Warming Up

We hadn't even been away for a full week (not quite) and yet we've packed a lot into these six and a half days and it felt like an age since we'd been home. On the long journey home Catie read Phoebe the last part of her first book “My Best Friend and Other Enemies”.   Highly recommended for the approx 8-12 year olds in your life. And this 55 year old thinks it's ace too. There's a whole series to enjoy.

What a treat for both parties. My wife wrote that book over ten years ago, before Phoebe existed and now she gets to read it to her own child. My daughter gets a private (well apart from me and Ernie listening in and in my case occasionally interjecting to try and make it more about me!) audiobook reading from the actual author. It didn't blow Phoebe's mind as much as it should do, as she thinks writing books is just something that parents do. In fact she is keen to write her own book. She wants to call it “Victorian Ghost Joke Book” attempting to build on her popularity from her occasional (non-) appearances on Twitch of Fun and is keen for it to be properly published. She told me she wanted someone to draw the cover and I said she could do it, but she was annoyed with that idea as she wants it to look like (and be) a proper book. She also asked if her name would be in it and if she'd be able to have her photo at the back like her mum has. So it's not just in Uranus jokes that she's taking after me. She also wants the empty acknowledgment and worship of strangers.

My Best Friend and Other Enemies is a terrifically funny book, but it was a little triggering for me as it involves a school competition to win an Easter egg. In the book the characters have to create art to win the prize, but at my school we had a creative writing competition based around Easter and the prize was a chocolate egg. This combined my two main interests of showing off and chocolate and I was determined to win. I wrote a moving and serious story, which I don't remember too much about, but it involved a flower blooming on some waste land to signify rebirth. It was very clever. I worked hard and made an especial effort with my (usually terrible) handwriting.  I was going to smash this. And have chocolate smeared all over my delighted face. I tugged at the heart strings, but it was all for show. I only cared about myself. The true message of Easter.

However when the competition winner was announced I was astonished to come second. I believe Paula Maunders won the Easter egg (and no, it's not tragic that I remember all the details). Paula, a bright and very funny girl (and woman) didn't usually come top of the class and wasn't as interested in creative writing (or chocolate) as me. She had written a poem about Jesus which began (and again, it does not reflect badly upon me that I remember this forty-five years later) “Jesus died upon a cross, Upon a cross he died”.

Now listen, her poem was OK, but it was not as good as my heart-rending story about, probably a boy losing his mother or something and the seeing a flower and feeling a bit better about it. She'd gone straight for the obvious Easter story of Jesus' crucifixion and then thought she was clever to sort of repeat the first line backwards for the second line (it was NOT clever. It was HACK). And just because she had done something better than she might usually have achieved, Mrs Harris-Bryant made her the winner. Even though she KNEW that my story was objectively the best. It was a fucking disgrace. 

I still won something, probably a book token or something like that. But you can't eat a book token. You can't smear melted book token over your face. I didn't want a stupid book. Books are rubbish. I wanted the Easter egg. It was the greatest injustice in recorded human history and Catie's stupid book (which has the added disadvantage of being a book and not some chocolate) had dredged it all up for me. And when I tried to interrupt her reading to let my family know about this, they all told me to shut up because they wanted to hear how the story turned out. Not my true story, the made up story which wasn't even about their dad.

I hope you enjoyed your egg Paula. I hope it didn't stick in your throat because it was an egg of lies. It won't have done of course, because it was chocolate and so would just melt. 

Did Mr Williams read your poem out in Assembly, like he did with my brilliant story? I don't know, I can't remember. But he read mine out. And didn't even say until the end that it was by a pupil at the school so everyone thought it was by a real life writer. He knew it was the best. He knew who should have had the egg. But reading out the story in Assembly doesn't give me any chocolate does it? It's no consolation. Tear down Fairlands Middle School. This contravention of justice should not be allowed to stand.

I mean it is true that my older brother had come up with the whole idea for the story. But that's not the point it it. I still wrote it out. In neat handwriting. And my own words. It's still clearly the best. And any accusations of plagiarism are just ignorant.