Skellig by David Almond (Yearling Books 1998)

 

I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon. It was the day after we moved into Falconer Road. The winter was ending. Mum had said we’d be moving just in time for the spring. Nobody else was there. Just me. The others were inside the house with Dr. Death, worrying about the baby.

He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he’d been there forever. He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’d soon begin to see the truth about him, that there’d never been another creature like him in the world.

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend (Methuen 1984)

 

Sunday April 4th

 

My father has sent a telegram to the War Office. He wants to take part in the war with Argentina. His telegram read:

QUALIFIED HEATING ENGINEER STOP A1 FITNESS STOP OFFERS HIMSELF IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY STOP READY FOR IMMEDIATE MOBILIZATION

My mother says that my father will do anything to avoid working for Manpower Services as a canal bank renovator.

At tea-time I was looking at our world map, but I couldn’t see the Falkland Islands anywhere. My mother found them; they were hidden under a crumb of fruitcake.

I feel guilty about mentioning a personal anguish at this time of national crisis, but ever since last night when a model aeroplane became stuck fast to my nose with glue, I have suffered torment. My nose has swollen up so much that I am frantic with worry that it might burst and take my brain with it.

I rang the Casualty Department and, after a lot of laughing, the nurse who removed the plane came on the line. She said that I was ‘probably allergic to the glue’, and that the swelling would go down in a few days. She added, ‘Perhaps it will teach you not to sniff glue again.’ I tried to explain but she put the phone down.

Pandora has been round but I declined to see her. She would go straight off me if she saw my repulsive nose.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend (Methuen 1982)

 

Tuesday December 22nd

School was closed this morning because the teachers couldn’t manage to get in on time because of the snow. That will teach them to live in old mill houses and windmills out in the country! Miss Elf lives with a West Indian in a terraced house in the town, so she bravely turned out to prepare for the school concert in the afternoon. I decided to forgive Pandora for the fox-fur in the cat’s basket incident after she had pointed out that the cat was an expectant mother.

The school concert was not a success. The bell ringing from class One-G went on too long, my father said ‘The Bells! The Bells!’ and my mother laughed too loudly and made Mr Scruton look at her.

The school orchestra was a disaster! My mother said, ‘When are they going to stop tuning-up and start playing?’ I told her that they had just played a Mozart horn concerto. That made my mother and father and Pandora’s mother and father start laughing in a very unmannerly fashion. When ten-stone Alice Bernard from Three-C came on stage in a tutu and did the dying swan I thought my mother would explode. Alice Bernard’s mother led the applause, but not many people followed.

The Dumbo class got up and sang a few boring old carols. Barry Kent sang all the vulgar versions (I know because I was watching his lips) then they sat down cross-legged, and brainbox Henderson from Five-K played a trumpet, Jew’s harp, piano and guitar. The smarmy git looked dead superior when he was bowing during his applause. Then it was the interval and time for me to change into my white T-shirt-and-Wranglers Joseph costume. The tension backstage was electric. I stood in the wings (a theatrical term – it means the side of the stage) and watched the audience filing back into their places. Then the music from Close Encounters boomed out over the stereo speakers, and the curtains opened on an abstract manger and I just had time to whisper to Pandora ‘Break a leg, darling’, before Miss Elf pushed us out into the lights. My performance was brilliant! I really got under the skin of Joseph but Pandora was less good, she forgot to look tenderly at Jesus/Peter Brown.

The three punks/wise men made too much noise with their chains and spoiled my speech about the Middle East situation, and the angels representing Mrs Thatcher got hissed by the audience so loudly that their spoken chorus about unemployment was wasted.

Still, all in all, it was well received by the audience. Mr Scruton got up and made a hypocritical speech about ‘a brave experiment’ and ‘Miss Elf’s tireless work behind the scenes’, and then we all sang ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’!

Driving home in the car my father said, ‘That was the funniest Nativity play I have ever seen. Whose idea was it to turn it into a comedy?’ I didn’t reply. It wasn’t a comedy.

Unhappy-Go-Lucky by Ian Pattison (Tindal Street Press 2013)

 

When people die, their memories die with them. But their memories are not their exclusive domain, encompassing as they must, the lives of others. Contained within our memorabilia, other people walk and speak, inhabiting our dreams and anecdotes. The only person one never sees in a memory is one’s self, since we are otherwise engaged, crouched behind our mental camera. Memories, therefore, are not only a personal but a social history. One of the things Vaughan had said to me that day on Byres Road was: ‘I wish I’d got it all down before she died.’ He was talking about his own mother. I’d heard that same utterance several times from different people. But why didn’t anyone ever take their own advice? The reason, in my case, was simple: who the hell ever listens to their mother? Like a Facebook home page, they talk in an ever-flowing, unedited stream of trivia, gossip, local news, repetition, received opinion, stale myth, whimsy and spite. To listen out for items of true interest amid the babble is to risk turning oneself into a crazed prospector panning for decades through murky silt in the hope of turning over a golden nugget or two.

I tried though.

I found out that in Tradeston Church, Kathleen Cairns had married Ivan Moss. The bride wore a white dress with matching white skin, patent black shoes and a discreetly visible foetus. Father looked dashing in his naval uniform with its braided cuffs and faint reek of engine oil. Father’s brother Rolf was granted shore leave to attend as best man. Father was overjoyed at the prospect of fatherhood.

'Are you sure it’s mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours,’ protested Mother. ‘Who else’s would it be?’

‘I was away for months, anything could’ve happened.’

‘That cuts both ways – do you want to swap separation stories?'

Father demurred. Though back on dry land, my guess was that he would have felt himself all at sea – things were changing too quickly, too decisively, for him to keep a telling grip on life’s rudder.

Mother was close to tears. Father tried to put her at her ease, with silken words.

‘If it’s backward, we can always bung it into an orphanage.’

Mother grew alarmed. ‘Why would it be backward?’

‘It’s a precaution. A first child’s either the pick of the bunch or the worst.’

‘You’re a middle child,’ observed Mother.

‘I know,’ mused Father, darkly.

The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll (Penguin Books 1978)

 

FALL 63

Today was my first Biddy League game and my first day in any organized basketball league. I'm enthused about life due to this exciting event. The Biddy League is a league for anyone 12 yrs. old or under. I'm actually 13 but my coach Lefty gave me a fake birth certificate. Lefty is a great guy; he picks us up for games in his station wagon and always buys us tons of food. I'm too young to understand about homosexuals but I think Lefty is one. Although he's a great ballplayer and a strong guy, he likes to do funny things to you like put his hand between your legs and pick you up. When he did this I got keenly suspicious. I guess I better not tell my mother about it. I don't want to describe the first game; I played bad and we lost anyway. I was nervous, I took my girlfriend Joan to the game which was at 153rd St., a Negro church called Minisink. Our team is from Madison Sq. Boys Club on E. 29th St. The starting team consists of two Italians, two spades and me.

When the game was over and we were waiting on the subway platform at 155th, Tony Milliano started a fight with Kevin Dolon. Tony is a huge monster who loves to fight; Kevin is a wise ass little prick. Some guys tried to break it up but Tony wouldn't let them and kept on yelling, "I want blood!" It was scary but interesting; I don't like to fight but I love watching others fight. Kevin asked me to jump Milliano from behind but he was too big for me to get involved. Who wanted to help that little fucker anyway? He's forever getting me in trouble down at St. Agnes grade school, where we go. Just today he snitched to Sister Mary Grace about me spitting on the first graders from the lunch room window.