by David Almond
In thi biginin glibbertysnark woz doon in the woositinimana. Golgy golgy golgy thang, wiss wandigle. Oliotoshin under smiffer yes! Glibbering mornikles which was o so diggibunish. Hoy it! Hoy it! Then woz won so stidderuppickle. Aye aye woz the replifing clud. Yes! Clud is cludderish thats trew. Tickles und ticklin woz the rest ov that neet dun thar in the dokniss; An the crippy cralies crippin unda the path doon thar. Howzit! Woz the yel. Howzit! Sumwun nose a sekritish thang an wil holed it unda. Aye! Unda! So hoy it! Naa. It is two riddish a thang for hoyin. So giv it not a thowt. Arl wil be in the wel in the wel ay depe don in the wel. An on it goze an on an on an on an on an on an on an on til the middlishniss is nere. An the glibbertysnark wil raze oot the woositinimana an to the blewniss wi the burds an clowds an clowds this loke lyke clowns. An wil laff laff laff. An wil yel Hoy it! Hoy it! Til the lasst ov the daze wen we wil no a ansa. So pond the glibbertysnark an the olitoshin an kip way ov mornikles. Yel howzit an hoy it! Til the bels is ringerish. An rite words for scullery an hedteechery coz ov the gosts an goolys an the sats an orl wil be wel wel wel. In conclooshun woopwoopwoopiness is pringersticks wif strattikipiness coz the ansa iz hidin in the cludderish claminosity wer the clowdiwinkling quakilstrator iz. Luk no wer wer the blippistrakor ov munomintelish plirders iz. Ther. Is dun. Hoy it! Hoy it! Hoy it! Til the coos cum bak acros the flisterin feeld unda the mistrictacular moooooon. Flap! An ther rite now its endid. Pop!
RESULT:
Mrs. Scullery: Not Pleased. The “Mina Bloody McKee
Bloody Disgrace” Scene.
(see above)
HEAD TEACHER: Not Pleased. The “Who Do You
Think You Are Madam I Am Calling
Your Mother” Scene.
(see below)
Grade Achieved Level 0 Well Well Well Below Average.
Mum Very Sad, Very Kind,
Then Very Determined.
Mina Created new words
(Glibbertysnark! Oliotoshin!
Claminosity! Blippistrakor!)
Therefore: Very Pleased.
TAKEN OUT OF SCHOOL!
Therefore: VERY VERY
VERY PLEASED.
I thought I had done very well in such a short time. They didn’t even read it right through. Mrs. Scullery held it up like it was a poisonous thing. She did the “bloody” scene. She got to the bit where she said I was an utter bloody disgrace. Then she leaned right down so that her face was nearly right in mine. For a moment I wanted to stroke it. I wanted to give her a cuddle, I really did. She looked O so stressed out. I wanted to say, “O, Mrs. Scullery. Never mind. It’s just some writing, that’s all. It’s not going to harm you. And look, some of it’s lovely. Don’t get yourself worked up, love. Calm down. I’m sure Samantha has done some lovely level 5ish work.”
But I couldn’t get any words out. I just stared back into her eyes.
“You,” she whispered hard into my face. “You, madam.”
“Me?” I whispered back.
“Are as hard as iron.”
And she led me to THE HEAD TEACHER and gave the writing to him. He looked at it like it was another ghost come back to haunt him. He held it up and twisted his face like it was a very very dangerous stinking poisonous thing.
“What,” he said, “is this?”
“Writing,” I said.
“Writing what?”
“Writing, sir.”
“And what kind of writing do you think it is?”
He glared. He fumed. He gritted his teeth. Did he really want to know?
“It’s nonsense, sir,” I said.
“EXACTLY, MADAM. IT. IS. NONSENSE! IT. IS. A PAGE. OF ABSOLUTE. AND TOTAL. UTTER. IDIOTIC. NONSENSE!”
I could see he wanted to swear, just like Mrs. Scullery had. I wanted to tell him it was OK to tell me I was an utter bloody disgrace, if he wanted to.* I wanted to tell him he could use even worse words if it would help him feel better. I wouldn’t mind at all. But I thought it was probably best not to say that.
“I know that, sir,” I simply said.
“Oh, you know that, do you? So who do you think you are? And what right do you have to … ”
“I don’t know, sir. Sometimes I wonder, Who am I? What am I doing … ”
Mrs. Scullery groaned. She gripped the edge of THE HEAD TEACHER’s desk.
“Are you taking the mick, young lady?” said THE HEAD TEACHER.
“No, sir.”
Mrs. Scullery groaned again.
“Doreen!” yelled THE HEAD TEACHER.
Doreen came in from the room next door.
Doreen was THE HEAD TEACHER’s secretary.
“Yes, Headmaster?” said Doreen.
“I need this young lady’s telephone number, please, Doreen.”
I started to say that I knew it but he stopped me with a glare.
Doreen went out and came back again with the number.
“Thank you, Doreen,” said THE HEAD TEACHER. “That will be all for now.”
He lifted the telephone. He dialed the number. He spoke to Mrs. McKee about her daughter. He said he would like to see her, now, if at all possible.
“No,” he said. “She has not had an accident, Mrs. McKee, but I should like to see you in person if I may.”
He put the phone down.
“She is on her way,” he said.
“She won’t be long,” I started. “We just live—”
“We KNOW where you live!” said THE HEAD TEACHER. “We need no further contributions from you, thank you very much! Mrs. Scullery, would you like a glass of water? You look a little … ”
“Oh yes, please, Headmaster. Thank you, Headmaster,” said Mrs. Scullery.
“And do take a seat, Mrs. Scullery. Doreen! A glass of water for Mrs. Scullery, please.”
Doreen brought the water in. They sat. I stood. We waited in silence. I stared at a painting on the wall. It showed a delicious-looking bowl of fruit. I imagined that on bad days (like today, perhaps) THE HEAD TEACHER gazed at this fruit and dreamed of what he could have been instead of A HEAD TEACHER. A banana, for instance. Or a plum. Or a bunch of grapes. I tried to imagine THE HEAD TEACHER as a bunch of grapes. He might be much happier that way.
Minutes passed. Mrs. McKee arrived and was brought into the room by Doreen.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. McKee,” said THE HEAD TEACHER.
“That’s all right,” said Mrs. McKee. She looked at her daughter. “But what on earth … ”
“Madam,” said THE HEAD TEACHER. “We have called you in on a matter of great importance.” He held up the page of writing. “May I ask you to read … this?”
The lovely Mrs. McKee took it from his hand. She read it through. She breathed out the sounds of the nicest words. She sighed. She smiled. She shook her head. She held the page like it was something rather precious.
“This,” said THE HEAD TEACHER, “is possibly the most important piece of writing that this young lady will be asked to do all year. It may well be the most important piece of writing that she will do during her time as a student at this school. And she presents us with this!”
Mrs. McKee sighed.
“Oh, Mina,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Don’t know, Mum,” I said.
And she cuddled me, right there in THE HEAD TEACHER’s office while THE HEAD TEACHER and Mrs. Scullery watched. And THE HEAD TEACHER said,
“Mrs. McKee …”
But she raised her hand to stop him.
“You don’t need to say anything more, Head Teacher,” she said.
“So you understand the gravity of the situation?” said THE HEAD TEACHER.
“Indeed I do,” said Mrs. McKee. “So I think I’ll take my daughter home now. And I don’t think she’ll be back for some time. Goodbye.”
And we walked out of the office and along the corridor and past the classroom and out of the main door and across the schoolyard and out through the gates into the world.
We walked slowly homeward through the sun
light. We stopped in the park on the way home. We ate ice cream and we sighed at its deliciousness. We sat on a bench by a bush with lovely bright red roses growing on it. We watched people dressed in white playing bowls on the beautiful green lawn. The brown bowls clicked and clunked as they struck each other. The people in white chatted and laughed. Somebody somewhere sang a lovely song. Close by, a little boy rolled down a hill, giggled, got up, ran to his mum and kissed her, then ran up the hill again and rolled down again. It was lovely and warm in the sunshine. The sky was heavenly blue. Bees buzzed. Butterflies flitted by. A dog chased a ball. A flight of honking geese flew over us. The tops of the trees were swaying in the gentle breeze.
“This is very diggibunish,” said Mum.
“It is,” I said. “And very pringersticks, as well.”
When we got home, Mum pinned up GLIBBERTYSNARK in the kitchen. We looked at it together. It was indeed one of the most important pieces of writing I had done all year. I was now a Homeschooled Girl, which made me Very Very Very Very Very Very Pleased. Very.
Mum put her arm around me, and we smiled, and we were filled with claminosity.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Write a page of UTTER NONSENSE.
This will produce some very fine
NEW WORDS.
It could also lead to some very
SENSIBLE RESULTS.
* * *
* Thoughts about swearing. Yes, I know that swearing is very bad, and that swearwords are very very bad bad things. But there are times when nothing else will work – otherwise why have swearwords at all? And I know that you are not supposed to say this, but there are times when swearwords just sound very nice and feel nice on your tongue and are simply very nice to say. (I don’t think Mrs. Scullery would agree with any of this, despite her performance in the Bloody Disgrace scene.)
I am in the tree and the birds have had their eggs! Three of them. They are bluey-green with brownish spots and they are absolutely beautiful! I knew something was up. The birds were silent. The air was still. I climbed higher in the tree, to where I could look down into the nest, and there they were, three of them, lying so prettily in the pretty nest. Bluey-green with brownish spots and they are beautiful. Bluey-green and speckled brown and beautiful. I almost cheered, but I stopped myself. I wanted to hold the birds in my hands and praise them, but of course why should they take notice of me? Why should they care what I might think? But I say it now anyway, deep inside myself: “WELL DONE BLACKBIRDS! YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY! YOU HAVE CREATED THE MOST AMAZING THINGS IN THE WORLD! YOU HAVE CREATED NEW UNIVERSES!”
Maybe they did hear me somehow, and they certainly saw me, because they squawked their warning calls, so I slithered to my lower branch, where they are used to seeing me and where I can safely be ignored. I sigh with joy. The chicks are on their way.
And then I see the family outside Mr. Myers’s house. The poor boy is as fed up as ever. He’s kicking the ground again like he wants to do it harm. Poor lad. Looks like he’d be a perfect candidate for the pills they wanted to give me, or for the Corinthian Avenue Pupil Referral Unit. Cheer up, I want to yell! You’ve got a mum and dad beside you! You’ve got a brother or a sister on the way!
The mum and dad are smiling. She holds her belly and I see with that it is egg-shaped. I have to stop myself from jumping out of the tree and running along the street to her and telling her that she is extraordinary.
“YES!” I yell inside myself. “IT’S TIME FOR THINGS TO BE BORN AROUND HERE! BUY THE HOUSE, AND A BABY AND A CLUTCH OF CHICKS WILL BE BORN IN FALCONER ROAD THIS SPRING!”
Maybe she hears me somehow. She turns her head but I’m sure she can’t see me because of the foliage around me. O she looks very nice. They all look very nice. They have a key. They open the door, they go inside. I imagine them moving through the dust. I imagine their skin mingling with the skin of Mr. Myers, their breath mingling with his breath, their lives mingling with his life, with his death. I lean back against the tree. I close my eyes. I think about the woman with the egg-shaped belly. And I wonder – if Dad hadn’t died, might Mum have had an egg-shaped belly, too?
Then I draw: birds and leaves and trees, and I am lost in this, too. Then a goldfinch appears, flickering through the upper branches. Then another, its partner. And I think of last autumn. There were days when a small flock flew through here. They will again when their time comes. I told my mum about them and she then told me that a flock of goldfinches is known as a charm. A charm of goldfinches! How beautiful is that?
I look at today’s goldfinch. There it is: black, gold, red, brown, white flickering quickly among the green leaves. There it goes, flying freely away into the blue. Does the goldfinch know how gorgeous it is? Does any bird? Does it know how beautiful its song is? If it did know, then maybe it would try to stop being so gorgeous. It would try not to charm. Once upon a time, goldfinches were the favorites of bird trappers. If the goldfinches knew this, they would have bathed in mud until they were mucky brown. They would have squawked or screeched or they would have stayed silent instead of singing out loud. They would have hidden themselves away in dark and isolated places. They wouldn’t have flickered and flashed through people’s gardens. They wouldn’t have sung their beautiful songs. But goldfinches don’t know anything about wickedness or stupidity And so they flew and sang, and they were trapped in nets, and put into cages, and sold for cash, and they were hung from ceilings or put on sideboards or bookshelves or on windowsills and they sang. And their songs must have been filled with yearning and pain. And their songs lifted over the stupid boring conversations of their stupid boring prison guards. Imagine them! Imagine the stupid boring people who trap birds, who put them into cages! How boring they must be! How stupid they must be! We don’t put the goldfinches into cages now. But there are still lots of bird trappers in the world – people who trap the spirit, people who cage the soul. What’s a gang of bird trappers called?
They flew away, the charm of goldfinches. Fly, goldfinches! Sing and fly!
Now I sit in the tree and wait. I sit in the blue-green dappled light. I rest my notebook on my knees. I watch Mr. Myers’s house. No movement there. I move my pen across the page.
I play about with my name and my pen and I come up with a concrete poem that shows that Mrs. Scullery was right. Mina McKee truly is hard as iron!
I keep on playing with words and my pen. I look at an empty page and it’s like an empty sky waiting for a bird to fly across it. I imagine a charm of goldfinches flying freely across it. I imagine them disappearing from sight and the sky, and the page is empty again. Then I think of another bird, a skylark. I imagine it flying upwards on the page. I recall the extraordinary fact that the skylark, unlike any other bird, sings as it rises from the earth, sings as it hovers high in the sky and sings as it drops to ground again. The skylark really does seem to be carried on its song!
As I write the skylark high above I see Whisper down below. There he is, prowling in the shadows. The cat is on the hunt. For mice, perhaps. For victims.
BLACK BEAST BLACK BEAST
CREATURE OF THE DARK
CREATURE OF THE UNDERWORLD
CREATURE OF THE HOUSES OF THE DEAD
CREATURE VELVET AS THE VELVET NIGHT
BLACK BEAST PROWLING
THROUGH MY WEIRD DREAMS
BLACK BEAST PURRING
IN MY RED RED HEART
BLACK BEAST YOWLING
IN MY YEARNING SOUL
BLACK BEAST BLACK BEAST
YOUR BLOOD IS MY BLOOD
YOUR CLAWS ARE MY CLAWS
YOUR FUR IS MY FUR
YOUR HEART IS MY HEART
YOU CAME TO ME FROM DARKNESS
YOU ARE MY BLACK BLACK BEAST OF DEEPEST DARK
AND YOU ARE WHISPER.
I write for what seems like hours in the blue-green dappled light. And my mind and my hand move smoothly together and I am lost in my thoughts and lost in my words and the minutes pass and the minutes pass, and at the secret h
idden center of the blue-green eggs the secret hidden creatures grow.
And then I blink and look up and the family is in the street again. I am hidden from them, and my songs are silent so they don’t know that I’m here. I look out through the leaves.
The boy is sullen as always.
The parents are pleased.
They leave in the little blue car.
I watch them leave the street and leave my page.
I think of the mysterious connections between words and the world, and my pen soon moves again, as if I can’t stop writing, perched up here beside the blue-green eggs in the blue-green afternoon.
I SIT IN MY TREE WITH A BOOK AND A PEN AND I WRITE. FOR INSTANCE:
“THERE IS A BOY AND A WOMAN AND A MAN IN THE STREET AND THEY ENTER A HOUSE WHICH ONCE WAS THE HOUSE OF A MAN CALLED ERNIE MYERS.”
FOR INSTANCE: