by AnonYMous
Mum seemed pleased. ‘Would you like to come for lunch with us?’
Fucking bitch.
‘NO, he would NOT like to come for lunch. Pack your things and let’s go, please.’
I said bye to the fat boy and we left London.
All the way home I read Wizard’s First Rule and marvelled at how much more a book could ‘fill me with’ than that fat boy’s horrible, scrawny penis.
Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule is:
People are stupid; they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it’s true.
Each book in the Sword of Truth series has a Wizard’s Rule. Some are brilliant and some are shit. I love this one, it’s fucking fantastic, and it will always remind me of my sore legs on that trip back from London.
Liverpool Daisy
My Mum left my Dad to fuck a farmer. When she left she took all of her stuff and moved into the farmhouse with the farmer. She got cats and dogs and started wearing Hunter wellies, and she became a bit of a cunt, but you know about that anyway.
After she’d been with the farmer for a while and things weren’t going so well, she did the logical thing and took the girl dog 20 miles down the road to get fucked by a boy dog so that she could have puppies. Later Mum would say to me, ‘never have children to try and save a relationship. I did it with your Dad, I did it when I took the dog to get fucked and she had those fucking puppies.’
When the puppies were a couple of weeks old my Grandma and Grandad came to visit. My Mum’s always been pretty good at being ‘normal’ around people that aren’t me or my brother, and so it was quite nice and relaxed.
My Grandad went out with the farmer to go and shoot some animals. My Grandma and Mum and I sat in the kitchen and my Grandma pulled a plastic bag out of nowhere to give to me.
When I was little and Grandma would visit, she’d give me and my brother both a ‘lucky bag’. It was a plastic bag that had sweets and toys and books and other shit in. As we got older the bags had less stuff in, and what used to be Enid Blyton in my bag started turning into stuff that Grandma had picked up in the charity shop, read, and then passed on to me.
The book she’d given me this time was called Liverpool Daisy. Grandma said that she had really, really enjoyed it, and thought that I would too. I went into the Dog’s room (a room next to the kitchen with a lino floor and a dirty sofa) and sat on the sofa while the dog and the puppies slept in the ugly wooden fort-type thing that the farmer had built for them.
I started to read Liverpool Daisy. I can’t remember exactly what happens but I do remember that Daisy started fucking people for money to pay for her Mum’s medicine, and then when her Mum died, to pay for a new set of gnashers for herself. And Daisy didn’t stop there. She kept on whoring herself. In alleyways mostly. And I sat there with my mouth hanging open wanting to get up and go and smack Grandma one for reading such muck. And she was going to fucking ask me about it soon, wasn’t she? She was bound to come through and see me reading and ask what I thought and what in the name of almighty fuck was I supposed to do then?
‘Yes Grandma, it’s good. I like the gratuitous sex and I really enjoyed that smelly fucker who rammed her one in the alleyway and then jizz ran down her leg.’
Fuck. I had to put it away. Hide it away and she’ll never ask.
So I pushed it under the dirty dog-sofa and got up to wake all the puppies up to play.
I stood over the wooden nest-cum-fort thing and watched as the puppies latched onto the dog’s tits and sucked. They all looked pretty happy. The dog looked fucking miserable though, poor thing.
There were seven puppies altogether. All black, all girls. But only six were feeding. The other one was sat at the back away from the rest. That was a bit weird, I’d not seen them do that before.
I called Mum and Grandma through and pointed at the dog.
‘What’s wrong with the dog?’ I asked.
‘Nothing’s wrong with the dog,’ Mum said.
‘She’s just tired,’ Grandma said.
And we all stood and watched and then slowly but suddenly it dawned on us.
Mum bent down and put her face next to the puppy at the back for a few seconds, then quickly jumped back.
‘She’s not breathing. She’s not breathing. Is she dead?’
They both looked at me. I didn’t know.
‘Pick her up! PICK HER UP!’ they screamed at me.
So I leant down and picked up the puppy, and yes, it was cold and dead.
Mum and Grandma both started crying and screaming and hugging each other while I stood there wondering what to do next, with a dead dog in my hands.
‘She needs to be buried,’ they both decided after a few minutes, wiping tears from their eyes. They looked at me with red, serious faces.
‘You need to bury her.’
If there is one thing that you should never do it is argue with two women. Especially if one of the women is your Grandma and the other is your Mum who is prone to going fucking nuts and telling you that you were an accident. So I took the dead dog outside and went to the place where the farmer would bury the rabbits that the dogs had caught and killed and ripped apart. Grandma and Mum both screamed at me.
‘NO! NO SHE NEEDS TO GO IN THE TREES!’
So I turned around, with the dead dog in my hands and headed for the trees outside the front of the house. Grandma ran out with a tea towel and told me to wrap the dead dog in it.
‘Poor little thing, what a poor little thing,’ she said.
I didn’t say much. I was too busy looking for a shovel. I wrapped the dead dog up, picked up a shovel and began to dig a hole while the two women looked on. When the hole was deep enough I carefully put the dead dog in and began to cover it over. I patted down the soil and told them both that we should go inside. They were still crying. A lot.
‘Poppy,’ my Grandma said. ‘If I’d had one, I would’ve called her Poppy. Will you make her a little marker, a little cross, and paint “Poppy” on it?’
If it were my Mum asking me and not my Grandma I would’ve asked her if she was shitting me. But it was my Grandma and my Grandma was sad, so I went to the garage and nailed together two bits of wood that I found, then found some paint and painted on “Poppy” where the two pieces of wood met.
When I got back to the grave that I’d dug and put the dead dog in and filled back with soil they were still both stood there. I pushed the makeshift cross into the ground behind the mound of earth and stood back. And I told them now, we’re going inside.
We went into the house and I made them both tea. My Grandad and the farmer came back. I told them both that the dog was dead and that I’d been made to carry round the dead dog and then bury the dead dog. They went and sat with my Mum and Grandma and comforted them.
I went and sat back on the dirty sofa, the dog and six remaining puppies jumped up and sat on me and we all continued to read Liverpool Daisy.
Towards Tomorrow
I was in the city centre of my wonderful hometown, waiting to meet a friend for a pub lunch. Now, if you’ve ever met me you’ll know that I will NEVER be late to meet you. Always early. Sometimes an hour early. On this day I was an hour and fifteen minutes early.
So I wandered around for quite a while looking in shops until I decided that the best thing to do to pass the time would be go to a charity shop, buy a book and sit in the pub with a drink reading until my friend joined me. I went in to my favourite charity shop (British Heart Foundation) and found a battered little copy of Towards Tomorrow by Isaac Asimov for 95p. I bought it, walked over to the pub, ordered a bottle of beer and sat in the corner to read and wait for my friend.
After about ten minutes I became aware of someone watching me. I looked up and saw a man staring at me and my book from the next table. He came over.
Man: ‘Hello. I see that you are reading Asimov, do you enjoy it?’
Me: ‘Well, I’ve only read eight pages but yes, it is good so fa
r.’
Man: ‘I learn English at the college. Are you English?’
Me: ‘Yes.’
Man: ‘I am Polish. My English is not good. You will teach me English.’
That wasn’t a question. He told me that I was going to teach him English. What the piss do you say to that?
Man: ‘You are … very beautiful. You have very beautiful eyes. You must be very clever.’
Oh, fucksticks.
Me: ‘Okay, I have to go now. I am meeting my boyfriend for lunch.’
I wasn’t meeting my boyfriend. I was meeting my rather large male friend who I thought might scare him off a bit.
Man: ‘You will teach me English.’
Me: ‘Look, I’m not qualified to teach English. And besides, you are speaking English now. It’s really good. REALLY good. I don’t think that you need lessons.’
Man: ‘I will read your Asimov and we will talk about it in English.’
Me: ‘I really have to go now.’
And I stood up, walked out of the pub and began what I thought looked like a casual but brisk stroll down the street. It was only when the Man came jogging up shouting me to ‘wait’ that I realised how fast I’d been walking. And then suddenly, ahead of me a beacon of light – I could see my friend! I shouted to him, a lot, loudly, a bit like a madwoman and start to run in his direction. The Man disappeared.
Friend: ‘Why the fuck are you running at me?’
I told him briefly that some mental cunt tried to accost me and if he wasn’t always fucking late then he could have fucking saved me, prick, and where the fuck had he been anyway?
And he apologised, and we went to the pub and had some lunch, and we forgot about the Man for a bit. After a little while it was time for him to go, so we said our goodbyes and he began walking down the street. I had a look in my purse and was feeling a little flush, so decided on a taxi home. I went and hopped in to the back of the nearest black cab, told the driver my destination, the doors clicked locked and then someone was there trying the handle and shouting at me to let them in.
‘FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING MAD TWAT!’ I screamed at him through the window.
Taxi Driver: ‘Do you know him, love?’
Me: ‘No I don’t fucking know him, he wants to read my fucking Asimov book and talk about it in English.’
Taxi Driver: ‘Eh?’
The Man was still shouting at me. His English really was very good. He knew all of the good swearwords and then some.
The taxi driver by this time had obviously made up his mind that I was probably the victim here, and started to pull the cab out in to the road. Then do you know what happened? As we started to drive away the Man ran and threw himself in front of the cab. We ground to a halt and the taxi driver did some shouting out of the window while the Man banged on the car and shouted a lot more abuse at me.
I did get home eventually, and the taxi driver rang the police and I never saw the Man again. I do wonder whether he ever got his English lessons, and whether he ever read Towards Tomorrow.
So while you are sat reading in public, and you see people looking at you from across the way – they are probably not admiring you for your choice of clever literature. They are probably wondering what your nipples look like.
And that is why you should never read Isaac Asimov in a pub.
Teenage years and university
Beloved
I didn’t really want to go to university, I went because everyone else was going. Now that I look back on it I’m glad that I went but at the time, particularly in my first year, I found it quite difficult.
I’m not sure what the process is for other universities, but where I went, when you applied for your first year and got your place you were sent a big list of stuff that you had to fill out and post back.
One of the lists was information about the different types of accommodation, asking you to pick a place to live and list a few interests of yours so that you could be matched in a flat or house with people who you might be able to get along with without stabbing each other to death.
A couple of my friends from school were also headed to the same university as me. I phoned them, asked where they were planning to live, and marked my form out accordingly. When the results came back a week later, I had been placed in accommodation so far away from my friends that I wanted to cry. I looked at lots of maps and bus routes, and eventually consoled myself that they would be in the same city as me, and that I needed to fucking man up.
So I moved to a new city and met the people that I was going to live with. We said brief hellos and then went and sat in the kitchen for a bit of a ‘get to know you’ session. They all started by talking about what they had written on their accommodation applications, specifically, what they had written in their hobbies and interests, as in theory we should have all matched.
Girl 1: ‘I wrote that I like drinking.’
Other girls: ‘Yeah!’
Girl 2: ‘I said that I like shopping.’
Girl 1: ‘Oh my God, I put that too!’
Girl 3: ‘And me! And I also put socialising.’
Other girls: ‘Yeah, I LOVE socialising!’
Girl 4: ‘I put down clubbing and magazines.’
Girl 2: ‘Oh my God, did you see Heat this week?’
Other girls: ‘No, why?!’
*Girl 2 runs out of the kitchen and rushes back with the latest edition of Heat magazine.*
Girl 2: ‘Look!’
*All girls crowd round the magazine and gasp.*
All girls: ‘OH. MY. GOD!!!!!!!’
A lot of laughter followed and when they had calmed down they turned to me. I hadn’t seen what they were looking at in the magazine, and I was very aware that I hadn’t said a single word yet.
Girl 1: ‘So what did you put?’
Me: ‘Well … I put the stuff that you all put: shopping, socialising, you know, normal stuff.’
Other girls: ‘Oh my God!’
I actually had done no such thing. I put that I liked reading and going to museums and eating. It is even possible that I explicitly said that I did not like the things that they mentioned. How in the name of almighty piss had I ended up here?
The girls all decided to unpack a bit more of their stuff and then we would all go to the bar together. We were all best friends now, there was no escape: I was fucked.
I went into my room and started to take stuff out of boxes. Out came the books that my reading list had told me I needed: Dracula, Regeneration, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, Birdsong, Frankenstein, and Beloved. The only one that I’d had to buy new was Beloved, I had already read and owned all of the others. They all went on my shelves, and Beloved on my bedside table.
I went to check how the others were getting on. They were all cunt-deep in their bags and boxes of clothes, so I went back into my room and started to read Beloved. About an hour later they were ready, so we went out to the pub.
They all drank vodka and lime. I’d never heard of such a drink so I had a pint of ale. They all talked about boys, and one of them got off with some ratty-looking creature who had joined our table onto the one with him and his friends. I didn’t really like it. I felt really uncomfortable, and weirdly, I felt like something was wrong.
I always have my phone set to silent. All ringtones annoy me. I took my phone out of my pocket and saw that I had a missed call from my brother. I knew that it was something bad before I called him back.
I excused myself and went outside. I phoned him back. He answered straight away, his voice strained:
‘Nanny has died.’
My Grandma had died an hour before, while I was sat in my room reading Beloved, listening to the noises through the walls of four girls who I’d just met unpacking their things.
I hung up and went back in to the pub. I told the girls that I was going back to the flat. They asked why. I told them. They didn’t know what to say. One of them offered to come back with me but I declined.
I’d already
missed the last train home, so I had to wait for the morning. I went and sat in my room and called my brother and spoke to him some more. I could hear people crying in the background, probably my aunties, and I could hear my Dad asking him, ‘Is that your sister? Is she okay? Who is she with?’
The next day I got the first train back home to see my family and to go to the funeral. I missed my entire first week-and-a-bit of university. When I came back my first assignment was due – an essay on Beloved. I hadn’t read it, but I wrote something and I got enough marks to pass that semester.
To this day, I still haven’t finished reading that book. It’s on my bookshelf with the receipt poking out where I marked the last page I’d read that first night away from home.
It could be the best book in the world for all I care, but it reminds me of a time that was too sad. Maybe one day I’ll finish reading it, but for now I’m happy for it to stay nestled on the shelf with the others.
A Game of You
I spent a lot of my time in my late teens when I was back home from university for the holidays working in temp jobs for very little money. And when I wasn’t working I was reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics over and over in a little place I’d discovered close by to my Dad’s house.
You walk down the long country road, over the bridge, under the underpass and follow the river until it runs into a lake. When the water stops moving you turn left, and after a little while left again.
Through some trees and under another underpass and then in front of you you’ll see a circle of willow trees in the middle of a field.
Walk across the field and into the trees and you’re surrounded by the drooping branches. The sun can still stream through the gap at the top of the trees so it’s still light, but the space below is just enough so that you can sit down in the middle but not see outside.
And that is where, aged 17 for the first time, and 18 and 19 after that, I used to sit and get stoned and read comics.