Free A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams by Jeff Pearce

on the floor and turned to the manager sitting behind the desk.
    ‘Here he is, sir, one of the culprits who sell right outside our shop.’ Lifting the suitcase on to the desk, he went to open it, as if I had just robbed the Bank of England and he was going to find hundreds of pound notes inside. The manager looked first at the large suitcase, then at me. I could tell he was thinking I was small enough to fit inside the case myself.
    He had just begun to ask me who my accomplices were when the door was thrown open with so much force it nearly flew off its hinges, and Dad appeared. He looked like a cross between Hopalong Cassidy and Flash Gordon as he burst into the room. ‘That’s my son,’ he yelled, lifting me up with one hand. ‘And that’s my suitcase,’ he added, grabbing the case up off the desk with the other. ‘I will thank you to leave them both alone!’
    The store detective leapt forward as if to stop him, but Dad swung the suitcase in his direction, making him retreat to safety behind the manager’s desk. The manager started shouting at Dad: ‘We don’t want you outside our shop selling. Not ever  … you got that?’
    Turning his back on the two men, Dad merely replied, over his shoulder, ‘I’ll make a note of that. And you know what I’ll do with it then … don’t you?’
    Nobody ever bothered us again. That corner entrance to T. J. Hughes department store became Dad’s pitch. And he sold his wares from there, chatted up ladies and successfully avoided the bizzies for many years to come.

9. Silver Blades
    I was now eleven, and it was time to move up to the seniors. I wasn’t looking forward to it, and neither were any of my classmates in Band C. The only saving grace was that I was not going to be alone this time. My mates and I would be together. We had shared our lives for four years in the juniors and knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We knew we could rely on each other. What’s more, for the first time, we could wear long trousers, something which certainly set us apart from the littl’uns, and made us feel more like men.
    The other thing that made all the difference was Mr Beesley, the sports teacher; he was an inspiration to hundreds of pupils. He knew how to get the best out of us all, finding a strength in each individual child, making each one of us feel that he had something worthwhile to contribute. He was a small man and looked so young he had to wear a moustache so as not to be mistaken for one of the pupils. He drove a little yellow three-wheeled Reliant, and would take us to matches and sporting events in it. With three boys crammed in the back, another boy sitting next to him in the front, and the boot and any spare space stuffed with our sports kit and equipment, we would chug along to our destination.
    It was amazing how much we could fit into that car. But it was vulnerable to wind, and the slightest gust would catch under the front, raising the front wheels off the road and the bonnet up in the air so that all that could be seen through the windscreen was the sky. Whenever this happened, Mr Beesley would call out to us, ‘Lean forward, boys! Lean forward!’, so we’d do as he said, until the front wheels bumped back down on to the road again. It must have been quite a sight in a gale-force wind – a little car bouncing up and down as it drove along, full of schoolboys bobbing about inside.
    Mr Beesley organized all types of sporting activities, and many of them meant you missed classes. As a result, he had many keen sportsmen, me being one of them, signing up for anything we could.
    I loved swimming, and we were fortunate to have a pool in the school basement, which the swim team used every lunchtime for training. It was quite small, but it enabled us to build up our technique and speed, which paid off once we started swimming against other schools. We won more and more.
    Occasionally, Mum and June would come along to watch and support me. Mum was always