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I had a brother but he went on holiday and never came back. One of the girls at school told me this wasn’t true so I asked Mother and she said it was. I asked if he had a wormhole like me but Mother was not listening and so I stopped thinking about it and went to the wood with Jean. I asked her what it was like to have a sister. She said it was quite bad because they are always talking. I agree with her that too much talking is like too much strawberry ice cream: it makes you sick. I asked Jean if she had heard about my brother and she said she had but that her mother said it was best to forget it so she had. I am not sure that’s true because unless there is a dustbin with a lid in your head things can’t be thrown away properly.
When I grow up I will throw some bad things away for ever.
*
The water fountain at school is near the dustbins so it smells, especially in the summer. Some people say this is dangerous because you can get terrible diseases when water mixes with bad air so nobody drinks from the fountain but they use the sink in the toilet instead. That also smells bad so I don’t drink at all except at dinner time when we get jugs and blue cups or pink cups or yellow cups. I will only drink from the blue ones. Because nobody drinks from the fountain near the dustbins we can set up a secret base and not be disturbed. There are four of us now: me, Brian, Keith and Simon. Simon is new and always wears his mac even when it’s not raining or cold. He is not from our village so I don’t know why he comes to our school. He has to walk quite a long way and his shoes are muddy from the fields so he has to wipe them with paper towels before going into the classroom. People say the towels look like they have poo on but he makes them smell them to show that it’s only mud. Simon is good at football so people do what he says also I think he might live on a farm because of the mud and the mac. Each of us has a number and I am number nought which I think is better than number one that Simon has. Keith is number two and Brian is number three which is the worst. We do spying missions around the playground where we look at people without them knowing then tell each other what we saw. Simon wanted to spy on the girls in the girls’ toilet but we agreed that if we did that we might go to prison or get caned by Mr Stuart so it was better to spy on them while they were at the climbing frame talking. That was not hard so next time we need to find a new mission to do.
When I grow up I will be a spy.
*
The snails are around and they are really big. Judith and Jean and me walked to the donkey and all along the road were snails. Some had got squashed by cars, trying to cross the road. I wondered why a snail would want to cross the road because the road is a long way for them and the other side is the same, just grass and hedge. Judith said that they may have been getting away from birds because birds eat them and French people do. She knows that this is true because she writes to a French girl in French. Judith is different to us because she likes doing really hard things like speaking French and long sums. She has to have pills though, because she sometimes faints. She says they are made of iron which is sensible because if you faint it helps keep you from breaking. The snails are bigger than last year. If they keep on getting bigger every year then the French people will get fat. As we walk along we pick up any that are on the road and carry them to the other side but when we get to the donkey the
snails have gone from both sides because there isn’t a hedge just a gate with a donkey. We pull up grass to give to it and it chews it up with big brown teeth. Where it lives is very muddy so it is not like the donkeys at the seaside; it is bare and dirty. But I think it knows we are kind to the snails so it doesn’t bite. Jean says she wants to climb over and see if she can ride it. She likes horses and broke her arm when she fell off one. She doesn’t do it because Judith said she would tell her mother because it is dangerous. I wanted her to do it because I have seen cowboys ride horses until they stop being jumpy and cross. Now Jean is cross and the twins don’t talk to each other until we get to the barn and see a rat.
When I grow up I will speak French and ride a horse.
*
I didn’t use to like doing art but now Dad has cleared the shed I like it more. It’s all about making hard things easy to think about. Like Heaven or the afterlife or time. All you need do is think of those things and then start painting and whatever comes out is right. Mother says it’s abstract but I think it’s just easy, not like painting a person or a donkey; that’s really hard because they are real things that are easy to think about but hard to draw. Now the shed has more space in it I can hang up my pictures to dry, whereas before they were in a pile and got stuck to each other. Jean came to see them and I let her have a go. At first she wanted to do a horse but I persuaded her to do death and love instead. She did a skull and a heart which looked quite real and took her a long time and a lot of rubbing out. I explained that she needed to be more abstract so she did a sort of scribble using red and black paint. It looked more like a bonfire so we decided that’s what it was and hung it up to dry. November 5th is a long way away but when it comes she can use her picture as an invitation or a poster. At school we paint pictures of bonfires before Guy Fawkes Night so now she doesn’t have to do it but she will probably still have to because school makes you do things in class and not in a shed.
When I grow up I will be an artist or an inventor because for both jobs you make whatever you like.
*
There is a new swimming pool to go to which is better than the old one. In the old one you could only stay in until your turn is over. In the new one you can stay in for ever if you want to. The best things are the machine at the door that sells chicken pies and the pool you walk through on the way from the changing room. I think of it as the wormhole: one side is changing; the other side is splashing and even drowning. I don’t think people drown often because there are people on ladders who can dive in. When we go with school we stay in the little pool and get taught how to do strokes like frogs and butterflies and dogs and then go back to the changing room and all get changed together. When I go with the twins and their mother I am the only boy so I go to the changing room on my own and get my own basket and medal. This is much better because it is private and everyone is not shouting or looking at your willy because one boy has hair coming on his and he says that everyone will have that but it’s not true because I have been to the future and I don’t remember any hair except on my head and a little bit on my legs.
When I grow up I will not have any hair around my willy.