The Smelliest Cheese in the World!
by
Stephanie J Dagg
Copyright 2011 Stephanie J Dagg
Thank you for your support.
Chapter 1 Smelleigh’s Smelly Cheese
Mr Smelleigh was a very happy man. He had a nice house and a big, shiny car. He adored Mrs Smelleigh and she adored him. There were three little Smelleighs and they were amazingly good children. They helped round the house, they always did their homework and they were never, ever rude to anyone. (Remember, this is just a story!).
But what made Mr Smelleigh happiest of all was his factory. It was a huge factory. It took up half the town. And it was no ordinary factory. It made something very, very special indeed. It made — THE SMELLIEST CHEESE IN THE WORLD!
Of course, there were a few drawbacks to making the smelliest cheese in the world. For a start, it was very smelly. In fact, it was horribly, revoltingly, terrifyingly smelly. Everyone in the factory wore pegs on their noses. Most of the townspeople did too. And the people who lived in the villages close by. But they could all still smell the cheese.
Another problem was mice. They didn’t mind the smell. They didn’t mind it at all. They loved it. Mice came from miles around to try and eat the smelly cheese in the cheese factory. They got everywhere — in cars, in buses, in beds, in bags, in shoes, in cupboards, in hats, in gardens. You name it and there was probably a mouse in it!
Except the cheese factory. There were no mice in there. Mr Smelleigh employed three cat handlers. They looked after a hundred cats each. The cats patrolled around the factory all day and all night catching any mice who got too close. There was also a mouse warden who rounded up any mice she found. But she couldn’t bring herself to hurt any of them (she thought they were rather sweet) so she drove them off into the countryside and let them go. Of course, they all came straight back so the mouse warden was always busy.
But back to Smelleigh’s Cheese. You wouldn’t think it was smelly to look at it. It was a beautiful, creamy pink sort of colour. It was diamond shaped, just to be different. It had black speckles all through it. It looked harmless enough. But golly, did it smell!
It’s hard to describe the smell. It was a combination of goats, school dinners, your granny’s perfume and your brother’s socks. Actually, better add your dad’s and uncle’s socks too. Mix those all together, leave them for a week in a hot sunny spot and the result is the smell of Smelleigh’s Famous Smelly Cheese. Each individual cheese smelled that strong so the combined effect of millions and millions of cheeses was truly awe inspiring. It made paint peel off the walls. It made flowers and trees wilt. It made dogs howl. It made cars break down. At the very least, it made your eyes water and your stomach churn.
But people loved the cheese! It was world famous. In fact, it was the most famous cheese in the world. It was even more famous (and far more smelly) than Gorgonzola or Roquefort cheese. Mr Smelleigh exported his cheese to just about everywhere — from Alaska to Zanzibar, from north to south, from east to west. It was rumoured that even Santa Claus put in a regular order for Smelleigh’s Famous Smelly Cheese.
Chapter 2 The Guided Tour
Every day people came to visit the cheese factory. There were guided tours all day long. Sometimes Mr Smelleigh himself gave a guided tour, just ‘to keep in touch with the public’, as he said.
This particular day Mr Smelleigh decided to do the eleven o’clock tour. There was a good crowd as usual. Amongst them was a pack of Beaver Scouts on a camping holiday nearby. Mr Smelleigh was always pleased to see young people visiting his factory.
The tour began. First Mr Smelleigh gave a little talk about how his French great-great grandfather, Mr Smellée, had arrived in the town as an exile. He had nothing except the clothes on his back and the family recipe for smelly cheese which he’d tucked in his sock. He had been driven out of his village in France when he started to make the cheese in his kitchen. The other villagers didn’t like the smell.
Thomas Tonks interrupted here. “How come your grandfather’s name was Smellie and yours isn’t?”
“Smellée, not Smellie,” Mr Smelleigh corrected him. “My father changed our surname to sound more English.”
“Sounds just as daft if you ask me!” whispered Thomas loudly to the girl next to him. Mr Smelleigh glared at him and so did the Beaver leader.
Mr Smelleigh went on to tell them how Mr Smellée arrived at a good time for the town. It used to be a coal mining town but all the coal had been used up. There were lots of people looking for work. So when Mr Smellée turned up waving his cheese recipe, people were delighted. They quickly helped him build a factory and start production. OK, so the cheese was horribly smelly, but it meant that the workers could earn wages again.
From the start, the cheese was a great success. Despite the pong, it was very tasty and people loved it.
“And so,” smiled Mr Smelleigh, “that is how the cheese factory began. Now, let’s go and see the production line.”
“Thank goodness!” muttered some of the Beavers. They thought Mr Smelleigh’s talk had been really, really boring.
It was much more fun seeing the huge vats of frothing milk. Mr Smelleigh explained how they used a combination of cow’s milk, sheep’s milk and another animal’s milk in secret proportions. That was the recipe for success.
“Please, sir!” Stanley Smith stuck up his hand.
“Yes, my lad?” beamed Mr Smelleigh. He thought it was important to encourage curious youngsters.
“What other animal’s milk do you use in your secret recipe?” asked Stanley.
“Well, that’s the secret!” smiled Mr Smelleigh.
“Is it rabbit’s milk?” suggested Thomas Tonks.
“No, now …”
“Is it crocodile’s?”
“No, now …”
“Is it pig’s milk?”
“Is it cat’s milk?”
“Elephant’s?”
“Hippopotamus milk?”
“Duck’s?”
The Beavers bombarded Mr Smelleigh with suggestions.
“NO, NONE OF THOSE!” said Mr Smelleigh firmly. “Now, let’s get on with the tour.”
“Llama’s milk?” That was Stanley again. The Beaver leader shook her head crossly at him. Stanley shut up.
Next they went to where the cheese was put into the diamond shaped moulds. That bit wasn’t very exciting. But the next bit was. This was where the cheese was taken down into the old coal mine to ripen for seven months, three weeks and four and a half days. Any more or any less, Mr Smelleigh explained, and the cheese didn’t smell properly.
Chapter 3 Going Underground
“Into the lift everyone and we will descend to the cheese ripening area,” commanded Mr Smelleigh. “You must all put on a miner’s hat with a lamp in it. I don’t allow electricity down in the mine. It might interfere with the cheese’s smell.”
To exclamations of “Cool!” and “Mega!”, the Beavers put on the hard hats and crowded into the lift. They began the slow descent into the coal mine. On the way down, Mr Smelleigh told them how the coal dust added to the special smell and flavour of the cheese.
“So that’s what the black crunchy bits are!” someone exclaimed.
“Yuk!” said Stanley, rather loudly. Mr Smelleigh pretended not to notice.
It was fun down in the coal mine. The cheeses were stacked in the old coal trucks which still sat on the rails. Mr Smelleigh told them how ponies used to pull the carts around.
Stanley had a brainwave. “Pit pony milk then?” he asked. Mr Smelleigh just sighed and shook his head.
“Have you thought of updating your storage facilities at all?” aske
d one tourist, looking in despair at the havoc the damp and coal dust were playing with her brand new, designer label, white trouser suit. “I mean, like not using coal trucks in a coal mine?”
“But Madam!” exclaimed Mr Smelleigh, horrified. “This is the traditional way of making our cheese. I couldn’t possibly change anything. And besides,” he added with a sniff, “it would be very expensive.”
Mr Smelleigh didn’t like spending any more money than he really had to. He was the sort of person who squeezed every last drop of toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube and stuck all the leftover bits of soap back together to make it last as long as possible. You could say he was mean with money I suppose.
“Hedgehog’s milk?” suggested Brain Baker.
Mr Smelleigh ignored that too.
“Right, back up we go,” ordered Mr Smelleigh. It took a while to round up all the Beavers. Penny Pickett and Mary Malone were playing hide and seek round the coal trucks. Thomas Tonks and Danny Davis were dropping large handfuls of coal dust onto some of the cheeses. Most of the others were rubbing coal dust onto their faces and pretending to be monsters.
“Ho, ho! Just high spirits!” chortled Mr Smelleigh. The Beaver leader glared at the troop.
Chapter 4 Testing Time
“We’ll finish our tour with a sampling session,” said Mr Smelleigh, leading them into a large room. “I have here a display of the smelliest things in the world to demonstrate that my cheese is definitely smellier than anything else.”
Mr Smelleigh waved his hand at a huge array of well-known smelly things. These included a heap of boiled cabbage, a sweaty vest, a skunk in a cage, a stink bomb and some rotten eggs.
“I need two volunteers to take the smell test,” urged Mr Smelleigh eagerly. Surprisingly no-one was very keen to offer.
“Beaver leader will do it!” piped up Billy Button, pushing her forwards. The Beaver leader silently vowed revenge on Billy.
“And I’ll do it,” said a jolly tourist, who was always game for anything.
“Right then, remove the pegs from your noses,” said Mr Smelleigh. (You’ll remember that people always had pegs on their noses near the cheese.)
“Do I have to?” quavered Beaver Leader anxiously.
Mr Smelleigh nodded. Beaver Leader swallowed hard and pulled it off. She took one sniff and fainted. The tourist took his peg off and went very green but managed to keep standing.
“Oh dear,” said Mr Smelleigh, carrying Beaver Leader’s limp figure over to a chair. “Here, you,” he said to Thomas. “You take her place.”
“OK,” shrugged Thomas. He pulled his peg off happily.
“Now,” went on Mr Smelleigh. “I will blindfold you. You must smell all the objects I hold in front of you and tell me which is the worst. And if it’s not my cheese, then I’ll eat the skunk,” he joked.
Everyone looked on in horror as Mr Smelleigh made Thomas and the tourist sniff all those revolting things, including a piece of his cheese.
“So which is the worst?” he asked, smiling smugly, taking off their blindfolds.
“That last one, definitely,” gasped the tourist. “Please, can I put my peg back on?” he begged.
“The last smelly object was my cheese!” announced Mr Smelleigh proudly. Everyone clapped.
“And what do you think, young man,” Mr Smelleigh demanded, turning to Thomas.
Thomas thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “they’re all pretty bad — but they’re not as bad as Stanley’s socks.”
Chapter 5 Stanley’s Socks
“What!” choked Mr Smelleigh. No-one had ever said such a thing before!
“Yep, Stanley’s socks are definitely worse than any of those,” went on Thomas. “You see, his Mum forgot to pack him any spare ones for our camping holiday, so he’s been wearing the same pair for a week. He’s even been wearing them in his sleeping bag because it’s cold in our tent. His socks really, really stink. He stuck them under my nose this morning and the smell was so bad I was sick into Brian’s sleeping bag, wasn’t I, Bri?”
Brian nodded vigorously to confirm this. “Yes, I was still in it at the time.”
The Beaver leader, who had just been coming round from her faint, heard what Thomas and Brian said and promptly fainted again.
Mr Smelleigh had gone white.
“So you are saying that Stanley’s socks really smell worse than my cheese?” he demanded in a strangled voice.
“Absolutely!”
There was uproar. A lot of the tourists walked off in disgust. One of them had a sister who was the editor of one of the national newspapers. She phoned her up at once on her mobile phone to tell her the news. Soon the whole world would know that Smelleigh’s cheese was no longer the smelliest thing in the world.
“You’ve got to eat your skunk now, Mr Smelleigh,” Brian reminded him.
“Yes, I did say I would, didn’t I?” whispered Mr Smelleigh. This was a nightmare. Something was smellier than his cheese! This couldn’t be happening.
Sighing, he picked up the skunk’s cage and started to carry it sadly to the canteen to ask the chef to make him some roast skunk sandwiches. Some of the Beavers burst into tears at the thought of the skunk being eaten.
Penny Pickett ran up to Mr Smelleigh.
“Please don’t eat your skunk, sir. He’s really sweet.”
“No, please don’t,” begged Mary Malone. “That would be very cruel.”
“Why don’t you eat Stanley’s socks instead?” suggested Rory Roberts.
“Yes, eat Stanley’s socks!” echoed the Beavers.
Mr Smelleigh started to cheer up. He didn’t want to eat his skunk. He rather liked the little chap. And if he ate Stanley’s socks, well, that would destroy them and his cheese would be the smelliest thing in the world again.
He put the skunk back. He turned to Stanley with a sickly smile.
“Please give me your socks, son,” he said.
Chapter 6 Stanley Escapes
“No!” Stanley was horrified. These socks were the only pair he had. He was also very proud of how smelly they were.
“Hand over your socks!” Mr Smelleigh stopped smiling and began to sound threatening.
“No!” Stanley started to back away. He looked to Beaver Leader for support but she was still stretched out on the floor.
“Give him your socks!” shouted all the other Beavers.
Then everyone began to chase Stanley. He headed back to the mine shaft, leapt into the lift and pressed the button to make it go down.
“Yah boo, can’t catch me!” he shouted smugly as he disappeared. The others were left watching.
When the lift got to the bottom, Stanley got out and jammed the door open with a piece of wood. That would stop the lift working so the others couldn’t come after him. He went and sat down. He began to think.
Now, he was safe down here, but he began to realise that he couldn’t stay in the mine forever. Besides, it was corned beef fritters for tea tonight back at camp and Stanley loved corned beef fritters. He didn’t want to miss those. And it really smelt down here with all the cheese, even with a peg on his nose. Mind you, a lot of the smell was probably his socks.
And it was very dark. Stanley had forgotten to bring a miner’s lamp with him. He couldn’t see a thing.
He felt in his pocket. There was a piece of string, a marble, a broken pencil, a very old, furry bit of chocolate, a dead fly, a sweet wrapper, Thomas’s woggle and a box of matches. He’d found the matches in the car park on the way in to the cheese factory.
“Brilliant, just what I need!” thought Stanley.
Now Stanley knew a lot of things. He knew that girls were silly, that Beybladez were cool, that teachers were horrid, that Mum got cross when he pulled his sister’s hair and that his socks smelt. But he didn’t know that it was very dangerous to light a match in a coal mine. He didn’t know that the coal dust in the atmosphere meant that the place could catch fire. Added to that, there were all the fumes
from the millions of cheeses, not to mention his socks. So he didn’t know that the very worst thing he could possibly do would be to light a match.
Stanley lit a match.
It flickered and went out.
“Bother!” muttered Stanley and lit another one.
This one flared into life.
“Great!” grinned Stanley, but then suddenly the air all around him seemed to catch fire.
“Yikes!” yelped Stanley. He dived for cover under a truckful of cheese.
Up at the top of the mineshaft, Mr Smelleigh saw a great orange ball of flame at the bottom.
“Oh my goodness gracious!” he cried. “That boy’s socks have set my cheese mine on fire. Everyone run!”
Chapter 7 No More Cheese
Mr Smelleigh pressed the emergency alarm and loud bells rang throughout the cheese factory. Everyone ran for it. All the mice ran for it. All the cats ran for it. All the townspeople ran for it. They all took cover in the woods around the town.
Just as the last person was safe, the mine blew up. There was a mighty roar followed by a terrific booming noise. The countryside echoed. Mr Smelleigh’s cheese factory flew into the air in one piece but came back down in hundreds of thousands. Cheese went everywhere and covered everything. The smell of gently roasting cheese was overwhelming.
All went quiet. People began to crawl out from their hiding places. Coughing and spluttering and wiping toasted cheese off their faces, they made their way to the huge crater that had appeared where the cheese factory used to be. It was a deep, deep crater. It went right down to the bottom of the old coal mine.
Mr Smelleigh peered over the edge. In all the rush he had completely forgotten about Stanley. So had everyone else. But now they all remembered.
“Poor little lad,” sniffed Mr Smelleigh. Now that the socks were certainly destroyed, he could feel sorry for the boy.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” moaned Beaver Leader. “Whatever will I tell his mum and dad?”
But just then there was a movement at the bottom of the crater. An upturned coal truck started to wriggle. It wriggled some more and then a blackened figure appeared. It didn’t have any hair. It didn’t have any socks since they’d been blown off. But it was obviously Stanley. He waved cheerfully at everyone. Luckily the truckload of cheese he’d sheltered under was one that had been forgotten about and accidentally left in the mine for about two years. The cheese had gone hard and tough and had protected Stanley when the explosion had occurred.