Too Short to Count Tea Coupons
Fresh Ink, September, 2019
My second home is the Globe but we are mostly out the back in the sheds with our pet collection and the Horse&ShoeSugarCubeClub. We build a rickety aviary and get some homing pigeons and leave them locked in like the book says and then we let them out and watch them fly away, away. Belinda gets bitten by a dead rat the cat brought in and it hangs onto her finger and we have to interrupt Rosalie’s speech class. We are in the Duchess of Malfi and have to scream really loud backstage and then be carried on dead. I do Creative Dance with Shona McTavish. I am an ant in something which tours to Tapanui and they drop me off at Raes Junction, and an angel in Hansel and Gretyl but I couldn’t twirl around because my costume was all shrivelled at the back where I’d tried to iron it. Sometimes when it is toogoodaday my father takes us to Brighton instead of school and once we took Belinda but Rosalie had already rung in about her having the wrong shoes and the parents all got into trouble. Sally sews herself a rainbow dress for the formal and my father says you’re not wearing that. We go to the pool and eat cheese rolls on puddled plastic seats and bounce on the trampolines outside if there’s time and leave our wet chlorined towels bundled up till next time. My mother gets lost in the fog up Swampy. Voice of Women ladies deliver great bundles of saved up tea coupons but when we can’t be bribed to count them my mother just guesses what they’re worth then throws them out. We have Esperanto Club and invalid cookery and make carrots in white sauce in a pie dish. We hang around in the basement at Corso eating the milk biscuits meant for Africa.