Free Jog On Fat Barry by Kevin Cotter

white and blue stripes against my face; breathed in through my nose; filled my lungs, but there wasn’t a trace of Frank on it now: not one tiny trace.
    Most of the things that Mum put aside for the Sally Army were worthless, and why anyone would want them was beyond me. There was a set of dentures Granddad never wore; his cracked reading glasses; a dog-eared army-issue road map of the north of France; old magazines; five billiard balls (all red); a mug with the Royal Marines insignia pressed into it; Granddad’s hearing aid; love letters from someone named Dora; a pair of Dr. Martins (steels) that Frank had painted white; sixteen Robertson Jam labels; three water-damaged Tintin books that’d been left out in the rain, and an assortment of black & white photos of people I didn’t know. Every box was exactly the same: chock-full of items that might mean something or nothing at all.
    As I picked up the very last one, the bottom dropped out and a mouldy old oil lamp fell to the floor. I remembered Granddad showing the lamp to Frank and me when he was going through the spoils of his war. He had so many different things: a Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds; a Hitler Youth Knife with enamelled swastika on the grip and “ Blut und Ehre! ” inscribed on the blade. Granddad told us he’d taken the oil lamp off a German colonel at an archaeological site on the banks of the Euphrates River in 1944, and he always handled it with care, cautiously peeling back the rag that enveloped it. He said that of all the things he had got during the war, that old oil lamp was the pièce de résistance . Unearthed as it was near the ancient city of Babylon, Granddad said it was worth a king’s ransom because of its mystifying powers. But no one else ever saw it that way. In fact, whenever Granddad sold one thing or another from his war chest for beer money, the lamp always got passed over. Every collector that examined it said it was worthless, and Granddad, fed up with trying to convince them otherwise, finally banished it to a drawer with his socks and underpants.
    “I’m popping out,” Mum shouted from the hall, putting on her hat and coat.
    The front door opened and then slammed shut. I ran the oil lamp over the carpet to remove the mould but it wouldn’t shift. I carried the lamp into the kitchen, sprinkled it with Ajax, and went at it with a scouring pad. After a minute or two I stopped and held it under the tap. I could see these odd-looking symbols engraved in the metal. What meaning they had was a mystery. Still, I wanted to see more and started scrubbing again. But no sooner had I started again, than this almighty thunderclap rocked the room, and hurled me across the kitchen. Both of my ears were ringing; my head was spinning, and when I looked up, a bloke was standing over me who looked like he’d just stepped off the set of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves .
    “Who the fucking hell are you,” I asked. “And what the fuck you doing in my kitchen?”
    “You freed me from the lamp, master,” the bloke replied. “Your wish is my command.”
    I was about to ask him if I looked like the sort of herbert who believed in magic bloody lamps, but before I could, he upped and vanished back into the lamp in a great puff of smoke. Now Scheherazade told tales of mischievous genies in her One Thousand and One Nights , and many were the times that I delighted myself with stories of them outfoxing evil sorcerers, or riding their magic carpets. Like most boys I was spellbound by stories of Aladdin , and had longed to hear the words, “Your wish is my command.” I’d spent hours thinking of all the things I’d ask for. But genies didn’t exist; they didn’t appear out of old oil lamps. At least, not in council flats on housing estates in North London, they didn’t. Mum must’ve left the kitchen window open; a bolt of lightning shot through and struck me. I’d been hurled across the room; banged my head, and was