Anonymous - A fucked up life in books

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

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New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

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United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollins.com

The first book I ever remember reading is Owl At Home, by Arnold Lobel. Im not sure whether I ever actually read it as a child, or whether it was read to me so much that I memorised the words, but I did used to sit and turn the pages and recite the stories from it. I dont know where the copy came from, but it is full of library stamps, which means that my Mum or possibly my Grandma probably got it from a library sale to read to me. Ive still got my copy of the book. It currently sits on my bookcase nestled in amongst the rest. But Owl At Home is more special than the others, because it is my oldest book and because it features in my earliest memory.

I must have been about three years old. I used to sit in the garden, reading Owl At Home out to myself. We had a pretty big garden, and I was sitting in the middle of the lawn. Mum was in the kitchen preparing dinner, Dad was at work, and my younger brother was zipping about all over the patio in his walker.

I wasnt particularly fond of him at the time. He was always in the way, he smelt, and in that walker he could come at you out of nowhere pretty fast. When I was on the lawn he couldnt get to me. At the end of the patio was a path. The path led down to where the big bin was one of those metal jobbies with a lid with a handle, like they had in Stomp. You couldnt see the path from the kitchen window. I looked up from my book just in time to see my brother, in his walker, zooming down the path.

It was Thursday. Bin day. Instead of the bin at the end of the path there was an empty space, an empty space where the path abruptly ended leaving a little step and a small hole. I watched him get to the end of the path, watched the front wheel of the walker drop down into the hole and all of a sudden my brother was horizontal and screaming his fucking head off. I glanced to the kitchen window. I could see Mum chopping vegetables. I could hear music, she was listening to a tape, the one that I called Coca Cola (Peanut Man by Tim Buckley). She couldnt hear my brother crying in the hole. I put my book down and walked over to him to have a look. He looked like a twat. Red-faced and crumpled eyes from all the tears. One of his shoes had fallen off. I picked up the shoe and headed for the kitchen. Mum was dancing around. I handed her the shoe. She shouted at me Why have you taken your brothers shoe? For Gods sake, Jesus and headed outside to replace the shoe. I followed her.

She saw my brother, screaming in the hole. She gasped, Fuck, but instead of going to help him dashed back inside. I waited outside. She came back moments later with a camera, walked towards the hole, took a picture, and then lifted my brother out of the walker, pulled the walker out of the hole and popped him back in it, giving him a little shove towards the safety of the patio. He promptly shut his fat face and started wandering around the patio, as if nothing had happened. Mum went back to chopping the vegetables and dancing to Tim Buckley, and I went back on to the lawn to finish reading Owl At Home.

I grew up mostly in the garden. We lived in the countryside, fucking miles away from anything. My best friend was my brother and my second best friend was the cat. On the right hand side we had an elderly neighbour, and on the left a newly engaged couple. My brother and I were the only children and so spent our days playing together.

It wasnt bad growing up in the garden, because it was a shit-hot garden: a big lawn and loads of trees and flowers and bushes. A vegetable patch at the back, a patio at the front. Plenty of space for running around and hiding from each other and finding new things to discover.

My parents had bought us a Wendy house each. I say Wendy house, but mine was some plastic sticks assembled into a house-like shape with a canvas slung over the top that was decorated like a house, with windows and a roof and all of that kind of shit. My brothers was a tipi, a bunch of plastic sticks that met at the top with a similar canvas sheet thrown over the top with decoration on.

When youre playing in the same garden every single day you have to get creative with your games. On this day, Id decided (I made almost all of the decisions) that my brother and I were going to play decorate the houses and then move in and be neighbours. First things first: decorate the houses.

I had this wonderful picture in my head of daisies growing around the bottom of my house. As daisies dont just grow where you want them to, this meant picking daisies and placing them around the edges. I decided that instead of daisies that my brother should decorate around his tipi with tufts of grass, because daisies were a bit girly and also because I didnt need the little shit taking any of my precious daisies.

Now, being a clever and scheming child, I knew that picking enough daisies would take a fucking age. I also knew that picking grass was a piece of piss. So, I lied to my brother. I told him that he could decorate with daisies and Id decorate with grass, so hed better pick all the daisies from the lawn and put them in a basket, and Id do the same but instead fill a basket with grass. We got to work.

After ten minutes my basket was overflowing with grass, but my brother, having to painstakingly pick each daisy one by one, was not doing so well. His basket didnt even have the bottom covered in daisies.

I told him to hurry up and that I was moving in now. I went inside and picked up my things. Into my lovely house went Mr Meddles Muddles, a swan Keyper (do you remember those toys, Keypers?), a notepad and pen, and the cat. The cat did not stay in the house for long.

Even after Id moved in my brother was still picking daisies. He was so slow and shit. I went into my house and looked at the pictures in Mr Meddle and waited for him to finish. After what felt like hours, he came to show me how much hed got.

It wasnt great, to be honest, but hed probably been at it two hours and I really needed to decorate my house. So I took the basket from him and told him that there had been a change of plan and that he was decorating with grass and Id have all these daisies. He was not happy.

He screamed at me that they were his. I told him that no, the grass was his, he didnt want flowers to decorate a tipi anyway.

Unfortunately, being my only friend, he knew my weakness: the flowers that hung up on the side of the wall of the house to dry. That old woman that lived on the right was teaching me about drying and pressing flowers and all of the other shit that old ladies do because they are bored to tears. He told me he was going to pull the flowers down, and began to stride purposefully towards the house.

Little cunt.