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When I am not inventing, I like to watch the pigeons on our roof. We get loads because Jill’s dad has built a pigeon house in the back garden next to the pond. So before they go to bed the pigeons walk around the roof of our house. I suppose they are not tired yet. I give them names and voices. If I am with Andrew or Jill I talk out loud but if I am on my own I talk inside my head as if I am inside a wireless.
I wonder what would happen to the pigeons if I turned the wormhole back on and they accidentally flew inside. Where would they go? Would they fly off and meet that dead Pekingese? That would be bad because they make nice cooing noises and nobody would know they were there because of all the snorting from that dead dog.
I love wirelesses even if they don’t work. As well as making saws from washing machines Grandad knew how to fix them. He gave me a bread tin full of radio parts. Some are glass, some are china and some are rubber. A few are made of wax. I lit
one like it was a candle using Dad’s blow torch. It melted but didn’t burn much.
The smell was bad so I mixed in some rose petals to cover it up. I thought I had invented a fire perfume-maker. Andrew thought it smelt ok but would probably work better as an explosive so we hit it with a hammer but that did nothing so we threw it all away and went back to the pigeons but they had gone to bed.
When I grow up I will be a perfumer.
*
Mum had dropped a milk bottle in the new fridge and it had split the plastic shelf. Now she is crying on the bed.
I want to invent something with the bag of taps. I have decided that they have been put there to stop me using the electric saw. I respect that because all tools are dangerous in the wrong hands. There are probably a hundred taps in the bag. Why would a house need a hundred taps? That’s fifty baths or sinks or twenty-five of each type. That’s very clean people or clothes or washing up.
I note the connection with my remaining hole and write it down as a clue in my list.
It seems that someone has planned to make lots of new baths to go with mine. I think about keeping this a secret as it might be important but the cat has my tongue so I let it out to Jill. She says her dad will know because he has some medals from the war.
I tell her not to tell him yet because of his gun. Brainwave!
That’s what I will make. A tap makes a perfect gun. That way if Jill’s dad were to want to kill us instead of the rats I could defend us. It’s a pity the rose-perfumed wax didn’t explode, as my book on guns (opened so many times the glue holding the pages has dropped out so it is no longer a book just pages) tells me I need a propellant. There is no mention of rose petals or wax but there is mention of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur in five/seven/five proportions to make gunpowder. The best charcoal is made from willow it says so I roast my cricket bat in the old bread bin using Dad’s blow torch. It takes a long time and a lot of paraffin. At the end of it my head hurts and my eyes hurt a lot. Jill says that’s a good sign.
Tomorrow I will ask Dad to get me some saltpetre and sulphur. When I grow up I will be a pyroman and fix Mum’s new fridge.
*
The shed was once Grandad’s. He is dead with coughing all his life. I was a bit sad as he was an inventor like me but I was glad because we got all his tins as well as his shed. I don’t think Grandad liked anything other than things and wrestling. I know that because he left one hundred and forty-one tins called Old Virginia with different things in them. Some of them have just one thing in like a door bolt or a chain but others have hundreds of little things like staples or washers. Some things are sticky and some are dry and chalky. Although he has painted what they are on the side of the tin I had to ask Dad what a grommet was and he said be careful. Grommets don’t look dangerous but I suppose you never know. Swallowing would be fine as they have a hole in them; you could still breathe. I suppose you could put one on your willy because that how they make dogs stop being bad so it might work on boys. It didn’t work at all on March so you might end up going on holiday and never coming back.
I know about the wrestling because we watched it together on Saturday afternoons and it was the only time he didn’t cough because he was too busy shouting. Once he shouted so hard he kicked his bottle of beer across the carpet. After that the room always smelt nice but Grandma said it made her sick and that Grandad made her sick and that she would sit in the kitchen but she stayed in the sitting room and watched the wrestling with us which was nice because she let me lean across her lap like a dog.
I miss my dog. I wish he wasn’t dead.
When I grow up I will bring my March back to life and my grandad but not my grandma. I may have to turn on the wormhole again.
*
Dad took me to Boots to get the saltpetre and the sulphur. Saltpetre is potassium nitrate and is white. Sulphur is called flowers of sulphur and is yellow. I also bought some sulphur sweets in all sorts of colours. I ate them in our car on the way home.
Gunpowder is easy to make as long as you are patient and sensible. The recipe is to grind the three ingredients up using a pestle and mortar. I had one as part of a chemistry set I had never opened as it was obviously a toy rather than real chemistry. It had a picture of a boy on the box. He wasn’t wearing a tie so it was likely he was just playing not working. That’s no good at all! “Things worth doing are worth doing work.” Play is for babies and children. The boy looks a lot like Andrew, so I took a note to talk about it later with Jill before we opened it up to Andrew. I think Jill might like the picture but she can’t have the chemistry set as it has one or two ingredients labelled ‘poison’ – another present from Auntie Margaret.
Another surprise is that gunpowder does not explode easily. Hitting it with a hammer is as ineffective as hitting waxy radio bits and rose petals. All those shows where people throw barrels of gunpowder down mountains and they blow up and cause an avalanche must use special gunpowder because I only managed to throw up a coating of grey dust across the bench that got muddled up with the dust left by dead Grandad or the sawdust left by my dad when he made a seed frame.
Now I need a number two very very badly. Mum says it was the sulphur sweets but I can’t see the connection. No time to add a list.
* Swimming is good for my body says my mother. I am more interested in the black pool.
We ride our bikes to see the pool. The water is black because the pool has been left inside the house for years and no one can get in. To see it we have to look through the windows and they are covered in moss from inside so there are only a few places left you can see in. One day you won’t be able to see in at all so we make hay while it’s still possible. We all agree it’s brilliant, better even than the stagnant pond further back down the lane where if you throw in a stone in it throws up a slimy green tail, opens a black hole then closes it down again and disappears. The black pool still has chairs around it like people will come and put their watches and clothes on and that makes it feel more like they may be in the water, it’s just we can’t see them because the moss is in the way. If people are in the water they must surely be in another wormhole because we can’t hear them and the water is very still. I wonder if this is the source of my wormhole.
Jill and Andrew want to go but I could stay all day. They prefer swimming. I might have to move them down my list and find someone who just likes looking to move to the top.
When I grow up I will just look as well as invent.
*
I have found someone who just likes looking.
It was easy. I told Andrew that I didn’t like swimming but I did like looking at the pool. He said he would do the same. So he’s on the top of my list still. I am not sure about Jill.
Because of her dad she may have to stick with swimming but we all agree that looking is best anyway.
We stand facing each other without laughing. Jill is very white. Something to do with her blood, her mum says. Andrew is very red like my mother’s hair. Jill says I am quite brown but that’s only because she is so white. We start to describe each other the way you are meant to in a story but that is boring so we give it up. The best kind of looking is secret looking so we go down to the woods to climb a tree and spy on people.
For ages no one comes so we just tear leaves off the tree and drop them down to see which one is first. Eventually Brian comes. We all know him well because he likes to stand in the woods a lot and show his willy to the girls. Jill has been told to run home if she sees him but with both of us to protect her so she doesn’t bother. As Brian doesn’t see Jill because she’s up a tree we don’t see his willy which is a shame because it would be a good-looking thing. We decide it’s best not to let Jill’s mum know we saw Brian because of her dad.
As we walk home for tea we see a giant pink crab in someone’s dustbin. I have made a list of the best lookings I have had so far:
• The black swimming pool
• The crab
(I can’t decide which of these two should be number one.)
• The pigeon with the broken leg
• Jill’s white arm
• My bike when I have washed it
• Andrew’s birth mark
• March’s old lead that Dad uses to keep the gate shut
• An unopened book
• A gun
• Jill weeing in the middle of the road
• My sister’s confirmation veil
• Instant Whip
When I grow up I will be confirmed and wear a veil.
*
Jill’s dad is called Sid. I like this name because it’s the shortest one I know so easy to write on a list.
Sid’s job is to cut the grass and to clean the car. He is the first person on our road to have a green car. Mother says that is because he is some kind of artist and that artists like bright colours and she shows me some impression paintings done by Frenchmen. The pictures in the
book are in black and white so I don’t really see the point but I don’t tell her because this is her most important hobby after cooking and cleaning. Sid is very quiet. Even when he is mowing or washing he never talks to anyone loudly. When I play at Jill’s he is usually inside in the dining room with his gun poking out the window waiting for the rats. I suppose this is why he is always so quiet. Jill says it’s something to do with the war but the war was over a long time ago and I don’t think it had artists in it.
When I grow up I will have a medal and a green car.
*
Andrew’s house is different from ours on the outside but in the inside it’s the same but without the wormhole.
It smells different to our house and the stairs have carpet all the way across and you can’t slide in your socks on the wooden floor in the hall because it’s covered in the same carpet. The carpet means that it’s more fun to jump down the stairs because it looks like soft sand and we can pretend it’s the desert when we jump. I can jump from six steps up because my legs are really strong from climbing the washing pole in the garden. Andrew manages only five steps because he is a lot fatter than me and his legs get very red and his face gets wet. I want to hit him a bit when he looks like that. Once a teacher said that my legs were too thin and I needed to eat more eggs. I hated her after that and wanted to hit her too.
Now I know what the smell is in Andrew’s house. It’s eggs. He must eat a lot of eggs; that’s why he has fat legs.
When I grow up I will hit Andrew and fat people and teachers
*
Jill has a new dog. It’s called Fred which is the same name that she gave to the guinea pig. It’s a German sausage dog which means it’s very very low down. It doesn’t seem to mind if Jill puts clothes on it or even paints its paws blue as if it was wearing slippers. Jill likes to dress me up sometimes. I won’t let her paint me as that would make a mess and would probably make my bath a funny colour and Mum would think I was ill or had a secret. I keep it secret that Jill dresses me up even from Andrew even though I think he would like to join in or look. We do it in the scruffy bit at the side of the house where Dad keeps bricks and bags of mud. She brings a bag of dressing up clothes, not all boys’ stuff either, and makes me stand on the bricks like a statue while she arranges everything. I get quite bored but I do it for her because in the end she is nice and doing things for her makes me feel grown-up. Besides, in Sunday School we were told that Jesus did things for other people like feed them fish and make them better, so wearing a girl’s dress is not hard work and might mean I go to Heaven. In Heaven the angels wear dresses not trousers so I might fit in well.
When I grow up I will go to Heaven and fit in well.