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wets her long winceyette pants. The ones that come down to her knees. You feel you want to brighten her day. Sometimes I sit and talk to her even though I know she can’t hear a word I am saying. I can say rude words to her like willy and bum and she just smiles at me and hums. Sometimes we swap sweets. She gets my chocolate buttons, I get her Parma Violets. I once gave her a Toffo but it stuck her dentures together. Mum said that sometimes I can be a little thoughtless.
    She looks so bored sitting there, humming to herself. I’m sure Auntie Fanny would enjoy a sachet of Space Dust. Maybe even two. Or even three.
    â€˜Mum…Mum…Auntie Fanny’s doing it AGAIN.’

Bombay Duck
    Not only has my brother got A Hard Day’s Night, a pair of desert boots and a donkey jacket with leather patches on the elbows, he’s even been to an Indian restaurant. It is easy to hate someone like that. He thinks it’s time I experienced the scented delights of chicken biryani and lamb vindaloo and takes me, together with our other brother John, to the Kohinoor, a small flock-wallpapered Indian restaurant tucked behind the rollerdrome in Wolverhampton.
    The restaurant is almost empty and smells of armpits. ‘I’m going to have a Bombay duck and a chicken biryani,’ says Adrian as soon as we’re seated. John goes for the chicken vindaloo, then they start laughing about something called the Ring of Fire, which doesn’t seem to be on my menu. It must one of the ‘specials’. The menu is terrifying, though not half so much as the man in a turban standing at the kitchen doorway, his arms folded in front of him. It is like he is daring us to set foot in the kitchen.
    â€˜I can’t manage both, I’ll just have the Bombay duck,’ I say timidly. It sounds exotic, even more so than chickenMadras. Adrian asks me if I know what Bombay duck is and I assure him I do. He and John seem to find something funny. Adrian then orders a biryani for me too, despite my pleading, and insists I will manage both.
    We get a pile of giant crisps as big as a plate and some spicy gunk to dip them in that makes my nose run and my ears sting. They order beers and I drink my first ever shandy. My brothers say it’s only like drinking pop, but even so not to mention it to Dad. The Bombay duck arrives – a wizened bit of grey bark smelling like something that has been dead a very long time. Putrid. ‘It’s not like I had it last time,’ I say rather grandly, without thinking the fib through thoroughly.
    The lone waiter in evening dress brings the biryanis and John’s vindaloo. I am not at all sure about this. The room smells of mildew and beer and the aforementioned armpits and the man on the kitchen door hasn’t smiled once since we arrived. The waiter smells funny too and his suit is shiny round the collar. The chicken is dark and strongly flavoured, browner than I have ever known chicken to be. Adrian tells me not to play with my food and just eat it. ‘Are you sure this chicken’s all right?’ I ask, poking at the hedgehog-coloured meat like it was poisoned.
    â€˜Yes, it’s the spices that make it that colour,’ assures John, who seems to know quite a bit about Indian food.
    I gingerly swallow a few mouthfuls. Actually, I probably could eat more but there is something I don’t like aboutthis place. Something sinister, something a little ‘grubby’. Adrian suddenly snaps, ‘You little sod, you’ve hardly eaten anything.’
    A couple of weeks later I gleefully cut a piece out of the Express and Star (usually pronounced in its catchment area as the Expressenstar) and leave it on the kitchen table. It is story about health inspectors finding skinned cats hanging up in the fridges of Indian restaurants.

Blackcurrant Pie
    Mother is upstairs, having forty winks, as she calls her afternoon nap. Adrian is standing in the doorway, smiling and