The Butterfly Lion. Michael Morpurgo

       Chilblains and Semolina Pudding

      Butterflies live only short lives. They flower and flutter for just a few glorious weeks, and then they die. To see them, you have to be in the right place at the right time. And that’s how it was when I saw the butterfly lion – I happened to be in just the right place, at just the right time. I didn’t dream him. I didn’t dream any of it. I saw him, blue and shimmering in the sun, one afternoon in June when I was young. A long time ago. But I don’t forget. I mustn’t forget. I promised them I wouldn’t.

      I was ten, and away at boarding school in deepest Wiltshire. I was far from home and I didn’t want to be. It was a diet of Latin and stew and rugby and detentions and cross-country runs and chilblains and marks and squeaky beds and semolina pudding. And then there was Basher Beaumont who terrorised and tormented me, so that I lived every waking moment of my life in dread of him. I had often thought of running away, but only once ever plucked up the courage to do it.

      I was homesick after a letter from my mother. Basher Beaumont had cornered me in the bootroom and smeared black shoe-polish in my hair. I had done badly in a spelling test, and Mr Carter had stood me in the corner with a book on my head all through the lesson – his favourite torture. I was more miserable than I had ever been before. I picked at the plaster in the wall, and determined there and then that I would run away.

      I took off the next Sunday afternoon. With any luck I wouldn’t be missed till supper, and by that time I’d be home, home and free. I climbed the fence at the bottom of the school park, behind the trees where I couldn’t be seen. Then I ran for it. I ran as if bloodhounds were after me, not stopping till I was through Innocents Breach and out onto the road beyond. I had my escape all planned. I would walk to the station – it was only five miles or so – and catch the train to London. Then I’d take the underground home. I’d just walk in and tell them that I was never, ever going back.

      There wasn’t much traffic, but all the same I turned up the collar of my raincoat so that no one could catch a glimpse of my uniform. It was beginning to rain now, those heavy hard drops that mean there’s more of the same on the way. I crossed the road, and ran along the wide grass verge under the shelter of the trees.