It’s summer. The Growing Season.’
I’ve noticed my finger and toenails grow faster in the summer, come to think of it. But I hate my fingernails. They’re flat and square, like spade heads. It’s something to do with my heart condition – spading or something. My fingers too, at the ends. I suppose I’m not a very beautiful specimen of homo sapiens at all, actually. Skinny and small with rather blue skin, limp mousy hair, and glasses. Still, there’s not much I can do about that at the moment, so I’ll concentrate on my mind.
Education is the answer. I’ve missed out on a lot of school but I reckon once a person can read, they can learn anything they want to know. It’s just a matter of knowing where to go for the information.
I do like novels, because they tell you about how other people live, what they think and experience, and I think that’s very important. It puts your own life into perspective and gives you ideas and makes you think of all the things you could do. Unless it’s a crime novel, and they are simply entertaining, I suppose, an escape from boring everyday life.
Daddy likes crime novels.
But I think if I read enough of all sorts of books now, when my brain is growing, I’ll be able to learn easily. Children’s brains are like sponges, apparently. I think adults aren’t terribly good at learning new things – like Mum with the metric system and computers and mobile phones and the video. As soon as we find a house to live in I shall ask Daddy to buy me a computer. A laptop would be cool, and a mobile. Then I can talk to Summer whenever I like.
Dream on, Gussie.
CHAPTER TEN
Note: Pop ate from my hand, practically, this morning. I gave him the leftover cat food. They are so fussy, these cats; only eat certain brands of cat food and turn their noses up at others. So, when they don’t eat it I can give it to Pop. He is a living dustbin .
THE ORIGINAL POP – my Grandpop – had the most amazing tattoos all over his arms. Mermaids and galleons and roses and eagles and ribbons and dolphins, all in red and blue and green ink, but faded, and his hands and arms had big veins on like snakes, but not scary. And his clothes were scratchy. He sat in his rocking chair; I used to climb onto his lap and we’d rock together. He wore white shirts with no collars and with the sleeves rolled up. He had these cool, silver, elastic armbands that he wore over his shirt-sleeves, above the elbow. He smelt of tobacco and sometimes I’d find a hand-rolled cigarette tucked behind his ear ‘for later.’ He taught me how to roll them. You take a thin sheet of Rizla paper, lay a few strands of tobacco on it, bunched up. Then you roll the paper around the tobacco and make a trumpet shape – it was supposed to be a cigarette shape, but I could only get a trumpet shape. Then you licked the edge and stuck it together.
Mum doesn’t know he taught me that.
He kept boiled sweets – pear drops, usually, in paper bags in the boiler cupboard. They were always stuck together, and very difficult to pull apart. He thought I didn’t know about them but I did. I have a very sweet tooth and can smell out a Smartie at fifty metres.
Mum’s nail varnish remover smells just like his pear drops. Whenever I smell it it’s as if Grandpop is here in the room, with a bit of Rizla paper stuck to his chin where he cut himself shaving.
He kept his tobacco on the mantelpiece in a tin shaped like a ship’s capstan. And there was a clock shaped like a ship’s wheel, and three black elephants, and two brass pagodas.
In a high cupboard there were piles of old photographs in a basket with a lid, and I’d go through them with him. I couldn’t recognise Grandma, who used to be this rather pretty young woman, slim and smiling, with flimsy stuff dresses. (What a pretty word – flimsy). He was a slender young man in the photographs – which were all black and white, and some of them had faded into a pale brown. He wore a white naval
I’ve noticed my finger and toenails grow faster in the summer, come to think of it. But I hate my fingernails. They’re flat and square, like spade heads. It’s something to do with my heart condition – spading or something. My fingers too, at the ends. I suppose I’m not a very beautiful specimen of homo sapiens at all, actually. Skinny and small with rather blue skin, limp mousy hair, and glasses. Still, there’s not much I can do about that at the moment, so I’ll concentrate on my mind.
Education is the answer. I’ve missed out on a lot of school but I reckon once a person can read, they can learn anything they want to know. It’s just a matter of knowing where to go for the information.
I do like novels, because they tell you about how other people live, what they think and experience, and I think that’s very important. It puts your own life into perspective and gives you ideas and makes you think of all the things you could do. Unless it’s a crime novel, and they are simply entertaining, I suppose, an escape from boring everyday life.
Daddy likes crime novels.
But I think if I read enough of all sorts of books now, when my brain is growing, I’ll be able to learn easily. Children’s brains are like sponges, apparently. I think adults aren’t terribly good at learning new things – like Mum with the metric system and computers and mobile phones and the video. As soon as we find a house to live in I shall ask Daddy to buy me a computer. A laptop would be cool, and a mobile. Then I can talk to Summer whenever I like.
Dream on, Gussie.
CHAPTER TEN
Note: Pop ate from my hand, practically, this morning. I gave him the leftover cat food. They are so fussy, these cats; only eat certain brands of cat food and turn their noses up at others. So, when they don’t eat it I can give it to Pop. He is a living dustbin .
THE ORIGINAL POP – my Grandpop – had the most amazing tattoos all over his arms. Mermaids and galleons and roses and eagles and ribbons and dolphins, all in red and blue and green ink, but faded, and his hands and arms had big veins on like snakes, but not scary. And his clothes were scratchy. He sat in his rocking chair; I used to climb onto his lap and we’d rock together. He wore white shirts with no collars and with the sleeves rolled up. He had these cool, silver, elastic armbands that he wore over his shirt-sleeves, above the elbow. He smelt of tobacco and sometimes I’d find a hand-rolled cigarette tucked behind his ear ‘for later.’ He taught me how to roll them. You take a thin sheet of Rizla paper, lay a few strands of tobacco on it, bunched up. Then you roll the paper around the tobacco and make a trumpet shape – it was supposed to be a cigarette shape, but I could only get a trumpet shape. Then you licked the edge and stuck it together.
Mum doesn’t know he taught me that.
He kept boiled sweets – pear drops, usually, in paper bags in the boiler cupboard. They were always stuck together, and very difficult to pull apart. He thought I didn’t know about them but I did. I have a very sweet tooth and can smell out a Smartie at fifty metres.
Mum’s nail varnish remover smells just like his pear drops. Whenever I smell it it’s as if Grandpop is here in the room, with a bit of Rizla paper stuck to his chin where he cut himself shaving.
He kept his tobacco on the mantelpiece in a tin shaped like a ship’s capstan. And there was a clock shaped like a ship’s wheel, and three black elephants, and two brass pagodas.
In a high cupboard there were piles of old photographs in a basket with a lid, and I’d go through them with him. I couldn’t recognise Grandma, who used to be this rather pretty young woman, slim and smiling, with flimsy stuff dresses. (What a pretty word – flimsy). He was a slender young man in the photographs – which were all black and white, and some of them had faded into a pale brown. He wore a white naval
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