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When you are on a pier you are on the sea and on the land. This is like the painting ladies who were on their chairs but also on the leaves and the mud and the dirt. Indoors and outdoors. I like this feeling because it’s like being in the wormhole when you are here and also not here. In the wormhole you see people you know but they can’t see you. You can see the sea through the gaps in the floor on the pier and sometimes you can see people swimming around so it’s a bit the same. Once I saw a boy jump from the pier into the water only he crashed into a sharp bit of iron and was bleeding. I thought it served him right because he was showing off and shouting but other people started shouting that he needed help and someone climbed down and got him. Mother said he was very lucky and I thought she meant that he was lucky to have so many people bothered about him but I think she meant he was lucky not to have been dead. Afterwards we watched some people making pottery using a wheel. They put their hands into the sticky clay and a pot would appear quite quickly. I think we did this to take the memory of the bleeding boy away but I still thought about it and it gave me goosebumps. After that we had coffee-flavoured ice cream and I forgot about the boy and noticed that the ice cream and the clay looked like each other and I supposed you could make a pot out of ice cream but you would have to always have it in the fridge or live in Greenland. Also you could only put cold drinks or pencils in it.
When I grow up I will be lucky.
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If you fall over at school the teacher will put yellow on your skin to stop it going bad. This happens a lot because the playground is made like a road and there is gravel to slip on and a climbing frame to fall off. The climbing frame is where the bigger children prefer to be at playtime because it’s a bit round the corner so the teacher in charge cannot see. The big ones like to make the little ones climb up to the highest place even if they are scared. The highest place has a bit like a ladder that goes across with nothing to hold onto. I think you are meant to hang on underneath it like a monkey but they use it like pirates do walking the plank. If you fall it will hurt. In the winter a girl in my class fell off and had to go to hospital. When she came back she had a bandage on her arm because it was broken. I asked her what it felt like and how they repaired it but she just said it hurt and let me touch her bandage which was quite hard like balsa wood. She said she would ask her mother and if she says it’s ok I can write on it. Her name is Denise and I know where she lives. The boys that made her break her arm got the cane from Mr Stuart who always does the caning. I didn’t see it but Simon from Form 5 said they didn’t cry. I would have liked it if they had cried but even better if they had been made to walk the plank and broke their legs.
When I grow up I will have a climbing frame in the garden so I can swing from it without anyone seeing.
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Dad has bought a car. He has to learn to drive because he only has one real leg. His other leg came off when he was little because he didn’t do the Highway Code. In the morning he has to put his leg on but during the night he hops. I don’t know why but no one finds it funny, probably because he does it every night so it’s quite boring. I told Keith about it and he said that he must have lost it in the war. I was happy to think that because otherwise it seemed a
waste to lose a leg crossing the road. The car is a Hillman Minx and the colour is camel. It has a 1500cc engine and four gears. It is in the garage and I am allowed to sit in the driver seat and pretend to drive as long as I don’t try to change gear. It smells like a shop. It has carpet on the floor and a cupboard to put things in. I like it more than anything in the house because it works and has an engine. Dad takes it out with his teacher and has to do things from the Highway Code like going round corners backwards. He looks quite okay when he gets back so I don’t think he crashes. If it’s been raining he wipes the car before putting it away because otherwise it will go rusty. I think he likes the car almost as much as me, maybe more than his own mother which I think would make God quite angry but I think he’s right because his mother has been very mean to my mother and she won’t talk to her. I think Mother also likes the car because it’s very comfortable and smells nice but she can’t go in it properly until Dad has passed.
When I grow up I will have a better car with more gears and cupboards.
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My coin collection has seventeen threepenny bits in it. I keep them all together in a Smarties tube. They are not valuable but they are the only coins I have that aren’t round so they are as different as my bike with the two crossbars or Keith’s sister who has to wear an eyepatch. I think it’s something to do with her sticky eye but Keith doesn’t talk about it because he says it’s not polite to stare and he feels sorry for her. I don’t feel sorry like him but I keep the threepenny bits separate from all the round coins but all together to show that I understand. I have lots of other coins that my uncle who had cancer gave me. He also gave me his collection of National Geographic books but the coins are made of metal so they are higher on my list of good old things. Some of the coins came in packets with writing on. I can’t read all the writing as it’s in old fashioned pencil but some of them say fine and mint. Dad says they might be valuable one day but I don’t really care because I want to keep them and not spend them on food or clothes that are a lot more ordinary. Keith’s sister’s name is Janice so that’s another J to add to my list.
When I grow up I will have some sovereigns in packets.
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I don’t understand why people move. Andrew went to Essex and now my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Trevor are moving to Coventry. They have been near us and I don’t think they want to move away from us because we have been over twice since Dad can drive the car even though he has a pretend leg. The last time we went over they had a new cat and Auntie Margaret made coffee that made mother feel bad, because her coffee isn’t real. I don’t like coffee and I don’t suppose it would be better if it was real because the not-real smells good but tastes bad. Besides, I don’t know what she means by ‘real’. I understand the difference between a book and an engine so it might be like that. Coventry is a long way off even with a car, and so far we haven’t gone further than Dartford because of the petrol and wearing out the car. I think Dad prefers to polish the car rather than drive it because with only one real leg I think it’s quite hard work and sometimes he makes a terrible noise with the gears. I hope we get Auntie Margaret’s cat if they don’t take it, because it hasn’t got a tail and looks more like a rabbit.
When I grow up I will never move.