About Me

My photo
Found on the shores of The West Midlands. The Coventry Conch tells the tale of a young girl's experience growing up in Coventry in the 1990's.

Sunday 22 March 2015

EASTER

 

5am 
It’s Easter. Jenny and me have woken up extra early because we are so excited.

We’re watching Dad’s Die Hard Two video, eating chocolate and playing a game called Smash An Egg On Your Stupid Head. We take it in turns to put a pan on our head, then drop Easter Eggs from the top of the stairs onto each other so they smash.

11am

Grandad has come round with his new wife Candy. Mum and Dad are still in bed so I tell Grandad and Candy to wait on the sofa. I make them a cup of tea, but have to use the hot tap because the kettles broken.

 Grandad says it’s the worst cuppa he has ever had, and I’d have to learn how to make a decent one if I ever want a husband. Jenny says it’s a good job we don’t ever want to get married, Grandad tells her not to be cheeky.

Grandad gives us a Father Christmas shaped Easter Egg each, Candy says they’re still in date.

11.20am

Mum comes downstairs and I go into the kitchen to help her make another cup of tea for Grandad. I tell her what Grandad said to me about getting a husband. She says ‘if I want a sexist arse of a husband like Grandad, then I should learn to make a good cup of tea, otherwise don’t bother’.

11.30am

Grandad asks Mum if she likes Candy’s new hair, mum says ‘yes it’s very different’. Grandad asks Mum what type of fish Candy’s hair is. Mum says she doesn’t know what he’s on about. Grandad says ‘it’s a Red Mullet’ and laughs on his own for a while.

12pm

The phone rings on the table next to Grandad and I answer it. It’s Nanny Pam. She says she’s coming round in a bit, to give us our Easter eggs. I’m worried because Nanny Pam and Grandad don’t like each other any more.

Grandad asks me 'if that was Pamela?’ I say it was. He says ‘when she comes round, tell her she owes me at least fifty quid for selling all my stuff at the car boot sale. Some of that crap was priceless’.

 Candy says she wants to leave because she has to get home to record Look Who’s Talking off the telly.

 


1pm
Grandad and Candy have left. Nanny Pam has come round with more Easter Eggs. She gives me Easter eggs from her and Colin, and a Cadburys Cream Egg with 50p sellotaped to it off my Aunty Irene. Aunty Irene isn’t my real aunty she’s just one of Nanny Pam’s friends from the fag counter in Tesco’s.

1.30pm
Nanny Pam has a coffee and asks me about Grandad and Candy. She asks if Candy wears nice clothes. I say Candy’s clothes are ok, but that her hair is a type of fish, a Red Mullet, which makes Nanny Pam laugh a lot.
I tell Nanny Pam that she owes Grandad at least fifty quid. She says he owes her the last twenty years of her life back, and the silver service set he nicked when he ran off with bootleg Barbie. 

4pm
Nanny Pam has gone. Me, Jenny and Dad, are sat on the sofa eating our Father Christmas Easter Eggs and watching Father Of The Bride. I tell Dad that I think this has been the best Easter of my life.

Sunday 8 March 2015

ROXY'S HOUSE


3.30pm
Every other Thursday, Nanny Pam can’t pick us up from school, because she has a shift on the fag counter in Tesco’s. This means my friend Roxy’s Nan, Maggie, has to pick us up.

Maggie waits outside of school in her car and beeps the horn until we get in. The car smells like cigarettes, fir tree air freshener and digestive biscuits. She’s playing her Robson and Jerome tape, which I hate, Dad says Robson and Jerome are one of the reasons he’s thinking of leaving the country.

Maggie tells Jenny and me that we didn’t look both ways when we crossed the road to get to her car, and she’ll have to tell Mum, because it’s a safety risk. I’m sat in the front and Maggie makes me hold her cigarette, while she starts the car. I waft the smoke away with my book about the Vikings.   

4pm
We get back to Roxy’s house and go upstairs to her bedroom. Roxy says she lives with her Nan because her mum doesn’t have a settee or anything to sit on and she stays up too late.

We play with Roxy’s toys for a bit. All of Roxy’s Barbies have shaved heads and tattoos that she has drawn on with felt tips. Roxy says she wants to play Blind Date with naked Barbies who are alcoholics.

I go and see her hamsters, Bill and Ted, and she takes them out for me.  When we’re called for tea Roxy shuts the hamsters in a tiny drawer by her bed, because she wants them to have babies.

5pm
I’m worried when I see dinner because it’s a burger with chips and beans. Mum says we can’t eat burgers because of Mad Cow disease. I remind Jenny after she has had a bite, and we both say we’re not eating it. Maggie says we’re ungrateful, and that in the war she had to eat her pet rabbit Floppsy, with two mouldy potatoes and her own tears, and it was the best meal she ever had.

Maggie sits with us and makes us eat some chips, while she has a cigarette and drinks a Slimfast.

5.45pm
I say I’m going to the toilet, but I go to Roxy’s room and put the hamsters back in their cage.

6pm
Mum comes and picks us up. On the way home, I tell her about Maggie trying to kill us. Mum says we were right to not eat the burger, but we should have just chopped it up and hidden it under the beans.

She asks us if we crossed the road properly. I say we did, but Maggie couldn’t see because her car was so full of smoke it was like Stars In Their Eyes. Jenny says ‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Skeletor’, because that’s what we call Maggie.