The Taylor TurboChaser. David Baddiel

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 hot water …?”

      “They dissolve.”

      Sanjay frowned. “Like instant coffee always does.”

      “Yes,” said Rahul. “But they’ll look cool in the tin.”

      Sanjay shrugged and nodded, and put this observation down as one of the many that meant his son was a genius he would never understand.

      Bean Pants. This was the only invention that Rahul had made that didn’t have a number, because Rahul felt that it went against its brand, which was – and he often said this doing an inverted commas mime – “fun”. It was pants, the lining of which he’d filled with beans. Not baked beans: whatever the beans are that are in bean bags. Which meant that, wherever you sat, you could feel like you were sitting on a bean bag.

      “Fun”!There were many other inventions on Rahul’s slate, by which I mean in his head, or doodles in his rough book.

      But these were the biggies. Or at least they were until Amy’s wheelchair came along.

      

      Rahul sighed, and handed the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503 back to Janet.

      “Eight pounds, please,” he said.

      Janet shook her head, and opened her mouth to continue to protest.

      But Amy cut her off.

      “Hello? Never mind the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz!”

      “503.”

      “What?”

      “The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503,” said Rahul.

      “Whatevs.” Amy spread out her hands. “This is going to be your best invention ever!”

      Janet frowned at her. “Rahul’s going to invent you?”

      “Not me, idiot,” said Amy, pointing downwards. “This. The wheelchair.”

      “Huh? But it’s invented already …” said Janet. “I can see it very clearly.”

      “Amy thinks I can re-invent it …” said Rahul.

      “What does that mean?”

      “It means …” said Amy, “he’s going to make it into … well, I’ll show you.”

      She turned and faced away from them, towards a free section of the playground, where no other kid was fighting, running or skipping.

      “Taylor lines up her car, in pole position on the Indianapolis 500 track.”

      “Who are you talking to?” said Janet. “And why has your voice gone so deep?”

      “She’s being a motor racing commentator, Janet,” whispered Rahul.

      “Oh,” said Janet.

      Amy’s eyes went up. “She’s watching for the chequered flag. A lot of work has gone into this machine since the last race. Rahul, head of her team of mechanics, has turbo-charged its engines, and reworked the tyres, and streamlined the body, and now it’s a speed-machine.”

      She mimed turning a key.

      “Brrrrrrrmmmmmm. Brrrrrrrrrrmmmmm. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm! Listen to that! Even from the commentary box we can hear it. It sounds …” and here her voice went very deep, as she did an impression of one of the men on a TV show about cars that seemed to always be on some channel somewhere “… like the devil clearing his throat.”

      “Right,” said Rahul. “I’m really not sure – even though I am, obviously, great at inventing – that I can make your wheelchair into the kind of vehicle you’re imagi—”