Rock Hollow

By Roli Cameron

‘IT WAS A LARGE HEAVY SILVER AND ANCIENT-LOOKING KEY. IT WAS THE SORT OF KEY THAT OPENED A TREASURE CHEST OR UNLOCKED DOORS TO SECRET CHAMBERS.’

There is nothing exciting about young Victoria Plant’s life. But this is all about to change with the finding of an old key. The key unlocks the door to a secret and supernatural world. Victoria encounters the wicked Count De Ville and his faithful black cat; they are as old as the hills and transcend time to bring about the end of what still remains of the Rock Hollow clan. Can Victoria help to defeat the dastardly army of fiends before it is too late?

Bittersweet and thought-provoking Rock Hollow is set in 1976 on the high moorlands that surround the small Yorkshire village of Riddleshaw. The book follows the awakening of differences, experienced by a young autistic girl. Victoria’s journey is enlightening, sometimes sad and more than often amusing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398453753

Book preview

Rock Hollow

Roli Cameron

Austin Macauley Publishers

Rock Hollow

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Foreword

Chapter 1: Let’s Take a Slant on Victoria Plant

Chapter 2: Time to Break Up

Chapter 3: This Little Piggy Had None!

Chapter 4: Malchap the Crow

Chapter 5: Churlish Charcot

Chapter 6: The Despot

Chapter 7: The Evacuation

Chapter 8: I Need Dry Bones

Chapter 9: Charley Says

Chapter 10: How Fairy Folk Get Their Names

Chapter 11: Through the Secret Door

Chapter 12: Up Before the Beak

Chapter 13: Curious Troglodytes!

Chapter 14: Hardwick Forest

Chapter 15: Scepe Dene

Chapter 16: The Jyn

Chapter 17: The Bad Penny Returns

Chapter 18: Count Nicholas De Ville

Chapter 19: A Time to Parley

Chapter 20: The Battle of Rock Hollow

Part 1: Rock Hollow Songs

i) Flixweed’s Song

ii) Guardian of Hill and Dale

Part 2: Glossary

Part 3: The FATBOY Attestation Papers

Part 4: Brockholes Balcony Cafė Recipes

About the Author

Carol (Roli) Cameron was born in 1967, and has lived in the Pennine town of Halifax, for most of her life. Carol attended the Highlands Grammar school before gaining a BA (Hons) in Combined Arts. She entered the teaching profession and worked as a special educational needs teacher until 2017, when she developed Charcot arthropathy, a degenerative bone condition. Carol has always enjoyed writing and regarded her debility as a challenge to be conquered and so she started to write Rock Hollow. This is Carol’s debut novel and it aims to share her lifelong love of books, nature and local history with the reader.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to great people, of whom I have lost along the way, including my very dear gran and fellow bibliophile, Wynne Akroyd, my green-fingered great auntie, Jean Yorke, and my spinster aunt, Mary Major, who all possessed intuitive insight into my differences and spent hours humouring my peculiar hobbies and whims. Ladies I owe you a posthumous ‘thank-you’ for your unerring patience!

Copyright Information ©

Roli Cameron 2022

The right of Roli Cameron to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398453722 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398453739 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398453753 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Foreword

The year is 1976 – and nine-year-old Victoria struggles to fit in with everyday life and the people within it. That is until she discovers the magical world of Rock Hollow. The book follows the awakening of differences, experienced by a young autistic girl.

‘Rock Hollow’ examines real autism issues from the perspective of the uninitiated and undiagnosed. A strong concurrent theme embedded within the story is how girls with undiagnosed autism can cleverly mask and conceal unusual behaviours and employ their own learned interpretations and perspectives in order to comfortably sink into social situations and be absorbed into the norm. The Battle of Rock Hollow personifies the need to ‘fit into’ the World of the Neuro-typical (NT) person in order to evade persecution for being ‘different’. Rock Hollow accepts that people with autism are generally banded together and are stereotyped as being emotionally sterile but Rock Hollow challenges why stereotyping does not account for the emotional concepts of aloneness, anger and anxiety.

A series of questions unfold within the narrative of the story. The questions all elicit a response, but very few can be answered. The narrator attempts to help the reader, but sometimes the realisation of fact is harsh for even the narrator to temper.

If ANYBODY had actually and ‘officially’ identified the need to investigate the appearance of certain autistic traits during the 1970’s the results of enquiry would have undoubtedly apportioned causal links of autism in association with poor parental skills, specifically ‘refrigerator mothers’ or cognitive dysfunctional psychological factors. Quintessentially each ‘official’ explanation of autism is a world away from colloquial ‘sunny’ Halifax with its peculiar Yorkshire mannerisms and the ‘unofficial’ explanations which were entrenched through an inverted social hierarchy in which the working class were King. Accordingly, that peculiar working-class colloquial governance blamed unusual behaviours on shyness (n), awkwardness (n) or being spoiled (v). Perhaps the best ‘neurotyping aide’ for autistic girls in the 1970’s was the concept that CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD, what an essential camouflage device as all unusual behaviours could be craftily concealed because of the sheer fact that silence (the absence of noise) failed to draw attention.

Sadly, Victoria did not discover until the age of forty-five that she had an undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Difference (ASD) condition. You may now have guessed that the book is based upon some of my own personal experiences of growing up and how, with the benefit of hindsight, I can now magically wave a wand and attribute and explain why I behaved and thought as I did as a young person. I hope that you find Victoria’s journey enlightening, sometimes sad and more than often amusing.

April 2021.

Chapter 1

Let’s Take a Slant on Victoria Plant

Victoria loved the word ‘kaleidoscope’ it was a tonal word and a delight to pronounce when she first discovered it, absolutely by chance in her Diamond Dictionary. The dictionary entry described the word as being ‘a tube in which patterns are produced by reflection of pieces of coloured glass, moved by rotating the tube’. Victoria had of course her own ‘acme’ cardboard kaleidoscope which Aunty Moira had presented to her last Christmas, but Victoria had made an important discovery.

If she lay on her bed and screwed up her eyes so tightly shut that it made her nose wrinkle and by pulling her counterpane over her head, Victoria could create her own kaleidoscope. Victoria commanded colours by concentrating very hard and then speaking the colour out aloud. She conjured up a magnificent spectrum of the most intricate kaleidoscope colours – hues of green like the first tentative leaves of spring, and the vibrant neon colours of gaudy buddleia, cornflower blue and the richest buttercup yellows. Victoria could spend hours creating the most beautiful colours and patterns. All it took was the determination to concentrate, which meant absolute silence and isolation, away from Tilly her little sister and mum and dad.

Victoria was an avid collector of lists, advertisements and menus. Her set of lists now exceeded two hundred. Victoria liked to memorise the facts contained in the topics and she loved anything that was presented in an ordinal manner. Her collection comprised of lists expressing the most, least, biggest, smallest, fastest, slowest, popular, unpopular, richest, poorest, famous, infamous, fattest, thinnest, powerful, dangerous and poisonous. She kept her collection in a tatty old box file on the top shelf of her Formica book case. Victoria’s fascination for advertisements developed because she liked to compare things. Just like her collection of lists which tended to contain more factual and empirical information, advertisements also appealed to Victoria because they offered varying prices and product specifications.

Her favourite ones were advertisements for cars and holiday cottage lets. It was difficult to keep the adverts in any semblance of order because they came in a range of sizes and print quality and even if you pasted them into a scrap book then they would still look scruffy. Victoria had to resign herself to the fact that she needed to find a trusted and organised collection of ‘readymade’ advertisements.

Luckily for Victoria her dad regularly bought a copy of the advertising magazine called the Exchange & Mart and he always gave her his old copy of the paper once he had finished reading it. Victoria was allowed to keep twenty copies of the magazine which she kept neatly stacked and stored alongside the old tatty box file on the top shelf of her Formica book case.

Victoria found that the Exchange & Mart was the ultimate reference point for finding out the prices of unusual items for sale like chickens, guinea pigs, vintage cars, yachts, caravans, long case clocks and musical instruments and she would often while away her spare time flicking through the pages discovering the prices of the most bizarre commodities that were advertised in the weekly publication.

Victoria had just started to collect menus after her mum had brought her one back from her trip to Paris the previous Spring. Victoria loved the menu because it was in the shape of a hippopotamus which also happened to be the name of the restaurant. She loved trying to decipher the curious accented words and to fathom out the value of the strange currency. Of all the dishes that were printed on the menu she could only recognise a handful of words that were used in English and had been pinched from the French language like ‘mayonnaise’, ‘soupe’, ‘filet’, ‘sauce’, ‘vanille’, ‘crème’ and ‘sorbet’. Victoria could not bear to throw the menu from the Hippopotamus Restaurant away and so she put it in the tatty old box file with her collection of lists. She reasoned that a menu was simply both a list and an advert all in one. If a customer read a menu and didn’t like the food or prices then they wouldn’t choose to eat there.

Victoria was very particular about her books. They had to be arranged in a certain order. Her fictional books sat on the first shelf of her Formica book case and were arranged in alphabetical order. Reference books were sorted by subject and size and were placed on the bottom shelf and her small collection’s Observer s Books were stored according to their series number and took pride of place on their own shelf She didn’t like lending books out and always got annoyed when her little sister borrowed one without permission. Victoria always spent most of her pocket money on books especially if they belonged to part of a series. She was currently saving up to buy another Observer’s Book to read over the summer holidays.

Although Victoria had learnt a lot about how to store books from going to Riddleshaw Library she hated library books. Victoria believed that the idea of reading a book that had been mauled by other people was revolting. It upset Victoria when she saw a book that had been roughly handled and there were many books in Riddleshaw Library with cracked spines and dog-eared pages. She also hated the dusty smell of library books and she felt that the thick plastic covers made them awkward to pick up and read. Victoria thought that being a poor library book must be like somebody being made to wear a kagool all the time!

Victoria believed that the whole point of owning a book was to cherish reading it and to then enjoy displaying it on her book shelves. It was like having a trophy and it showed other people what she was interested in. Library books were unloved homeless nomads and they were soon forgotten.

At Riddleshaw County Primary School Victoria preferred the quietest places, well away from the gossiping girls and bothersome boys. Her favourite place at school was under the ‘chalet’ which was rather an elaborate name coined up by the teachers to describe the outside prefabricated classroom. You might think that squeezing into a gap no bigger than the height of a coffee table would be awkward and uncomfortable to while away play-time and dinners, but Victoria felt safe and in control. It was here where Victoria could study her beloved books which she carried about her person at all times in an old red corduroy beaded handbag. The bag was festooned with tin badges, fond souvenirs of annual holidays to Filey and Norfolk. Under the musty canopy of the school chalet shelter, Victoria relished the fact that she could break the cardinal Riddleshaw School rule:

4.’PUPILS CANNOT CONSUME SWEETS OR OTHER CONFECTIONARY ON SCHOOL PREMISES’

Gran had told Victoria that a gentleman called Douglas MacArthur had said that ‘rules were mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind’. Victoria interpreted this as being that people were too lazy to think for themselves, so rules had to be made. She concluded that she was not lazy, so it was acceptable to break the Riddleshaw School rule.

Bringing in banned confectionary was no mean feat. It involved a strict and secretive regime which formed an integral part of the school week.

The Plant family lived in a remote part of Riddleshaw, their family home was a large bungalow in an area called Brockholes. It was a very rural locality, with just a few houses and farmsteads dotted along the route. It was too far to walk to school and so dad dropped off Victoria and her younger sister Tilly in the village of Riddleshaw on each school day morning. The morning school drop gave Victoria the ideal opportunity to execute her daily school rule breach. She always ensured that she had at least twenty pence secured in her peggy purse to spend at the Riddleshaw grocery shop. Mr and Mrs Lumb ran the shop and it was always stocked full of every perceivable commodity that you could imagine – sacks of potatoes and an array of seasonal fruit and vegetables, tinned and pickled goods and even DIY and haberdashery products. The most sumptuous goodies on display were the neatly stored jars of sweets cleverly put on the lowest shelves so that even the youngest customer could view the full range of sweeties. Who could resist a quarter of rhubarb and custard, midget gems or bon bons? The best sweets were bought on an individual basis and were priced at half-pence each. The discerning customer could choose from a delicious range of delicacies and amongst Riddleshaw’s population of sweet connoisseurs, the trusted favourites were flying saucers, fizz bombs and white chocolate mice. Amongst the haw p’ny treats on offer, Victoria had discovered liquorice roots and this is how she verily broke ‘school rule 4’ each and every day.

Victoria always felt extremely nervous when she went into the shop accompanied by her little sister Tilly. For this purpose, she had produced a script which covered every eventuality:

‘Hello Mr [or] Mrs Lumb.’

‘Please could I possibly have four liquorice roots and four orange fizz bombs in two separate bags.’

‘Here is five pence.’

‘Thanks for the change.’

‘Thanks, good bye and see you soon.’

Tilly had to be part of the conspiracy as she had threatened to tell mum, dad and all the teachers at Riddleshaw if Victoria didn’t dip into her pocket money and buy her four orange fizz bombs each day. Tilly always shovelled the sweets into her mouth and chomped on the sherbet encrusted cases on her way to school. By the time the girls had reached old Mr Horsfield, the ancient lolly pop crossing patrol man there was never a trace of the fizz bombs apart from the empty crisp white paper bag and Tilly’s orange tongue!

In the discovery of this odd-looking gnarled stick Victoria had of course extensively researched liquorice roots. Her starting block was her Diamond Dictionary where the definition was described as ‘substance used in medicine and as a sweetmeat; the plant or its root from which the substance is obtained’. This description gave Victoria further justification for breaking the school rule. This curious root was a medicine! Victoria had read all about liquorice in gran’s copy of ‘The Golden Pathway to a Treasury of Knowledge’ and had found out that generous supplies of liquorice had been discovered by archaeologists in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, three thousand three hundred years ago and that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics recorded the use of liquorice as a popular type of tea. The ferocious Scythian warriors used liquorice to boost their energy before they went on a long route march. Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar were also reputed to be liquorice lovers. With such a provenance, Victoria had assured herself of the benefits of her four daily liquorice roots which she secretly chewed under the Riddleshaw chalet at play times and lunch time.

Victoria’s favourite poet was William Wordsworth. She loved the second verse of his poem entitled ‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways’ so she was delighted when her teacher Miss French announced that the class was going to write a poem about ’nature’. Victoria knew exactly what she was going to write. She soon had the second verse of her favourite poem written down in her jotter!

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

Victoria stuck up her arm to attract her teacher’s attention and Miss French came over.

‘Miss, you said that you wanted to read our poems before we wrote them up in our best books.’

‘That is quite correct Victoria but you surely can’t have finished your nature poem already!’ Miss French picked up Victoria’s jotter and read the poem.

‘Is this your own work?’ quizzed the teacher.

‘Yes Miss French. I have written it.’

Sometimes Victoria took things that were said to her literally which occasionally got her into trouble. When Miss French announced that her class was going to write a nature poem Victoria didn’t think that she had to compose it from scratch and write it in her own words. When Miss French asked whether or not it was Victoria’s own work, she believed that she had answered her teacher correctly because it was written by her in her own jotter and with her own pen. Luckily for Victoria although Miss French was dubious of the provenance of her nature poem, she let the girl write up the poem in her best book!

Mrs Plant told everyone that her eldest daughter had a ‘nervous stomach’ and for this reason there was always a yellow plastic bucket put in the corner of Victoria’s bedroom. Most evenings just as she was falling asleep Victoria had the sudden urge to be sick. Her mum presumed that her daughter worried too much about things and told her husband that she would soon grow out of it.

Being sick happened when Victoria had to do something the next day when it was out of the ordinary. She was always very poorly on Thursday nights in anticipation of when she went swimming on a Friday afternoon to Riddleshaw baths. She hated the strong smell of chlorine that floated up from the baths and the little changing cubicles that were set around the edge of the pool. Each week she tried to get the same cubicle as she had had the previous week but the allocation of cubicles was on a first come first serve basis. Boys down the left-hand side of the pool and girls down the right-hand side of the pool. Sometimes the cubicle’s lock didn’t work and there were often scraps of sticking plaster or other bits of flotsam in the shallow pools that had formed on the surface of the cubicle’s floor.

When Victoria first started at Riddleshaw County Primary School she got invited to nearly all of her class mates’ birthday parties. The evening preceding birthday parties always led to great anxiety as the girl worried about the prospect of having to go to an unfamiliar house and to experience using unfamiliar toilets. Victoria never chose to eat a crumb of party food and she hated the games that the party guests had to play. It always seemed to entertain the adults far more than the children!

In the end, Victoria discovered that if she didn’t take the party invitations home and show them to her mum than it was not long before the invites stopped altogether as the other pupils in her class couldn’t be bothered to send out any more invitations to Victoria if they were was no prospect of receiving a RVSP!

This was a valuable discovery and it suited Victoria very well. She wasn’t bothered in the slightest about having so called ‘friends’ and couldn’t even begin to imagine how somebody was meant to spend time in the company of a friend.

There were seven large desks in Miss French’s classroom. Each desk had the capacity to accommodate four pupils. The teacher’s seating plan arranged pupils in a boy-girl-boy-girl formation. Victoria sat next to Christopher Wilson. He was taller and stouter than the other boys in Miss French’s class and he was clever and kind. He was quietly spoken but people made a point of listening to his opinions because they were always balanced and fair.

Christopher’s nickname was ‘Chris-chuckle’ because he had such an infectious giggle that could make the entire class break out into rapturous laughter as soon as somebody heard the sound of his giggle!

Christopher was universally liked by everybody at Riddleshaw County Primary School. They respected his sense of judgment and because he was often seen talking and spending time with Victoria the pupils in Miss French’s class tended to leave her alone even if they found her awkward and strange.

Victoria liked Christopher because he always seemed to be interested in listening to what she had to say about her hobbies and interests. After she had told him that she liked collecting cacti and succulents he had brought her in a small cutting of an Easter cactus. It was Christopher Wilson who had taught her to correctly form a figure of eight after he had seen her struggling to draw ‘8’ correctly. Instead of two fat circles that were plumped on top of each other she could now easily guide her pencil over paper and form a perfect figure of eight. Christopher was nearly what somebody would describe as being Victoria’s friend.

Chapter 2

Time to Break Up

It was Friday the 9th July 1976 and the very last day at school before the start of the long summer holidays. Teachers are very busy people and at the end of term they have lots of tidying up to do in preparation for the start of the next academic year at the end of August. For this reason, Miss French, the class teacher had announced to her class the previous day before the end of school prayers that ‘You can bring in two sensible games each tomorrow. I suggest board and card games that you can play in small organised groups. I am going to be very busy taking down your art work and if you want to take it home, you will have to play nicely amongst yourselves’.

When mum and dad were very crotchety and cross with Victoria, they called her ‘obstinate’. Victoria did not know what this word meant but deduced that it was a word that people said when a person or people were feeling extremely unhappy with somebody. When she had looked it up in the Diamond Dictionary, she had determined that obstinate meant ‘stubborn’. Victoria regarded this as being a very positive quality and had come to the conclusion that being obstinate possessed the same good qualities as Douglas MacArthur idea that ‘rules were mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind’. ‘The rule is to bring in to school two sensible card or board games, which can be played unsupervised in a small group. As I do not like playing games with other people, I am going to have to be stubborn and sheep-headed.’ Victoria mumbled to herself ‘and not be lazy because I shall occupy myself’.

Victoria had anxiously deliberated as to what she could actually bring into school. In the end she had decided to bring along her favourite books which included the Diamond Dictionary and The Observer’s Tourist Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland, she also decided to take her Bead Craft Kit which had she had received as a Christmas gift the previous year. It had remained untouched and was still sealed in its box because mum had banned her from opening it and spilling beads all over the carpet because Victoria was so clumsy. Gran described Victoria as being ‘sheep headed’ this was due to the fact that her head was always in the way and that she was obstinate and always did the opposite that she was told to do.

Mum had advised that Victoria should take in her cork-work bobbin and woollen yarn and Victoria agreed to take it into school. However, Victoria had sneaked the bead kit into her school bag whilst her mum was pegging out the washing.

The Bead Craft Kit was described on the box lid as being ‘Educational, Useful and fascinating’. According to the box lid the kit consisted of a Beading Loom, some tint glass beads, a bead thread spool and wire. The kit may have been ‘Educational’ and ‘Fascinating’ but it may have been more useful and honest to describe the Bead Craft Kit as having ‘Unrealistic Expectations’ and ‘Perfect for Failed Crafters’. Victoria was to find this out sooner rather than later as the last day of term ensued.

’Hurray! Hurray!

Breaking up today,

No more reading,

No more sums,

No more writing,

Til loosin’ August comes!’

Miss French’s pupils spontaneously burst into this familiar cheeky end of term song as they waited in a dishevelled line outside the classroom whilst their teacher unlocked the door. Children carried an array of boxes of various shapes and sizes and none could wait to be able to set up their games. Miss French had even relaxed her seating plan rule and the children were allowed to choose for themselves which desk and who they wanted to sit with. When Miss French pushed the door open the children rushed in and started to set up their games as fast as possible.

Victoria was the last to come into the classroom and she chose her usual place at her usual desk. Whilst Miss French was carefully taking down the volcano display work Victoria watched the chaos ensuing all around her. Children were arguing over whose turn it was next. Others accused each other of cheating whilst a group of children were fascinated in Helen Clay’s Bag of Laughs. Yesterday had been Christopher Wilson’s last day at Riddleshaw County Primary School.

His family were moving to Hampshire where his dad had got a new job. Victoria and Christopher had promised to keep in touch with each other and they had exchanged addresses.

‘We are going to live close to the seaside so I will send you a nice postcard when I get down there’ promised Christopher.

Victoria kept the details of his new address safely tucked inside her peggy purse and she thought that it would be best to write to him in a couple of weeks’ time when she may have had some interesting news to tell.

She decided that she would have a go with her Bead Craft Kit after dinner so she put the kit box under her desk out of harm’s way until she decided to unseal it. She wanted to look up in her Observer’s Tourism Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland where Christopher was moving to. According to the address he had given her he was moving to a town called Gosport. She soon discovered that it was on page ten of her Tourist Atlas and she was just about to calculate the best route from West Yorkshire to Hampshire when her train of thought was rudely and unexpectedly interrupted.

‘Oh, Alistair if it isn’t our dear little Queen Victoria sitting there looking all prim and proper. I suspect she’s too good to mix with the hoi polloi’ said Gordon Mattinson to his twin brother.

‘Except that she’s no real Queen our dear thicky little Vicky is somebody that we can take the micky’ snorted Alistair trying not to laugh.

The Mattinsons were identical twins and you could only tell the difference between the two boys because Gordon had a small mole on his right cheek. They wore their hair in the same style in a curly shock of auburn. They had the same greedy piggy eyes and snarling mouths. Even the freckles on their pug-like noses seemed to be in exactly the same place. Victoria did not bother to look up from her Tourist Atlas. She didn’t look people in their eyes when she was spoken to so she when she heard the Mattinsons’ derisive words she kept her head down. She suspected that now Christopher Wilson had left school that she would become the subject of the twins’ teasing. They hadn’t liked it when Christopher had stopped them from stealing Victoria’s her Christmas play costume and now there was nobody to stop them from making Victoria’s life at school an utter misery.

‘We’ve been talking to your little sister’ jeered Alistair ‘and we’ve been finding out some very interesting facts from her about you, your grace’ continued Gordon in a mocking tone of voice. The twins often finished off each other’s sentences and it was if they could share their thoughts. ’We’ve heard all about your little daily visits to Lumb’s shop and unless you want all the teachers to know about your liquorice smuggling then we suggest that you buy us some spice just like you buy fizz bombs for Tilly. We like Victory V’s and you can get us a quarter of a pound every morning when you go to the shop. They contain chloroform and ether and they are really good for soothing or nerves. I am sure you wouldn’t want to see us getting agitated.

On the first day back after the school holidays we will be waiting for you outside the shop.’ Gordon spoke for the both of them and then he let Alistair continue to taunt Victoria. ‘We’ve been finding all about your nerves Sicky Vicky. That’s something that we would like to help you with’ started Alistair.

‘He means that we shall endeavour to develop your nervous complaint’ said Gordon finishing the sentence. ‘You will have to bring your yellow sick bucket to school every day and carry it around all day by the time we have finished coaching your nerves’ as they both jeered at the same time.

The twins had finished what they had wanted to say for now and they spotted a game of Ker Plunk just about to start. Both rather relished the prospect of having some fun at the cost of wrecking others’ happiness. They planned to steal marbles and to poke the players with the game’s plastic straws. The Mattinsons slunk over to the desk where the game was just starting.

Relieved that the twins had moved somewhere else Victoria still didn’t look up and she instead surveyed the charted ferry routes to the Isle of Wight on page ten of her Road Atlas. After about five minutes she heard a commotion at the other side of the classroom. When she finally looked up and across the room to the desk closest to the classroom door, she noticed that Richard White was dabbing blood off his arm with his hankie. Tony Johnson was looking cross and holding up pieces of broken Ker Plunk straws. Jayne Duncan was crawling about on her hands and knees under the desk trying to pick up spilled marbles that lay all over the classroom floor.

Miss French had also noticed the commotion and had gone over to investigate the source of it.

‘Gordon stabbed me with a Ker Plunk straw and he has made my arm bleed’ wailed Richard White.

‘Alistair has snapped all my Ker Plunk straws and he has ruined my game!’ exclaimed Tony Johnson angrily.

‘The twins threw the marbles all over the floor’ said Jayne Duncan wiping a tear from her eye.

‘If you cannot play nicely, I can easily give you some lines to be getting on with. Settle your selves down and stop fidgeting and quarrelling.’

The teacher’s warning seemed to work. Richard, Tony and Jayne silently cleared away the shattered pieces of the Ker Plunk game and then they decided to play something which couldn’t be spoilt. They got some scrap paper and played Hangman. The Mattinsons joined in a game of Monopoly which kept them quite up until dinner time.

The Head teacher of Riddleshaw County Primary School had promised his pupils that if the weather was fine on the last day of term, they could have a whole school picnic in the school’s playing field.

At 11: 30 am Victoria watched the school caretaker carry some trestle boards across the playground and into the playing field. Quarter of an hour later she watched a procession of dinner ladies marching across the playground carrying an assortment of trays and baskets laden with catering equipment. Finally, she spotted the cook coming out of the side entrance of the kitchen pushing a dinner trolley stacked with dishes and plates covered in muslin cloth.

Just after midday Miss French announced to her pupils that they should clear and tidy their desks and stand behind their chairs so that she could see when her class was ready to go to dinner. Once was all spick and span and the chairs neatly pushed under the rightful desks then Miss French instructed her pupils to leave in an orderly fashion in single file in the direction of the school playing field.

When they got there, they found that Mr Mottram’s and Mrs Bell’s classes had already got there first. The two class groups were standing in a long snaking queue in anticipation of the whole school’s end of term picnic. Miss French’s class joined the back of the queue.

‘I hope that we are getting a longer dinner break because by the time we finally get our meals all the other classes will have already gone back into school’ grumbled Richard White.

In the end nobody had to wait too long. The dinner ladies had really got the concept of the division of labour down to a ‘T’! With military precision dinner lady number one distributed paper plates and plastic cutlery to the diners at the front of the queue. Dinner lady two was responsible for the egg salad bridge rolls whilst dinner lady three was in charge of cheese and tomato rolls. Cook guardedly served out luncheon meat and piccalilli rolls. Dinner lady four at the end of the long trestle table gave each and every picnicker a green shiny apple whether they wanted one or not!

‘You can come back and get a drink of water once you have eaten your picnic lunch’ shouted the rosy cheeked cook ‘Keep Britain Tidy! I don’t want to see any rubbish!’

Victoria chose to sit at the top end of the field where the grass was longer and still a little bit damp. She slipped her bag down from her shoulder and popped the apple inside the compartment next to where she kept her Diamond Dictionary. Then she looked down at the limp paper plate with the soggy egg salad roll on it and contemplated how she was going to tackle it. She removed the cress that garnished the roll first and scattered it in the long grass and then she sorted the contents of the sandwich into five piles consisting of the hard-boiled egg, bridge roll, iceberg lettuce, onion and tomato. She nibbled a miniscule piece of the lettuce and onion but didn’t touch the tomato. She ate the bridge roll and every single morsel of the hard-boiled egg. Victoria looked around to make sure no one was watching her before she tipped the salad left overs into the long grass.

She picked up her handbag and went to exchange her empty plate for a glass of water. Next to where dinner lady number one was serving water into waxed paper cups Victoria couldn’t miss hearing Jayne Duncan excitedly talking to Mandy Cullingworth.

‘Cook told me that we can all play out until nearly before home-time and she said that Mr Stansfield is going to bring Snowdrop! Oh, won’t that be lovely! Look I can see him now and he has got Snowdrop with him.’

Victoria took a small sip of water from the waxed paper cup. She was glad that it was cool and refreshing. It quenched her thirst and took away some of the strong taste of onions which lingered in her mouth. Once she had finished her drink, she turned around to see what the girls were so excited about.

Victoria’s mum described Mr Stansfield as being ‘an eccentric gentleman’. When Victoria had looked up the word ‘eccentric’ in her Diamond Dictionary she found that the word alluded to a person who was whimsical. She looked up the word ‘whimsical’ only to