Free How I Killed Margaret Thatcher by Anthony Cartwright Page A

too sometimes. He comes on the train because his holiday is different. He has to fit in with the other workers. We go and meet him and pick him up at Porthmadog and drop him off when he is leaving. We have the cars. If we go anywhere in the car then my dad and grandad get the maps out and lay them on the car roofs before we set off or look at them on the table the night before, even though we always drive to the same places and they know the way: Beddgelert, round Snowdon and past the lakes to Llanberis, to Porthmadog to the train station and shops, Criccieth for ice cream and so on.
    I look at the maps with them, try to say the Welsh names and then look at all the spaces on the map where no one lives. If you look at a map of home there are hundreds of streets all together, then spaces for the factories and sometimes the hills, and canals criss-crossing the map. Here there aren’t many streets, just hills and farms, green and brown outlines, and sometimes castles and streams and rivers that twist across the map because of the shape of the hills, not like with our canals where you have a tunnel or a lock so the canal carries on in a straight line, just built through whatever was there.
    One year all the Robertsons came. They stayed all in one caravan, their mum and dad and six kids plus Natalie’s little baby.
    Never again, we might as well stop at home, my nan said.
    I thought it was great.
    I go with Ronnie down to the rock pools and collect things. He keeps a pet crab in a bucket for a few days. I tell him to walk it on a lead. One hot afternoon I lie on the rough grass and can see underneath our caravan through to Ronnie’s mum sitting smoking in her shorts and drinking from a glass with ice melting in it that Ronnie’s dad has walked over from the club with, laughing because you’re not meant to take glasses away. I know I shouldn’t be looking at her. She pulls the shoulder straps of her top down and I can see where her skin is lighter there and dark brown on her arms and shoulders. She’s tied her wavy black hair up on top of her head. I think of the drawings of Natalie hidden in Johnny’s sock drawer.
    Six kids, older than me, rough as you like, and looking like that, I hear my mum say to my nan.
    Ah, it only brings trouble, my nan says.
    Here’s to you, Mrs Robertson.
    Mrs Robinson, ay it?
    That was a joke, Mother, my mum says.
    The main reason for going on holiday is for my dad and grandad to have a rest from work. My grandad says that when he retires, which is a few years away yet, or if he wins the pools, then he’d like to get a bungalow here. There’s a row of them as you walk away from the sea and down the lane towards Llanystumdwy. Whenever he talks about it my nan rolls her eyes like she doesn’t want it to happen. She says she prefers it for a holiday. I’d like to live here, though, in the caravans, as long as we all stay.
    Some people live in caravans all the time, I say to Ronnie.
    Yeah, the gypos, he says.
    When they knocked all the old houses down on Kates Hill the gypsies came and lived there. They lived in caravans and drove lorries. We were told not to go near them because they were dirty. People said they had a disease where you have to keep going to the toilet, called dysentery. I told my mum this while she was ironing and she said not to believe everything I heard, but to stay away anyway. I thought it was funny how everyone said the gypsies were dirty because they lived in caravans, then went and lived in a caravan for their holidays. I told my mum this and she laughed, but then she said maybe not to say that outside the house as not everybody thought the same as we did.
    You mean like Margaret Thatcher? I said.
    Exactly.
    Why doh we think the same as Margaret Thatcher?
    Well, she’s not a very nice person. Say don’t, not doh.
    Why?
    So people outside Dudley can understand what yer say to them.
    No, why is Margaret Thatcher not a nice