on my side. She might not have been. She might have got into a huff and never written to me again. So I just, like, grunted at Lily and pulled the duvet over my head and pretended to go to sleep. I didn’t want to hear any more about her and her horsy friends!
When we got home on Sunday I looked eagerly at the front door mat to see if there was a letter for me, but there wasn’t. Lily said, “Are you expecting something from the Blob? Don’t tell me you’re still snail mailing?”
“She hasn’t got a computer,” I said. “I did ask her!” I said this for Dad’s benefit. “I said we could e-mail but she said her mum’s got a lot of bills to pay and they can’t afford a computer just at the moment.”
Lily looked at me like she wasn’t hearing right. “Can’t afford a computer!”
“She hasn’t got a dad,” I said.
“Why not? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t told me.”
“You mean, you haven’t asked? I would ask!”
“That would be a personal question,” I said. “You can’t ask people personal questions. Her mum and dad might be divorced.”
“So what? Lots of people’s mums and dads are divorced. Francie’s mum and dad are divorced. She doesn’t care who knows. I’d say straight out,” boasted Lily. “Are your mum and dad divorced? That’s what I’d say. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, it’s nothing odd. Not like not having a computer. That is just so weird! How do they live?”
“They live just the same as anybody else,” I said, crossly.
Lily looked over at Dad and made her eyes go big. I know she was expecting him to be on her side, what with him being a computer person and all, but Dad just laughed and said, “You could do with a spell on a desert island, my girl!”
Hooray! That told her.
Hi, Katie,
I know it’s not my turn to write but I wanted to tell you about my ace weekend with my nan and granddad.
Nan had a birthday cake with SIXTY CANDLES on it. Truly! She counted them. It was a VERY BIG cake! It took her several goes to blow out all the candles. In the end we had to help her!
What made it such fun was that all the family came and we played games. All the family is: aunties and uncles (two of each); my great aunt (Nan’s sister); my cousins (Six in all).
Two of my cousins are boys, but they are quite nice. This is because they are still little!!! One of them is Seven and the other is five. They have not yet had time to grow horrible… Of my four girl cousins my favourite is Stephanie as she is like us and hates fox hunting. Stephanie is twelve. You would get on with her!
The games that we played were:
Miming
2O Questions
Charades
How does it resemble me?
This last was particularly funny! How it is played is that one person has to go out of the room and all the rest think of an object. The person then comes back and goes round in a circle asking “How does it resemble me?” and trying to guess what it is. It was SO hilarious! When my nan went out of the room the object chosen was: a flower pot. Well, she came back and started to ask questions, and when she got to my granddad and said, “How does it resemble me?” you will never guess what he replied! Very solemnly he said, “It has a hole in its bottom.” Nan looked quite shocked for a moment so that I felt sure she was going to tell him off for being rude, but in the end she couldn’t help laughing, and so then we all did.
Charades was also fun. In case you don’t know it, this is where you divide into teams and each team chooses a word and breaks it down into syllables. You then act out each syllable and people have to work out what the word is.
I was in a team with Stephanie, Uncle Dave, my dad and my great aunt Annie. Our word was AEROBICS. (Air-o-bix.) When we did the first syllable Aunt Annie pretended to be an opera singer (Singing an AIR). She dressed up in a big lacy tablecloth and put a lamp-shade on her head! She is a very dignified sort – She is a head teacher!!! – and it was just hilarious. I couldn’t help wondering what the children at her school would think if they could see her!
It was a really great weekend. Even Lily enjoyed it, though she was moaning like crazy on the way there as she didn’t want to leave her friend Francine and miss out on riding a pony called Cobbie in a gymkhana.
What sort of things do you do when you go and visit your nan? Where does your nan live? Mine lives in St Alban’s, which is not so very far away.
Tomorrow we go back to school. WOE. I don’t really mind though it would be far more fun just to go on playing charades and seeing my Aunt Annie in a lampshade! Her school had already been on half-term. We were a whole week later than everyone else but we break up a week earlier. On the other hand we do LOADS of homework and we start at half-past eight every morning and don’t finish until half-past four, which I think is quite a LONG DAY.
Please write soon!
Lots of love
from your friend
Violet XXX
PS This is a joke my Uncle Dave told me. How do you make a sausage roll? Push it!
PPS Did you manage to work out all the flower words?
Hi, Violet!
Sorry I haven’t written for ages. Almost ten days! I expect you will have been wondering what has happened and whether you have said something to offend me, which is what I would most probably be wondering if you didn’t write back to me like almost IMMEDIATELY.
I have been in bed, boo hoo! I have had this really bad cold and couldn’t go to school, which I absolutely hate. There are some people that think it is fun, not having to go to school, but I am not one of them! It is just so boring, lying in bed, even though Mum stayed home to keep me company. I kept thinking all the time of what was going on at school without me, and wanting so much to write to you but I just felt too woozy. Like my head was full of fog. I did try starting a letter but my hand went like
all across the page so that you wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway! It was, like, all sh-sh-shivery and sh-sh-shaky. Like a g-g-g-ghost.
I am not yet back at school so I am going to write you this really LONG letter. Be warned!!!
I did your flower arrangements.
