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I am ill. I know this because when I woke up my bed was wet. I am not ill a lot but when I am I get a special thing which makes me see and feel things that aren’t real
as if they are real. Last night I woke up and my bed was made of bricks. I could feel them pressing down and I called out for help. Mother came and changed the sheets. She must have taken away the bricks at the same time because after she had gone
I checked. I am very hot so Mother has taken me to the doctor. We have to walk and
I feel very ill so we stop a lot so it takes a long time. The doctor lives in a small wooden house with birds in a cage and a bell that rings when he is ready. It’s dark because the windows have plants on the inside and outside. He also has a cat that seems to like the birds and doesn’t try to eat them. I don’t know why but the cat is very fat and must eat a lot of food so probably doesn’t need birds as well. There are other people waiting as well as a lady at the desk ordering people about and writing.
I ask Mother what she is writing and she says that it’s not stories. I think it’s probably lists of illnesses you can get that week like a shopping list. The doctor has a funny voice and makes me breathe until I cough and can’t stop. A lot of stuff comes out. Whooping cough must be on the lady’s list because I have it. Mother says I won’t go to school. I am very happy being ill.
When I grow up I will be a doctor and let people get off school.
*
After a while whooping cough is not that bad and seeing things stops so you can watch television all day because you don’t feel like making things or being outside. The programmes in the day are for school children but they are a lot better than school lessons because they are all in black and white so they don’t hurt your eyes and you can turn the sound down and ignore them and think instead. Every programme starts with a clock which is interesting to watch then someone says what the programme is going to be about and then it starts. I can’t say what they are about because they are all the same. Someone talks about something and shows things like
a tap running or a picture of a king, sometimes with numbers but because it’s only pretend I don’t bother to put them on one of my lists. People like television a lot but I only like one programme where some boys build a fort and other buildings and carts. They seem to have a fine time but it’s in America so I don’t think you can do that in England because we don’t have enough planks made from really tall trees or muskets (which is a type of gun where the bullet is put in with a long stick). I leave the television on all afternoon because Mother says it means I am still learning but she doesn’t know I am thinking about making a musket rather than watching a tap running.
When I grow up I will watch the same television programme every day
*
I sat on the wall with the twins and their mother took our photograph. I coughed a lot but nobody minded. We did this last year. I don’t mind doing it because it involves sitting and staring and nothing else and because of the cough I don’t always feel like thinking or doing. It takes a while to get us looking right. I don’t really know what ‘right’ is but their mother does so she tells us to be closer and look happy. So I pretended our dog had come back from holiday. After it was over she showed us the picture from last year. I think I look the same, as if I have just passed through the wormhole and none of the things I think I remember have happened. This is a happy thought because it might be true, in which case the wormhole works without me knowing. We had tea at their house. It was chicken which was special because it came through a hatch in their wall when it was ready and we sat at the table in their back room not at the kitchen table. Judith said it was like the chicken came from a chicken coop (the name for the house for a chicken) and laughs, but Jean and I didn’t think it was funny because we didn’t know what a coop was, so we made her sit further round so she
couldn’t see the television. Mother says they are better than us. I don’t know why she says this but it may have something to do with knowing words and these arrangements for tea.
When I grow up I will have a hatch (coop)
*
I am back at school now that the whooping cough has gone. It feels worse than ever.
I wish I could have whooping cough forever. Brian said that while I was gone people had been mean to him and said that he loved me. I said he should fight them if they said that but I knew he wouldn’t. Keith said his sister had whooping cough when she was a baby and had nearly died. I wondered if that was why her eyes were so sticky because mine were sticky when stuff was coming from down my throat. Perhaps because they are poor they didn’t deserve the medicine I got. Keith said that everyone got the same medicine and it was free.
Keith knows a lot of things so this is probably true. Maybe her sticky eyes are just the way her eyes came out when God made them in which case God must have made a mistake which is not possible. I could ask her about her sticky eyes but Mother says I should be careful about asking question because people don’t always like answering. I understand that because Mrs Holness asks questions around the class and I don’t like answering those even if I know the answer. At hometime I walked home as usual past the churchyard where the crystals came from. I thought about God making mistakes when he makes people and wondered if the answer was in the Bible. If so I could ask my Sunday school teacher as she is very very old and probably knows even more than Keith.
When I grow up I will know more things than Keith.
*
When the painting ladies are in the woods I like to hide and watch because they look like they are inside when they are outside because they bring chairs and tables and bags and rugs from indoors and put them on the leaves and the grass and eat food like sausage rolls and jam
sandwiches. Then they sit together all facing the field and stay there for hours. I can’t see the pictures they paint but I think they are all the same.
Mother likes to paint pictures. They are mainly of fruit and plates but she also paints outsides like trees and fields. She always says they are not very good but I think they are quite good and she is just shy to say so. She is very shy because when she talks to people her voice goes funny as if everything is funny. Perhaps if she stopped doing that she would not feel shy because she would have a normal voice like she has at home and that would make her fit in. I have seen her painting in the woods and she looks happy. Even though she is with other ladies that should make her shy her voice does not go funny. That might be because she is so busy painting the scene. I can’t see anything interesting to paint but she says that when you are outside everything is interesting to paint. I think she is wrong but I don’t say so because Mother is sometimes very sad and frightened, a bit like Brian, and I don’t want to hit her like I do Brian; I just want her to be happy again. So when she is painting a field or a tree it’s best to leave things alone and go home.
When I grow up I won’t paint or be an artist.
*
I don’t see Jill very much anymore because she has some new friends to play with. I can see them in the garden sitting beneath the pigeon house. I don’t think they realise how busy the pigeons are above them, flying in and out and waiting about, because they are too busy talking. I like pigeons more than some other birds because they are bigger and do more things, specially if you give them a house to live in. As well as coming in and out they sit on the roof and call out to each other. At least I think it’s to each other because if it’s to us or to some other animal they are wasting time because we don’t understand it like we don’t understand people from France or Finland. Some people race them from places like France all the way back to their houses in England. I know this because I got a pigeon clock at a jumble sale for checking how long they take. You take the ring off the pigeon’s leg and put it in the hole and the clock seals it up and prints a piece of paper. I have never been able to try it because you need a pigeon so I just use it as a clock. These ones are not for racing just for keeping because Sid likes them and thankfully doesn’t shoot them which is a blessing. When I was little I made an elastic gun to shoot at the pigeons. I didn’t know I liked them then. I actually hit one which made me like them because it didn’t die or anything but I think I hurt it but I didn’t like the feeling so I decided to like all pigeons and just fire my gun at people rather than animals.
When I grow up I will have at least one pigeon as a pet so I can use my clock properly.
In 2019, I wrote nothing for the Fleeting website.
2020