Quick, Let's Get Out of Here

by Michael Rosen

  and fill it up.

  Me and my brother –

  we had a plan.

  Not just one stocking

  Not just two stockings

  no – we emptied the chest of drawers

  of every sock we could find

  and laid them out on the end of the bed,

  hanging from the window,

  the door handle,

  the lamp shade

  and the mantelpiece –

  we covered the place with socks.

  Then we went to sleep.

  I d-on’t know what the old bloke thought when he came

  but he must have turned up and said:

  ‘Well – that little show doesn’t fool me,’

  and he stuffed a few sweets in one sock

  just one single solitary sock,

  and left.

  At least,

  that’s what Mum and Dad

  thought he did.

  MRS TOWNSED

  Every time I see Mrs Townsend

  she says

  O I remember you, you rascal

  I can see it now

  Your mum and dad was out

  looking for you

  you was only three

  you had gone missing.

  You know where they found you?

  Halfway up the road

  outside the methodist church

  running along in your little vest

  you didn’t have nothing else on

  you had left home

  with just your vest on

  everything else open to the weather

  can you imagine?

  Well you would never think

  of that to look at you now,

  would you?

  NO

  EDDIE AND THE BIRITHDAY

  When Eddie had his second birthday

  he got lots of cards,

  and he had a cake and all kinds of presents

  and we sang Happy Birthday.

  ‘Happy Birthday to you

  Happy Birthday to you

  Happy Birthday, dear Eddie…’

  and all that.

  He liked that very much

  So he goes:

  ‘More. Sing it again.’

  So we sang it again.’

  ‘Happy Birthday to you

  Happy birthday to you

  Happy birthday, dear Eddie…’

  and all that.

  And he goes,

  ‘More. Sing it again.’

  So we sang it again.

  ‘Happy birthday to you

  da de da de da, dear Eddie

  da de da to you…’

  And he goes.

  ‘More. Sing it again.’

  It felt like we sang Happy Birthday about

  Two hundred and twenty-three times.

  And the candles. On the cake.

  He loved them.

  ‘Eddie, blow.’

  He blew.

  And the moment he blew it out

  he wanted more.

  ‘More candle.’

  So we light it.

  ‘More Eddie blow.’

  Eddie blew.

  ‘More candle.’

  We light.

  ‘More Eddie blow.’

  ‘More candle.’

  That felt like two hundred and twenty-three times as well.

  And he loved the cards.

  Everyone who sent him a card

  seemed to think he’d like one

  with pictures of big fat animals.

  Elephants and hippos.

  He got about ten of them.

  Imagine.

  Your second birthday

  and everyone sends you pictures of

  hippopotamuses.

  Maybe they think he is a hippo.

  Anyway he had a nice birthday.

  Next day he gets up

  comes downstairs

  and he looks round

  and he goes,

  ‘More happy birfdy.’

  So I go,

  ‘That was yesterday, Eddie.’

  ‘More happy birfdy.’

  ‘But it isn’t your birfdy – I mean birthday…’

  ‘More happy birfdy.’

  Now, you don’t cross Eddie.

  He has rages.

  We call them wobblies.

  ‘Look out, he’s going to throw a wobbly!’

  And the face starts going red,

  the arms start going up and down,

  the screaming starts winding up

  he starts jumping up and down

  and there he is –

  throwing a wobbly.

  So I thought,

  ‘We don’t want to have a wobbly over this one.’

  So we started singing happy birthday all over again.

  Two hundred and twenty-three times.

  Then he says

  ‘More candles.’

  ‘We haven’t got any,’ we say

  (Lies, of course, we had).

  ‘More candles…’

  So out came the candles

  and yes –

  ‘Eddie blow.’

  He blew.

  ‘More candle.’

  And off we go again –

  Two hundred and twenty-three times.

  And then he says,

  ‘Letters, More.’

  Well, of course no one sent him any more,

  so while I’m singing more happy birfdy’s,

  my wife was stuffing all the cards

  into envelopes and sticking them down.

  So we hand over all his cards again

  and out came all the hippopotamuses again.

  So he’s very pleased.

  And that’s how Eddie had two birthdays.

  Lucky for us

  he’d forgotten by the third day.

  Maybe he thinks when you’re two you have two birthdays

  and when you’re three you have three birthdays

  and when you’re seventy-eight you…

  PLATFORM

  I’m standing on platform one

  of Pinner station

  at half past four.

  Mum comes at ten to five.

  When I wait for her

  I watch the signals for the express trains change

  I watch the lights change

  I watch the trains going dark as they

  come under the bridge.

  I’m waiting for my mum.

  I go and stand by the

  glass case on the wall

  where the Christian Science people

  put a Bible for you to read.

  It’s open and there are bits

  of the page marked that you’re

  supposed to read.

  I don’t understand it.

  I watch the woman in the sweety kiosk

  serving people.

  Mars Bar, bar of plain chocolate,

  packet of chewing gum, Mars Bar, Kit Kat,

  barley sugars.

  Are you waiting for your mum again?

  Yes.

  I go and stand on the shiny floor of the waiting room

  and look at the big dark benches. There’s a boiler in there.

  They never light it.

  Even in winter.

  There are big advertisements that I read.

  One says:

  ‘Children’s shoes have far to go.’

  And a boy and girl are walking away

  down a long long road to nowhere

  with thick woods on both sides of them.

  I’m not waiting for a train

  I’m waiting for my mum.

  At a quarter to

  The Flying Scotsman Express Train comes through.

  I stand back against the wall.

  It’s the loudest thing I know.

  The station goes dark,

  I stop breathing

  the coaches move so fast

  you can’t see the people in them.

  At ten to five


  Mum’s there

  The doors open

  She’ll be in the second carriage,

  she always is.

  Daylight shines from behind her

  so I can’t see her face

  but I know it’s her –

  Mum

  I know it’s her

  by her shape

  and her bag

  and her walk.

  Have you been waiting long?

  No.

  You could have gone home, you know. You’ve got a key.

  I like waiting for you.

  It’s better than being at home on my own.

  I suppose it is.

  I point to the children

  in the big advertisement

  ‘Children’s shoes have far to go.’

  Where are they going, Mum?

  I don’t know.

  I hold Mum’s hand all the way home.

  ON THE TRAIN

  When you go on the train

  and the line goes past the backs of houses in a town

  you can see there’s thousands and thousands

  of things going on;

  someone’s washing up,

  a baby’s crying,

  someone’s shaving,

  someone said, ‘Rubbish, I blame the government.’

  someone tickled a dog

  someone looked out the window

  and saw this train

  and saw me looking at her

  and she thought,

  ‘There’s someone looking out the window

  looking at me.’

  But I’m only someone

  looking out the window

  looking at someone

  looking out the window

  looking at someone.

  Then it’s all gone.

  AUNTIE WINTERMIDDDLE

  When I was seven I made up my mind:

  I am going to prove

  once and for all

  there is no such person as Father Christmas.

  I’ll stay up all night

  and when he comes down the chimney

  I’ll say,

  ‘There’s no such person as Father Christmas.’

  – no –

  I mean no one’ll come down the chimney

  which will all go to show

  that I’m right

  and everyone else is wrong.

  So that Christmas

  the Christmas when I was seven

  I went to bed

  very very excited.

  I lay in bed, my eyes wide open

  staring up at the ceiling

  staring at the door

  staring at the fireplace

  going,

  ‘I’m not going to go to sleep

  I’m not going to go to sleep.’

  I went on like that for ages

  and ages, hours and hours

  until suddenly I heard

  a rustling sound.

  It was coming from the fireplace.

  A bit of soot fell into the fireplace.

  I sat up in bed

  and stared into the dark.

  Then slowly there appeared

  feet, legs, body

  then a whole person.

  ‘Who is it?

  Who is it?’

  I called out in the dark.

  No answer.

  The shape moved across the room.

  It tripped over my yellow dumper truck

  that I had left there

  just in case there was a Father Christmas

  so he wouldn’t leave me another yellow

  dumper truck.

  Anyway –

  it turned on the light.

  I blinked.

  It was a woman.

  ‘Hi,’ she says,

  ‘I’m Auntie Wintermiddle.’

  ‘Auntie Winterpiddle?’ I said.

  ‘No, Auntie Wintermiddle.’

  ‘What are you doing in my room,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Michael,’ she said,

  ‘I’ve come to give you your Wintermiddle presents.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘I know everyone’s name,’ she said.

  ‘Blimey,’ I said.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said.

  ‘An Action Man,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t got any dollies like that,’ she said.

  ‘Action Man isn’t a dolly,’ I said.

  ‘Well I haven’t got any Action Man dollies either.’

  ‘I want a gun,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t got any guns,’ she said.

  ‘You’re useless,’ I said.

  ‘Am I?’ she said. ‘Watch this, then.’

  Her fingers turned into felt-tips

  and paint brushes

  and she was up the walls

  across the ceiling

  drawing, scribbling, colouring.

  She did pictures of tigers, aliens, roller-skaters,

  trees, dragons, aeroplane cabins,

  skeletons, people, moons.

  Fantastic.

  She wrote on the door:

  Knock knock

  who’s there?

  Toodle

  Toodle Who?

  Toodle-oo? But you’ve only just arrived.

  She wrote:

  Father Christmas is a fat fool

  above the fireplace

  She wrote:

  What goes snap, crackle, squeak squeak squeak?

  Mice Crispies.

  And she hung a giant paper sun

  with a light inside it from the ceiling.

  ‘How about that?’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘Not so bad actually,

  what else can you do?’

  ‘I can turn the world upside down. How about that?’

  ‘Like what?’ I said.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said.

  And she took me to the window.

  Pow! a flash went out from her hand.

  Night turned to day

  and the cars parked in the street

  turned into buses,

  all shapes, sizes and colours

  covered all over with mad faces

  winking and smiling.

  There were no cars just these buses,

  some the shape of giant tortoises

  and giant tins of baked beans

  giant feet and giant doughnuts.

  Pow!

  the room, my room

  turned into a hall,

  so big it looked as if all the children of the world

  could fit in it.

  I don’t suppose it was that big

  but there were thousands of us

  and we were all blowing up this

  huge huge huge purple balloon,

  we each had a bit to blow through

  and we were blowing and blowing

  and the balloon was getting bigger and bigger,

  it was swelling up above our heads

  and we were blowing and blowing

  it was getting so big I thought it was

  going to burst.

  There we were, thousands and thousands of us

  blowing and blowing

  until I thought it really was going to burst

  so I called out,

  ‘Stop, stop, stop.’

  And in a flash everything did stop.

  There was a grinding, smashing roar,

  light turned to dark

  the hall shrunk to a room – my room,

  there was a sucking whooshing sound

  and I saw Auntie Wintermiddle’s feet

  disappearing up the chimney.

  ‘Come back, come back,’ I shouted.

  ‘Come back, Auntie.’

  But there wasn’t a sound,

  and so, tired and sad – I fell asleep.

  In the morning

  there were presents.

  Dad said, ‘Look what Father Christmas brought you.’

  ‘Did he?�
�� I said.

  ‘You believe in the old Father Christmas story, don’t you?’

  he said.

  ‘I know a better one,’ I said.

  ‘A better what?’ he said.

  ‘A better story,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Mum.

  ‘Oh – never mind,’ I said.

  But later that day

  I went upstairs

  and wrote underneath the mantelpiece

  ‘I love Auntiewinterpiddle

  – no sorry –

  Auntiewintermiddle

  I’ll stay up for you next year.’

  THE ITCH

  If your hands get wet

  in the washing-up water,

  if they get covered in flour,

  if you get grease or oil

  all over your fingers,

  if they land up in the mud,

  wet grit, paint, or glue…

  have you noticed

  it’s just then

  that you always get

  a terrible itch

  just inside your nose?

  And you can try to

  twitch your nose,

  twist your nose,

  squeeze your nose,

  scratch it with your arm,

  scrape your nose on

  your shoulder

  or press it

  up against the wall,

  but it’s no good.

  You can’t get rid of

  the itch.

  It drives you so mad

  you just have to let a

  finger get at it.

  And before you know

  you’ve done it.

  you’ve wiped a load of glue,

  or oil,

  or cold wet pastry

  all over the end of your nose.

  ORANGE JUICE

  We get orange juice

  delivered to our door

  with the milk,

  on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

  We get one pint of milk

  one carton of orange juice.

  So,

  one Monday morning

  I go out there

  and there’s one pint of milk

  and

  no orange.

  So I go,

  ‘Damn – the milkman’s

  forgotten to deliver the orange.

  I love orange juice for breakfast.’

  So on Tuesday,

  I got up in time to meet the milkman

  and I say to him,

  ‘Hey, you forgot to deliver the orange yesterday.’

  ‘No, I never,’ he said.

  ‘Afraid you did,’ I said.

  ‘I delivered your orange yesterday,’ he says.

  ‘Well it wasn’t there when I came