The Mummyfesto Read Online Free PDF

usual. He was always at school way before he needed to be.
    ‘Of course. Have you had any breakfast?’
    ‘No. I haven’t really got time.’ I handed him the banana I’d just put in my dressing-gown pocket.
    ‘Thought as much,’ I said. Paul shook his head, smiled at me and unpeeled it.
    I crept into Alice’s room. I loved it that she wasn’t one of those children who woke at the crack of dawn every morning; mainly because I liked my sleep and couldn’t have hacked it, but also because it gave me a chance to have these first few quiet moments of the day with her.
    I pulled up the blind, although the dreary February morning outside didn’t seem to want to come in. I lay down on the bed next to Alice, managing to squeeze myself in between the menagerie of soft toys. I used to watch her sleep all the time when she was a baby. Marvelling at her nose, her lips, her fine blonde hair. Having to pinch myselfthat she was mine. That something so perfect could have come from me.
    Alice stirred a little, turning over and stretching her arm across me. Her warm fingers touched my neck. A few seconds later she opened her eyes, saw that I was there and promptly shut them again.
    ‘Morning, sweetheart,’ I whispered.
    ‘Have you fed Betsy yet?’ she asked, her eyes still closed. Betsy was her pet rabbit. It was actually a male rabbit, but Alice had said she didn’t like any boys’ names. Paul had suggested calling it Roger, but she’d been too young to see the film and she didn’t get the joke.
    ‘No, not yet.’
    ‘Good,’ she said, opening her eyes, ‘I’ll do it with you then.’ A second later she was up and starting to get dressed. Wherever she had got that ability to go from fast asleep to wide awake in ten seconds from, it certainly wasn’t me.
    ‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asked when we got to the empty kitchen.
    ‘He’s gone to work early. Remember I told you his school is having an inspection today? It’s like a little test.’
    ‘Has he learnt his spellings?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘I expect he’ll come top of the class.’
    She nodded and picked up the compost box in which we kept leftovers for Betsy. ‘I think for Christmas,’ she said, ‘I’d really like a donkey.’

    Drama teachers had it made. To be honest, I sometimes wondered why anyone would want to teach any othersubject. You got to take kids out of the classroom environment, free them from the confines of textbooks and whiteboards. It was like that moment when Angela Rippon kicked up her legs and emerged from behind the newsdesk on
Morecambe and Wise
. You got to see what the kids were really capable of. The surprising talents which no one else knew existed. And for much of the time you got to do it without anyone else bothering you. The Head was far too busy bearing down on the English and maths departments to interfere in what I was up to. As long as the kids put on impressive shows at Christmas and summer, I was left pretty much to my own devices. No doubt at some point Michael Gove would decide that drama teachers were surplus to requirements or would introduce minimum standards in improvisation and mime. But until that point I was simply going to keep my head down and get on with it.
    Sheila, on the other hand, appeared to have the words ‘sacrificial lamb’ tattooed on her forehead. It was hard to imagine a more stressed-looking person than the one who sat opposite me in the staffroom, sipping her coffee as if she were scared a sea monster might leap out of the mug and gobble her up at any moment.
    ‘What’s Frodo said now?’ I asked. The Head’s name was actually Nathan Freeman. But ever since Sheila and I had both watched a BBC2 natural history programme where the dominant bonobo chimpanzee, named Frodo, had bullied the other members of the troupe into submission, he had been referred to by his ape name.
    ‘He hasn’t said anything. That’s the problem. He came into my classroom this morning, unannounced,