Sugar and Spice Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted to join, and she just said, “Not worth it.” She was such a mystery!

    That evening, after tea, I shut myself away in the kitchen to do my homework. The kitchen was the only place that was warm enough since the central heating had been turned off. Mum said we couldn’t afford to heat the whole flat, so now we just had it on in the front room, but I was allowed to have the oven on low in the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly quiet out there cos I could hear the television blaring in the next room, and the person in the flat that joined ours had music on, really loud, but I didn’t mind that so much as the way Sammy and the girls kept crashing in and out.
    “We’re playing!” yelled Lisa.
    When I complained to Mum she said that it was nice the girls played with their little brother, and then she sat herself down at the kitchen table to ring one of my nans on her mobile. They started to talk and I really couldn’t concentrate cos of listening to what they were saying. After a bit Mum put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Get Sammy off to bed for me, will you? There’s a good girl!”
    Well. That was easier said than done. It wasn’t a question of “just getting him off to bed”. First you had to catch him. Then when you’d caught him you had to fight to get him out of his clothes and into his pyjamas, and then another fight to get him to clean his teeth, and another fight to actually persuade him into the bedroom. (Actually Mum and Dad’s bedroom, as we only have the two.) I finally got back to the kitchen to find that Mum was now working her way through a mound of ironing.
    “If you did that in the other room,” I said, “you could watch television at the same time.”
    “Too much hassle,” said Mum. “Go on, you can work, I won’t interfere with you.”
    I took out a sheet of paper and wrote MY FAMILY in big letters across the top. What could I write about my family?
    “Look at this!” Mum was holding up one of Lisa’s school blouses. “What on earth does she get up to?”
    I nibbled the top of my pen, searching for inspiration. ( Bang, went Mum, with the iron.) Maybe I could just write one line, like the person that wrote about the night sky.

    “My family is so ordinary I cannot think of anything to say about them.”
    Then Mr Kirk ( bang, thud ) would read it out and tell me to grow up and everyone would laugh, only they wouldn’t be laughing because I was a geek or a boffin, they would be laughing because I’d dared to be cheeky. They might even start to respect me a little.
    What if I did the spelling all wrong, as well?
    “My famly is so ornry I cannot thing of anythink to say abowt them.”
    Yess!!!!
    “Know what?” said Mum. “This iron’s giving out.”
    “They are jest to bawrin for wurds. Wurds canot discribe how bawrin they are.”
    I was really getting carried away, now.
    “ My mum is bawrin my dad is bawrin my sistus is bawrin my b  —”
    “Well, that’s it,” said Mum. “That’s the iron gone.”
    “ — my bruthr is bawrin. This is an eggsample of the bawrin things that happen in my famly. My mum has jest sed to me that the ion has gon but she duz not say were it have gon. Maybe it have gon to the Nawth Powl. Maybe it have gon to Erslasker. I wil aks her. Were has the ion gon, I wil say.”
    “What are you talking about?” said Mum.
    “The iron,” I said. “Where’s it gone?”
    “What d’you mean, where’s it gone? It’s broke! Why don’t you make us a cup of tea and bring it in the other room? You’ve done enough scribbling for one night.”
    I made the tea, but I didn’t go into the other room. I stayed in the kitchen, writing my essay. I found that once I’d got going, my pen seemed to carry on all by itself and I just wrote and wrote, making up all these funny spellings. Tellervijun and sentrel heetin and emferseema, which is what my dad has got that makes him run out of breath. (It’s really spelt emphysema. I learnt it,