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At the bottom of the road is a railway station. I am allowed to go there to do trainspotting. I have an Observer’s Book of Trains with all the trains in England and lots and lots of lists that tell you things like how many wheels they’ve got. I go there on my own because neither Jill or Andrew are interested in trains and going on my own is more grown-up. There aren’t that many trains going to our station and most of them are the same type but I did once see a steam train but it wasn’t in the book so it must not be English. When I am waiting for the trains I watch the people on the platforms. Once I saw a lady be sick into her hand. Some of it splashed on the floor next to her. I was almost sick watching and everyone near her moved away but she seemed alright and went back inside the station, I suppose because she was afraid people would laugh or to wash the sick off her hand or maybe she just went home and went to bed. I would have done that if I had been sick. Another time a blind man was at the station. He had a white stick but no dog. I thought he might walk off the platform and get killed but he stood very still well back from the edge and waited for his train and a man talked to him just like he was normal. I wondered if his dog was dead like March or had run away. It can’t be fun for a dog to look after a blind man all day long because the dog has to always be on a lead and the blind man can’t throw sticks or run fast without falling over.
When I grow up I won’t be blind.
*
After watching real trains I like to get out my train set. I only have one train and two carriages and the track is a circle. It needs two batteries to work and they are expensive and Dad says I need to reserve power and I have to be careful to remember to disconnect everything when I finish playing. I don’t understand why Andrew likes the train set but doesn’t like real trains but he always wants to play with it even on days when I haven’t been at the station first which is stupid. I am beginning to think that his behaviour means he isn’t the right person to go at the top of my list after all. Jill can’t go there as she is a girl so that is a problem. Sometimes I let Andrew drive the train. He likes to make it go as fast as it can which means it comes off the track. I tell him that he needs to be more careful and make it like the speed of the train is real even though it’s tiny compared to the real thing. Because he doesn’t go to the station like me he doesn’t understand this and he keeps making the train crash. In the end I tell him the battery is going to run out and that we have to stop. He doesn’t seem to mind but I feel quite annoyed and hope he moves to Essex soon and someone new and better moves into his house that I can put at the top of my list. Afterwards we go outside and play trains by walking along the garden wall making train noises. As we are doing it the ten to six from Holborn Viaduct arrives and all the people walk up the road past us on their way home. One of them is the lady who was sick, so I do a really fast train along the wall to get away from her.
When I grow up I will have another carriage.
*
I tell Mum about the sick lady and she says that most likely she is going to have a baby because that makes you sick. I don’t understand because I thought having a baby made you happy. If it makes you sick why bother?
Next morning I watch out the window until I see the lady walking down to the station again to catch the two minutes past eight stopping service to Blackfriars. I do this watching most mornings while Mother tidies up after Dad has gone to work. He catches the ten to eight which is the fast train. The number 83. I notice she has a fat tummy that sticks out of her coat and Mum says her name is Rosalind and something about her skirt being too short. If there is a baby inside it must be being jiggled about because she is rushing. I think Mum is wrong because there is no way a baby could get out of there without making a terrible mess so more likely her big belly is what makes her sick. I get that after too much strawberry pink ice cream especially if it’s a hot day. I wonder if all babies come through wormholes like me and if they do what has that got to do with bellies and being sick. If Rosalind has a wormhole in her belly that would make her sick for sure because of all the gravity swirling round. Also people would be swirling around her getting sucked into her belly and appearing in the future or the past rather than catching the train and going to work.
When I grow up I won’t be sick again so I will never eat strawberry pink ice cream on hot days.
*
Next to the station and to get to the wood is a narrow road. We are allowed to go down the road all the way to the donkey but no further as then you get to the shooting range where the army try out machine guns and bombs. I really want to go there but Dad says that even though it was in the war there still might be bombs lying about. I once heard a few bangs coming from there but no one was blown up or shot so I think it’s safe as long as you are careful and sensible. On the way to the donkey the road is so narrow that if a car comes you have to climb onto the bank to let it pass. The bank is full of snails and Jill is afraid of snails.
They are really big ones the size of the crowns I have in my coin collection that the lady next door gave me before she died in bed. I sent her a thankyou letter but she must have been dead already because when Dad went to make sure the house was ok it was still on the mat. On the way to the donkey we once found a mole in the middle of the road. I picked it up but it bit me so I dropped it. I pretended it didn’t hurt but it did and it bled a bit so I kept my hand in my pocket. After that we kicked it with our feet over to the bank to stop it getting run over but it didn’t move again so we left it alone. I think I killed it when I kicked it. The donkey is very muddy but we take carrots for it so it comes to the gate and puts its head over when it sees us coming. Everyone is afraid of it biting them except me. I like animals and they know that.
Except moles perhaps but I think they are blind like the man at the station. The donkey has a really fat belly like Rosalind and thin legs like me. It’s not having a baby though as it has a big willy like Brian has when he is in the woods.
P.S. The donkey’s best bit is its ears that are big, not sticky out like mine but sticky up. I wonder what donkeys hear like. I wonder if they can hear other donkeys making noises a long way off like submarines can. After all this one is all on its own and is probably lonely even with us there so it might like to hear another donkey even if it can’t see it.
When I grow up I will explore the shooting range and find a bomb or bullets and my ears won’t stick out.
*
Across the road from our house is a white house. Someone has covered the bricks up in stuff and then painted it white. I don’t like this as I prefer to see the bricks all the way up to the roof. Our house has bricks at the bottom and then tiles. This is also bad but paint is worse.
The main thing with paint is you have to keep painting it again when it’s dirty or flaky so the house is always fading away and I prefer strong things that stay the same. The people that lived in the white house didn’t have any children so some new people have moved in with children and the old ones have gone away to live in a bungalow by the seaside and then die or that’s what Mum says. She seems to think this is quite sad and I agree because surely it would be a lot less trouble to die in the white house and not have to move your things and have all that kerfuffle. The lady and the man next door died and they didn’t move and now there are two new old people next door who look like they will do the same thing soon. The new people across the road’s children are both girls which means all the children in the houses near me are girls. This is a blow because although he was weak Andrew was stronger than Jill and could almost jump from six stairs up. The two girls are twins but you wouldn’t know because they are not at all alike. I am suspicious that they are adopted. I have heard that adopted children are very deceitful because being adopted has to be kept secret. Mum says that I must not ask them and I must not think that but then she was still sad about the people dying in a bungalow so she was feeling a bit sensitive and short.
When I grow up I won’t die or move to a bungalow by the seaside
*
They are not adopted I asked. They didn’t mind in fact they thought it was fun to pretend they were. They said that their real parents were German and had been captured and put in prison so their new parents rescued them and brought them here but their old parents were planning to escape from prison and take them back to Germany to live in a castle which had caves and
a lake that you were allowed to play in. I told them about the black swimming pool and they said they would like to see it and that one day I could visit them in Germany to see the lake and swim in it. They are called Jean and Judith. I said it was a good idea to have the same first letter for their first name because then their initial would be the same so when they wanted to be more like twins that would help. They told me that their middle names did not have the same initial but they would not tell me what they were because they were German names so they were secret and hard to spell. I think J and J might go higher up my list than Jill as Jill doesn’t speak German and they can. All my girl friends have a name beginning with J. That makes me think that J is a girlish letter but then John is a very popular boys’ name and I have a friend at school called Jonathan. Oh yes, I go to school now.
When I grow up I will change my name to Josh and learn German
*
Andrew and I have a new game called hanging teddies. We both have teddies but because we are old now we don’t need them. Mine was given to me by my mean nan, who my mum hates. She is not mean to me but she is mean to the family. It has short fur and when you turn it upside down it growls but it sounds like a cow. Andrew’s has long fur and is quite small and worn out. It doesn’t growl or anything. We attach string round their necks and dangle them out of my window. Because of the porch we can’t swing them very far without them bashing into the walls but we can balance them on the porch roof so it looks like they are going to do suicide like the lady up the road did only she set herself on fire. The people walking up the road from the station saw us and smiled which is strange because I don’t think it’s funny. Andrew’s bear was weak and it head and body tore apart like it had had its throat cut. Andrew said the bear belonged to his mother and her mother so she would be cross. I knew about sewing from Mrs Friend’s class so I showed Andrew how to stitch the head back onto the body just like the boy at school had stitches on his thigh after he fell on some railings. I wanted to do the hanging teddies game again but Andrew said he was going home. Andrew is very weak like his teddy.
When I grow up I will have stitches.