Free Daisy and the Trouble with Life by Kes Gray Page B

ten times more at least.
    The trouble with air is you can’t eat it.

    The trouble with sherbet is it dissolves too quickly and then turns into air.

    And that’s without even the slightest bit of crunching.
    My mum says I should buy gobstoppers with my pocket money instead of strawberry dib-dabs. But I’d rather buy dib-dabs any day. If I had a gazillion pounds pocket money every week, I’d spend it all on dib-dabs.
    Because strawberry dib-dabs are soooooooooooooooo nice.
    Strawberry dib-dabs are tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo nice.
    You can’t blame me if they’re sooooooooo nice and tooooooo ooo nice.
    It’s not my fault if they’re llllllllllllll lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooovvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllll lllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
    It’s not my fault my pocket money had run out. Or that I had no money at all to buy sweets.
    You can’t blame me if someone dropped a half-sucked strawberry dib-dab on the pavement outside the shops.

    All I did was see it.
    . . .

    Pick it up off the pavement.
    . . .

    Put it in my mouth . . .
    . . .

    And eat it . . .

    Excuse me – I need to go to the loo again!

Chapter 9
    The trouble with germs is they’re invisible.

    Germius Pavementius
    Well, they’re either invisible or they’re red. Whatever they are, you definitely can’t even slightly see them when they’re on a half-sucked strawberry dib-dab.
    So you can’t even slightly blame me, because invisible is as small as small things get.
    In fact it’s smaller than that. Invisible is totally teensy.
    You’d need a greenfly’s eyes to see something that was invisible.
    Which absolutely isn’t my fault. I mean, sometimes I can’t even see the dirty socks on my bedroom floor! And they’re LOADS bigger than germs.
    I’m telling you, the only thing I could see on that dib-dab was some sherbet. And a bit of dirt which I picked off with my fingers. So how was I to know it had germs on it?

    Anyway, I’d licked all the germs off before my mum even grabbed me.
    My mum was really really reaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa lllyyyyyy cross with me when she came out of the butcher’s. In fact her face was nearly redder than the dib-dab.
    She said she saw me do what I did through the window of the shop but couldn’t run out because she was still paying for the sausages.
    That’s the trouble with sausages .

    If they didn’t take so long to pay for, I wouldn’t have had time to put the dib-dab in my mouth.
    When Mum grabbed me, she told me to spit whatever it was right out, right now. But she was too late. I was already on my fourth crunch.
    â€œWhat will people think!” Mum said. “What WERE you thinking of!” she said. Had I gone mad? How could I possibly even think of picking up a dirty disgusting germ-covered sweet off the floor? And EATING IT? EATING ITTTT!!!! Did she not feed me? Had I not had breakfast that very morning? Had I not polished off a boiled egg and soldiers AND two slices of toast and jam? Or had I had an argument with a witch while she was in the butcher’s and been turned into a dustbin on legs?

    I wasn’t too sure what to say. I thought of asking for some more pocket money, but decided maybe this wasn’t the time. So I didn’t say anything at all. In any case, it wasn’t even a whole dib-dab. It was only a half-sucked one with hardly any sherbet on it. So what was all the fuss about?
    The trouble with not saying anything at all is it leaves lots of space for other people to say things.

    My mum told me off ALL the way home in the car, and then when we got home, she told our neighbour Mrs Pike what I’d done.
    Mrs Pike told Tiptoes too and then asked me if I thought Freddy would ever pick up a dirty fish flake