Uptil (tulip)
Sore (rose)
Drogmail (marigold)
Foglevox (foxglove)
Shopytalun (polyanthus)
Marigold and polyanthus were really difficult! Especially as polyanthus is one I hadn’t heard of… Mum had to help me with that one! I expect you know all about flowers because of your mum.
The flowers were in your first letter, which I expect by now you will have forgotten what you wrote. I will have to remind you!
I keep all of your letters. Do you keep mine? While I was in bed I read through all of yours and I just felt so happy that we are pen pals!
Mum says that the lily that Lily is named after is probably a TIGER lily. A tiger lily would look like this:
I still like violets best!
I couldn’t help laughing about your visit to the British Museum and seeing a mummy that looked like one of your teachers! I have done a strip cartoon of it. I will stick it on Now.
Next week, me and Mum are doing a sponsored walk for the Cats’ Protection League. We got Bella and Bertie from them and so that is why we always support them. These are the people I have been sponsored by:
The lady who lives upstairs, Mrs Cathcart. (She is old but very nice. Sometimes if I am at home when Mum is at school I go upstairs and watch TV with her.)
Our next door neighbours (both sides).
The lady in the newspaper shop.
The whole of my class at school!
If I walk right round (five miles) I will make… £52!!! I am really looking forward to it.
I am glad you enjoyed your nan’s birthday party. It sounded like fun. I specially liked Auntie Annie in the lampshade!
I told Mum about your granddad saying to your nan that “It has a hole in its bottom”. Mum thought it was very funny! Mrs Cathcart came down on Sunday afternoon for tea and we played the game of “How does It resemble me?” but we didn’t have a flower pot! Mrs Cathcart is too old and might have been upset.
You asked me what we do when we visit my nan and where she lives. She lives in Yorkshire but we don’t ever visit her. She won’t have anything to do with us, except just at Christmas and on my birthday she sends me a present and I write to thank her, but that is all. She doesn’t want to see us or even for me to ring her up. This is because she thinks we are beneath her. She was my dad’s mum, and she was very angry when he and Mum got married.
Unfortunately she is the only nan I have as Mum was brought up in a children’s home and has no family. She and Dad were so happy together! There is a photo of them holding hands and looking all smoochy into each other’s eyes. But my dad died when I was only three and so I never really knew him and I have never met my nan at all as she cut us off and retired to live in her dark and spooky house and never see the light of day. Dad was her only child so perhaps when he died it unhinged her mind, but Mum says she is a very proud and unforgiving woman and so I cannot really feel too sorry for her. Mum is the one I feel sorry for. I think it is so unkind, the way she has been treated.
You are lucky to have a mum AND a dad AND a sister (even if it is not always fun) AND two nans and a granddad. I am not being jealous when I say this but I would like to at least have a nan. Mum says Mrs Cathcart is “as good as” but Mrs Cathcart has children of her own and always goes off at Christmas to stay with them. So then I am completely nan-less! It is just Mum and me. Even Arthur has a family.
I hope this letter doesn’t sound too glum and gloomy. It is not meant to. But you did ask! About my nan, I mean. I am not feeling sorry for myself, I am just telling you how it is.
The reason you have half-term at a different time from everyone else is because you go to a posh school and posh schools do everything differently from everyone else! I expect you have to be quite rich to go to your school. I don’t mind if you are rich! My nan is rich. Mum says she has more money than she knows what to do with. Mrs Cathcart says, “It is a pity she doesn’t spend some of it on her granddaughter,” but Mum says, “We can do without her charity.”
I have not yet done another maze, but here is a joke! I just made it up.
Question: What kind of robbery is the easiest?
Answer: a safe robbery!
I think that is quite good.
And now I must tell you something. I have had this totally brilliant and earth shattering idea! You know in one of your letters you said how it would be great if you could write stories and I could do pictures to go with them? Well, we could do a magazine! Like Go Girl, only we could make it funny. You could do the writing bits and I could do the drawings. Do you think this is a good idea? We could have problem pages and letters pages and short stories and poems and articles. And then when we had done it you could maybe make copies on your computer and I would do a cover for it. Say if you want to! You don’t have to. I mean, like if you’re too busy or anything. Or if you think it would just be a drag. But if you would like to you could send me something next time you write and I would do the pictures straight away.
I hope this letter is not so long that you have stopped reading it! I must close now as my hand is beginning to ache. I suppose that would be one good thing about having a computer. Mum says maybe next year. I will keep my fingers crossed!
Lots of luv from
Katie xxxxxxxxxx
I told Mum about Katie’s dad, and about her nan being too proud and unforgiving to have anything to do with Katie and her mum. (I didn’t tell Lily as she was still calling Katie the Blob and so I didn’t think she deserved to be told. Plus she would probably only say something stupid and annoying.)
“It’s so sad, isn’t it?” I said to Mum.
Mum agreed that it was. “But it’s nice that she’s told you. She obviously felt ready for it. And it explains why she’s always seemed so close to her mum, if there’s only the two of them.”
“At least she has Arthur and Mrs Cathcart,” I said. “I know it’s not the same, but it’s better than nothing.”
I was so excited by Katie’s idea of writing stories and poems for our own magazine. It is just exactly
