleaming white boxes with flashing lights. Watching the computer screens, a thin young man with messy dark hair sat in a black leather office chair, swivelling from side to side and chewing the end of a pencil.

  The young man was Dr Tim Taverner, the brilliant scientist who had accidentally dropped the microspeck into the waste-paper basket with his sandwich crumbs, which had resulted in Hamilton becoming the most super-intelligent hamster ever. Tim had found out that the paper from his waste-paper basket had been taken to Dolittle’s Pet Shop to be used as hamster bedding, and had tried to get the speck back – but by the time he got there, the microspeck was in Hamilton, and Hamilton was in Bethany’s bedroom. Tim hadn’t given up, though. A lot of the work he was doing was secret and strictly against the law, and he mustn’t be found out. So Tim had made a tracking device to home in on the speck, and had discovered that the hamster belonged to either the dark-haired girl at Number 33 Tumblers Crescent (Bethany) or her blonde friend across the road (Chloe).

  He’d even tried to kidnap Hamilton, and failed. Now, Christmas was coming. He’d soon be going away to his parents’ house, but he was so determined to get on with his work and to catch the hamster that he didn’t want to leave until he really, really had to – say, on Christmas Eve. He didn’t much like being at home because he got bored there, but his mum did cook a magnificent Christmas dinner.

  He stopped swivelling his chair and looked at his diary. There were still two weeks and a few days to go before Christmas. ‘I must get that hamster,’ he muttered to himself. Two or three times a week he drove down Tumblers Crescent, looking out for any opportunity to get Hamilton back. He couldn’t go away without one more try.

  There was suddenly an unpleasant taste of wood and rubber in his mouth. He’d chewed the top of his pencil right off.

  That afternoon, Hamilton woke up suddenly at ten to four. He always woke up at ten to four on school days, because that was when Bethany and her brother Sam came home. On this particular afternoon, he could hear three pairs of feet hurrying up the stairs, and an extra voice.

  That’s Chloe, he thought. He liked Chloe, even though she talked a lot of nonsense to him and – he didn’t like to think about this – called him Fluffpot. Chloe was Bethany’s best friend, which made her a Nice Person. He always looked forward to his after-school chat with Bethany, but that would have to wait until Chloe had gone home.

  Bethany and Chloe tumbled excitedly into the room, dropped their school bags, threw their coats on the bed and then bounced on it. From the bounce and their bright eyes, Hamilton knew that something special was going on.

  ‘Hello, Hamilton!’ called Bethany, as Chloe dashed home to get changed. As soon as she had gone, Hamilton opened his cage. He jumped on to Bethany’s hands and rubbed his face against her thumb.

  ‘We’re doing a Christmas end-of-term concert at school,’ whispered Bethany. ‘We always have one, but this year, Miss Fossett asked me to sing a solo. I couldn’t! I’d be too scared to sing by myself in front of everyone! So then she asked Chloe to do it, and she was scared too, so we asked if we could sing together, and she said yes!’

  The door opened and Chloe appeared. Bethany was still talking to Hamilton, but there was nothing strange about this. (It’s all right to be seen talking to your hamster – Chloe talked to her hamster, Toffee, all the time. All hamster owners do that. It’s only when the hamster sends text messages back that some people get alarmed.)

  ‘Did you hear that, little Fluffpot?’ said Chloe. Hamilton couldn’t help cringing. This was the 127th time she’d called him that. ‘Bethany and I are going to sing in the concert!’

  Hamilton couldn’t understand why Bethany didn’t want to sing by herself. He’d heard her singing while she got dressed in the mornings, ran up and down stairs and listened to the music on her iPod, and she had a lovely voice. As Bethany and Chloe chatted about what they had to sing, and whether they’d have to wear school uniform, Hamilton jumped into his wheel and checked that Chloe wasn’t looking while he adjusted the gears before going for a run.

  Other hamsters might have been happy just to run on the wheel, but to Hamilton, this was boring. He liked to imagine himself having an adventure. This time, as he’d been learning about winter, he decided that he was running across plains covered in snow, with icy mountains all around, and through shining frost tunnels hung with icicles…

  He was just having a ride on a galloping polar bear when the door opened. Sam had one foot across the entrance to his big sister’s room when he remembered that he was supposed to knock. He went out again, knocked and waited until Bethany called, ‘Come in, Sam!’ He entered properly this time, throwing back the door so hard that Hamilton felt his wheel rattle.

  ‘You know the school concert?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, we’re singing in it!’ said Chloe, but Bethany could see that this wasn’t the response Sam had wanted.

  ‘What about the concert, Sam?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m in it!’ he announced proudly. ‘I have to do forward and backward rolls, and star jumps, and all that acrobatic stuff, cos we’re doing this dance thing about snow scenes
and snowball fights. I got chosen to be the snowball!’

  ‘So the snowball does star jumps and forward rolls?’ said Bethany.

  ‘Yeah, when it’s flying through the air,’ said Sam. ‘I’m best at gymnastics, so I got chosen for that.’

  ‘That’s great, Sam!’ said Bethany. ‘Well done!’

  ‘I’m going to practise,’ he announced, and ran out, and soon there were thumps and bumps from the landing as he practised his acrobatics before hammering down the stairs and going outside to the shed to clean out his rabbit’s hutch.

  Hamilton did a few exercises too, and thought about snow. He had enough cotton wool now to do about fifty snowflakes. By his calculations, he still needed at least another 4,950, and he wasn’t at all sure how to find them.

  Each morning, Hamilton and Bethany opened another door on the advent calendar, and each afternoon after school Bethany and Chloe practised their song, sometimes at Chloe’s house, sometimes at Bethany’s. Hamilton wished he could sing. Soon he knew every note and every word, and conducted with an apple stalk when Chloe wasn’t looking. He had a finely tuned ear for music and could read it too. He could even tell if either of the girls sang a little sharp or flat, or missed a beat. One afternoon, when Chloe had gone home after a pretty terrible practice, Bethany sat down heavily on the bed. Hamilton climbed on to her hand.

  ‘It’s no good, Hamilton,’ sighed Bethany. ‘We can’t do a thing right, and it’s making me nervous. I wish we hadn’t said we’d do this.’

  Hamilton pawed at her hand for the phone.

  U DID IT BETTER YESTERDAY, he texted. I CAN HELP.

  ‘Can you, Hamilton?’ asked Bethany. He never stopped surprising her.

  IF U SING FLAT, HE TOLD HER, I’LL GO… he tipped his head to the left. AND IF U SING SHARP, I’LL GO… he tipped his head to the right. He was adding, BUT YR NRLY PERFECT, as Sam opened the door, shut it again, knocked and came in. He grinned when he saw Hamilton.