The Year of the Ladybird Read Online Free PDF Page A

he wasn’t Abdul-Shazam he was just Tony, sans-fez, the camper’s friend, the noisy, funny, friendly exhibitionist with a stage tan and an all-weather smile.
    Tony took over the PA system for the Donkey Derby, only occasionally surrendering it to the nominally-head-Greencoat-with-the-wig, Sammy from Stockport. Sammy had bucket loads of enthusiasm for
broadcasting but little talent and less wit. He would liberally spray spittle onto the hand-held microphone as he chortled and blethered away. Tony winced as the mike was handed back to him; I
noted how Tony’s ready smile could manifest as a form of violence.
    The donkeys arrived with a fairy-tale figure called Johnny, who looked like he lived in the stables with his animals. The crotch of his trousers hung down near his knees and his thin leather
belt, having lost its buckle, was tied off in a double knot. He had a bit of straw in his hair and one ear that stood perpendicular to his head whereas the other did not. His team of donkeys
smelled less of donkey than he did.
    ‘He spends hours perfecting that look,’ Pinky told me, deadpan. ‘Just so he can make a case for a better fee next time.’ I didn’t know if he was joking or not.
    I don’t know whether donkeys can ever be said to look ‘happy’ but Johnny’s herd seemed totally pissed off with life. Flea-bitten moulting things, they made me nervous.
One tried to bite me before I snatched my hand away just in time. I also saw one kick out. I worried that they might try to take a chunk out of one of the children so I kept a close watch.
    The jockeys were those children brave enough to scramble on a donkey’s back. I was told to grade the children by age so that we could run off five races over the course of the afternoon.
Each event had a name like The Seahorse Stakes and the Jellyfish Handicap. While I tied high-coloured silks to the children, Nikki or one of the other girls grabbed the donkey’s halter so
that Sammy could hoist the child onto the donkey, hopefully without incident. A genuine bookie appeared from nowhere with a blackboard, chalking odds on the board at 3-1 the field. The parents
waved shocking amounts of cash at him as they backed their own kid to win the race. I made a quick calculation. Identical odds. For every race if he took sixty pounds he knew he’d only have
to pay out thirty; if he took a hundred he’d pay out sixty. For the bookie it was like scooping money up off the beach.
    While I was making my calculation I saw Pinky squeeze by the bookie and give him a pat on the behind. It was odd because the crowd wasn’t so tight that he needed to squeeze by, but in that
moment I saw a brown envelope change hands in Pinky’s direction. It was such a rapid sleight-of-hand it could have happened on the
Abdul-Shazam! Magic Show.
    But it was a gala afternoon for the campers, and the sunlight rippled off the dazzling silks while the parents roared as if they were at Ascot. Tony ratcheted up the excitement with a commentary
that echoed from the Tannoy around the playing field. As for the race it was impossible to predict a winner because all the beasts did the same thing, which was to bolt five yards and then stop
dead, until Johnny, running behind them in his flapping, baggy pants laid his crop over their loins. Then they’d advance another five yards. It reminded me of the mechanical horse race
I’d seen in the slot machine arcade.
    After five races I was hot, fly-bitten and reeking of donkey but there was still one more race to go. Tony took up the PA microphone and announced The Thoroughbred Fillies Half-Dash Triple
Crown, in which mothers – exclusively – were invited to mount the donkeys. For some reason this attracted the most overweight women. It was a struggle for me to get the ladies mounted.
The crowd thought I was playing it for comedy. I wasn’t. It was hard work to hoist these large ladies onto donkeys that knew what was coming. The canny beasts side-stepped,