Bramley Checks the Engine

Bramley plays rugby, eats like a horse, and has a saying for almost everything. His favourite is from his grandad, who used to fix tractors.

“Before you blame the driver, check the engine.”

In the Clue Club, Bramley is the one who checks the engine. The body.

It started with a boy called Ollie, who sat behind Bramley in science. Ollie had become, as Bramley put it, “a total grump.” He sighed when anyone asked him anything. He rolled his eyes at the teacher. When Bramley asked to borrow a ruler, Ollie snapped, “Get your own,” so loudly that half the class turned round.

“He’s just rude,” said a girl at the next table.

Bramley wasn’t so sure. He had noticed something about himself that year. On rugby mornings, if he skipped breakfast, he turned into a different person by eleven o’clock. Short. Spiky. Everything annoying. Then he ate a sandwich and the whole world got nicer again, even though nothing in the world had changed.

So he started watching Ollie, the way his grandad would have watched a stuttering tractor.

Ollie yawned all through first lesson. His eyes had dark smudges under them. He never seemed to have a snack at break. And science was right next to the music room, where the Year 7 drummers practised every morning with the door open. Bramley could barely hear himself think in there, and he’d had nine hours’ sleep.

He mentioned it at the Clue Club.

“I think his engine’s running on empty,” he said. “Not enough sleep, no breakfast, and the drums. That would make me grumpy too.”

“Could be,” said Inez. “How could you check?”

Bramley didn’t want to make it weird. So the next day, at break, he sat on the wall near Ollie and opened his lunchbox.

“My mum packs me enough for three people,” he said, which was true. “Want a flapjack?”

Ollie looked at him suspiciously. Then he took it.

It turned out Ollie’s family had a new baby. The baby cried most of the night, and the flat was small, so Ollie heard all of it. His mum and dad were exhausted too, and mornings had become a scramble where breakfast didn’t happen.

He wasn’t rude. He was running on fumes.

Bramley didn’t fix the baby. Nobody could fix the baby. But he could do a few small things. He shared his enormous lunch. He asked the teacher if their table could move away from the music room door, and she said yes. And Ollie told his mum about the drums and the no-breakfast thing, and she found some cereal bars he could grab on the way out.

Ollie is still tired. The baby is still loud. But he doesn’t snap at Bramley any more, and last week he lent Bramley a ruler without even being asked.

Here’s what Bramley tells new members of the Clue Club.

When someone is acting difficult, check the body first. Have they slept? Have they eaten? Is it too loud, too hot, too crowded where they are? Are they unwell, or sore, or growing so fast that their legs ache?

Those are the easiest clues to miss, because they don’t look like feelings. They just look like a bad mood. But a hungry body is a cross body, a tired brain is a slow brain, and noise wears everybody down.

Before you blame the driver, check the engine. Sleep, food, noise.