Free Where Did It All Go Right? by Andrew Collins Page B

and a Dracula’s vampire bat and I scared Nanny with it.
    Tuesday, 14 August
    We went to Auntie Mary’s 12 new house. It is very old and it’s going to be all painted up. There is a pigs field next to it.
    Thursday, 23 August
    My cousin Dean came for dinner. I had a Lord Toffingham lolly, so did Simon. Melissa had a Lemonade Sparkle and Dean had a Kinky.
    Saturday, 1 September
    Dad bought me a Liverpool football kit. I went down the field to fly Carl’s 13 kite with him and it got stuck in the tree but a big boy got it down.
    Monday, 24 September
    We stayed for sandwiches and in the evening we saw
Sykes
and
Star Trek. Sykes
was good but
Star Trek
was a repeat.
    Wednesday, 3 October
    Mum bought me a ‘Monster Mash’ record. It costs 45p. 14
    Friday, 5 October
    We watched
Dave Allen
on telly, it was on at 8.15 and finished a whole three-quarters of an hour later at 9.00.
    Wednesday, 10 October
    We went to Paul Cockle’s farm at school. It was a pig farm so it was very smelly. I fell off the haystack while I was climbing. 15
    Thursday, 18 October
    Cockle brought a pig’s ear, a pig’s windpipe, two pig’s eyes and a piece of pig’s skin. I had a haircut over the road at Carol’s. 16
    Tuesday, 13 November
    Today I became famous because I am so good at drawing. Mrs Crutchley told me to do a picture of cartoons. I drew some clowns and some spooks.
    Wednesday, 14 November
    We had a day off school because it was Princess Anne’s wedding. She married Captain Mark Phillips and we watched it on telly. We went to Nan’s house for dinner and tea and she bought me a disguise outfit.
    Friday, 16 November
    Today it was art and we are making puppets out of papier mâché. I am making Jimmy Savile but I haven’t put his hair on yet!
    Wednesday, 19 December
    The school was open and we had a cartoon film show before play, and a party after. Santa Claus came to the infants but not the juniors (HUH!).
    Tuesday, 25 December
    I got Subbuteo, Meccano set 3, Cluedo, tracksuit, a hamster, Sorry (a game),
Cor!!
annual, football annual,
Shiver and Shake
annual, a calendar, a Disneyland diary, another team for Subbuteo and some more balls, some coloured pencils and two drawing pads, two pencils, origami and loads more.
    1. Dean Cave, only child of Auntie Janice (Mum’s sister) and Uncle Allen, and our perfect cousin (‘He’s his family’s pride and joy/His mother’s little golden boy’). Dean – exactly one year between Simon and me – was our ‘significant other’ growing up. Though he lived in a different part of town and went to entirely different schools, Simon and I had Dean at the holidays, which seemed to come around so rapidly then, and we got on like a house on fire. (Actually, Dean’s house did go on fire once; the kitchen was gutted.) Because of his only-childness Dean accumulated an enormous stash of
stuff
: bigger and better Action Man gear than we ever got, more and varied Dinky toy cars, a radio-controlled car, a ventriloquist’s dummy. But Simon and I had each other, and anyway, Dean’s penance was to live under iron rule: Janice, with the best intentions in the world, made Dean tidy all his toys away the second they weren’t being used, and he kept them, à la Stinky Pete in
Toy Story 2
, in the original boxes. This used to infuriate us, because Dean would treat his
stuff
with too much reverence, a direct result of this oppressive regime. His Action Man, for instance, always kept his hat on, no matter what humiliation and torture our elaborate narratives put him through. Dean’s unintentional catch-phrase was, ‘I’ve still got me hat on.’ We loved him though. Dean grew up to look just like his dad (who looks just like his) and brought divorce to the family, which was such a scandal – I’d been long-ensconced in London by then – Mum didn’t even tell me about it!
    2. What Nanny Mabel actually bought me was some coloured
pants
. My first patterned undergarments in a short lifetime of plain ones: