Nicking Time Read Online Free PDF

chorus of the song again while the closing credits roll up the screen. “Can I watch it with you again next time?”
    “Yeah,” I say. I’m very tempted to tell him that by episode two François will have been condemned to death
by his own side
, just to see the horror on Lemur’s face. But a week’s a long time to wait not knowing the outcome. I mean,
a week, a whole week
– it feels liketorture to me and I already know what will happen! There’s this brilliant bit when François is being taken away to prison and he says, “I surrender my sword to no man!” and he breaks his sword in two
on his knee
and throws away the pieces.
    “Why have you never seen it before?” asks Kit. “Are you not allowed to watch it at home?”
    Lemur looks embarrassed. “We don’t have a television,” he confesses.
    That explains a lot.
    “Why not?” asks Kit.
    Lemur shrugs. “We just don’t. Don’t tell the others,” he says to me.
    “I think you should,” I say. “They’ll feel sorry for you. At the moment they just think you’re weird.”
    ***
    In fact, I don’t even give him the chance to think about it. As soon as we get into the den, I say, “Hey, guess what? Lemur hasn’t got a telly!”
    This is a technique of my dad’s. No wee clues or hinting, no giving people time to work it out for themselves so they’re not shocked. It’s like ripping a plaster off your knee. You can do it slow and make the agony bearable but last for a long time or you can do it with one brutal yank that takes your breath away. But then it’s done.
    They suspect a wind-up at first. We don’t know
anybody
who doesn’t have a television! And when Lemur tells them it is in fact true, Skooshie looks so sadfor him I think he’s going to take Lemur home to his already very full house and ask Mrs Skooshie to adopt him.
    “So he’s just seen his very first episode of
The Flashing Blade
!” I say.
    “What did you think? Isn’t François fantastic?” They fling questions at him without waiting for answers. Everybody’s talking at once about their favourite bits. This goes on for some time until there’s really nothing else to say. That happens just after Skooshie’s asked, “What
is
a swash and what happens if you don’t buckle it?” We decide it’s time to go and do something else.
    As always happens, one thing leads on to another and next thing we know, it’s much too near the end of another sunny day. We’re outside, on the patch of rough ground by Cathkin. We’ve been collecting dark purple berries. They’re on a tree that’s been allowed to seed and sprout inside Cathkin. Its neglected branches now tumble over the fence and the berries hanging heavily on them are easy to reach. They’re small and a bit hard – we’re not sure they are in fact ripe – but if you squash them you do get a pale purplish juice. We’re using it to make wine.
    None of us actually drinks it. We’re not too sure about the berries but we’re pretty confident that all the other stuff we’ve added will make us vomit, big time. We consider selling it but we haven’t got enough cups.
    Lemur’s standing up at the fence. It’s one of those mesh fences, where the wire is twisted into interlinked diamond shapes. Thousands and thousands of them. The kind of pattern that makes your eyes go funny ifyou stare at it. He’s twisted his fingers round the mesh and he’s pushed his nose through one of the diamonds. Technically part of him is inside Cathkin. He looks round at us and we know exactly what he’s going to say.
    He grins. “I’ve got a plan.”
    I like Lemur’s plans – we all do. He has pure dead brilliant ideas and the ones that aren’t wild, illegal and/or lethal always turn out to be loads of fun. But the rest… Before the holidays, he tried to talk us into breaking into the Hampden Bowl, the abandoned bowling alley on Somerville Drive. And I mean
break in
. The place has no windows. We’d need actual equipment. He was all,