Imagination

©2008 Ian G Hobson

It must be almost a year ago now: my mum and dad had gone out and my granddad had come round to babysit. Not that I was a baby; I was just a few weeks short on my fourteenth birthday then. But my little sister was only six, so we needed a babysitter, apparently. Anyway, my sister had gone to bed and I was sat at the kitchen table doing my homework. I'd finished the maths, that was pretty easy. I've even got to like maths since my granddad told me the secret of how to get good marks.

I remember my granddad saying, 'Your exercise book looks like someone's tipped a load of numbers onto the page and then given it a good shake. It's no wonder you get low marks; your teacher can't make head nor tail of it.' He was right: teachers like you to be very neat, you see. Like when you're doing equations – you have to keep all your equal signs in line down the page, then it's easy for the teacher to mark. And even if you get the wrong answer, they'll still give you higher marks 'cos they can see where you went wrong, and they like that lot better than if the page is a mess, even you've got the right answer at the bottom. 'Keep it neat - that's the secret,' my granddad had said.

I was thinking about that when my granddad came downstairs from reading my sister a bedtime story. My computer was on the blink, so my dad had lent me his laptop so I could do my English homework (we're allowed to use computers for that). The homework was to write an essay, or a story or whatever, on any subject we liked, – but I could never think of anything to write. And I said that to our English teacher, Mrs Dickinson. So she said, 'Write about something you know about.' Yeah, very helpful - I don't know why I bothered asking. I mean, what the heck did I know about, beyond the fact that my bike had a puncture, City had lost three-nil at the weekend, and I'd had a boiled egg for breakfast?

'Granddad?' I said, as he came and got himself a beer from the fridge. 'Is there a secret to writing essays ‘n stories ‘n stuff?' He frowned, so I said, 'Mrs Dickinson says we should write about something we know about.'

He laughed then. 'That's the sort of crap advice teachers always give you. No, forget that. That's far too limiting at your tender age. If there's a secret, I suppose it's imagination. That and punctuation, because if you muck that up, anyone reading what you've written will loose track of what you are trying to say.'

'I see,' I said, looking at the blank Word document on my dad's PC.

My granddad ruffled my hair. 'Don't look so glum, Adam. We've all got an imagination, and as for punctuation, well, that's just common sense, and if you're stuck, just look in any of your reading books to see how it's done... Your Harry Potter books will do. You like Harry Potter, don't you?' I nodded. 'Well that all came out of what's-her-name's imagination.'

'J K Rowling,' I said, feeling non the wiser.

'Aye, that's her, J K Rowling; and who's to say you can't be as successful as her one day. Just use your imagination; write a sentence and think of one to follow it, and then keep going... Well, there's a programme on the History Channel I want to watch, so I'll leave you to it.'

'Thanks, Granddad,' I said as he went through to the living room. Though I was wondering what I was thanking him for, as I still had no idea what to write. Imagination? Just make something up? I scratched my head and had a think, and then I remembered that my granddad had been in the merchant navy when he was a young man, and it gave me an idea.

***

Running Away by Adam Howarth

There was this kid called Dave, and he lived with his mum and dad. Except that his dad wasn't his real dad, because his real dad had been killed in a car accident. No, Bryan was his sort of step-dad, as he wasn't actually married to his mum, he'd just lived with her since Dave was about seven. Anyway, he was a right boozer, was Bryan, always down the pub, and he smoked so much he smelt like an ashtray. Dave hated Brian because he was always making him do things, like the washing up, or cleaning the car, or weeding the garden. So, one day, Dave decides he's had enough, he can't take any more of this beer-swilling, ashtray smelling, fake dad, and he decides to run away. He was almost twelve years old, so why shouldn't he?

So one Friday night he stuffs a few things – some Mini-Mars Bars and a bottle of Pepsi and socks and stuff – into the rucksack his uncle Fred bought him for Christmas, and then he sets the alarm in his mobile phone for five o'clock and goes to bed. It took him ages to get to sleep, and it seemed like he'd only been asleep for ten minutes when the alarm wakes him up. It was the middle of June, so it was light early, and he got dressed really quickly and then went for a piss, though he didn't flush the toilet because he didn't want to risk waking Bryan or his mum.

He felt a bit sad about leaving his mum, because she wasn't a bad mum really, she just happened to have lost her first husband and then ended up with a boyfriend that was a beer-swilling, ashtray-smelling, pig.

Dave went back to his room and had one last look round at all his toys, and the computer his uncle Fred had bought him for his birthday, before picking up his bag and his mobile phone and sneaking downstairs. Bryan always left his bunch of keys on the coffee table in the living room, so it was easy for Dave to let himself out of the front door and then lock it again and stuff the keys through the letterbox.

'You're up early.'

Dave nearly jumped out of his skin. It was next-door's milkman looking at him over the hedge. Dave’s mum always bought milk from Tescos, but next-door must have theirs delivered; he hadn't realised that, but figured he wouldn't as he was usually still in bed at this time.

'I'm going camping with a mate from school.' Dave whispered the lie. 'His dad's picking me up in about ten minutes.'

'Oh, well have a nice trip then,' the milkman whispered back, and then off he went. He had one of those electric milk carts that didn't make any sound at all. Dave watched to see which way he went and then ran off as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Not that he didn't have a plan; he was going to go that way anyway, as he'd decided to head for the canal and set off along the towpath. He'd once walked about three miles down the towpath with his uncle Fred, who had told him that it was possible to walk all the way to Liverpool, though Dave couldn't remember how far that was.

It was cold down by the canal, but Dave had put on two t-shirts and his blue Nike top with a hood, so he wasn't too cold - especially with the running, and then the walking along to towpath. But after about an hour, during which time he'd seen no one, he decided to stop and have a rest beside a dirt road and a funny-looking bridge thing that could be swung out of the way when canal boats wanted to pass through. There was a bench, so he sat on it and had a drink of Pepsi and one of his Mars Bars.

'Got any more of those?'

For the second time that morning Dave nearly jumped out of his skin, because right behind him in the bushes was a tramp, slowly getting to his feet. But there was something very odd about this tramp because, apart from the way he was dressed, he looked very familiar, as though Dave knew him from somewhere.

'I'll swap you a drink of milk for one,' said the tramp, as he took a pint bottle of milk from the pocket of the scruffy jacket he was wearing.

By then Dave was off the bench and standing clutching his rucksack to his chest and looking very suspiciously at the tramp. 'You're next-door's milkman,' he said. 'I saw you this morning.'

***

My granddad came back into the kitchen then. 'How are you doing, Adam?' he asked, looking over my shoulder and reading what I'd written. 'Mmm, I can see one or two spelling mistakes that the spellcheck-thingie's missed, and you need to add a comma or two.' He showed me where the spelling mistakes were, and where the commas were missing. 'Not bad though,’ he said. ‘Keep going, Adam.'

I was a bit pissed that he'd interrupted me, as I was dying to know what was coming next in this story that seemed to be writing itself. But I thanked him for his help, and he got himself another beer and went back to watch more television, while I read my last three paragraphs and then carried on writing.

***

'Ah, that will be my twin brother, Alfred,' the tramp replied. 'He always drops off a couple of pints for me... That was a Mars Bar you were eating, wasn't it? I could really fancy one, and I'll give you this full bottle of milk for one, if you've got any left.'

'I don't like milk,' said Dave, 'but you can have a Mars Bar if you want, they're only mini ones though.' Dave reached into his rucksack and handed a Mars Bar to the tramp, who thanked him and then sat down on the bench to eat it.

Dave pushed his hood back off his head and went and sat beside him, just as his mobile phone began to ring.

'Are you going to answerer that?' the tramp asked.

'Don't know.' Dave took the phone from his pocket to see who was calling him. It was his mum. Checking the time, he saw that it was just after half-past-seven, and he wondered how come his mum was up so early on a Saturday. He switched his phone off and stuffed it into the bottom of his rucksack. 'I'll have to be going now,' he said.

'Don't go just yet,' said the tramp. 'Stay and chat for a while. I don't meet many young people.'

'Just for five minutes, then,' Dave said, then looking at the tramp, he asked, 'Where do you live then?'

'Oh, here and there, but mostly by the canal. I like to sleep under the stars.' The tramp took the top off the milk bottle. 'Are you sure you won't have some?'

'No thanks,' Dave replied. 'But what about when it's cold, or if it rains?'

'Oh, I usually find somewhere. There's an old hut beside the cricket ground about a half-mile that way.' The tramp pointed along the towpath and then took a swig of his milk. 'So where are you going then?'

'Me?' said Dave. 'I'm off to Liverpool. I'm going to be a merchant seaman, like my uncle Fred.'

'I see,' said the tramp. 'Bit young though, aren't you... for starting a job, I mean.'

Dave sat up straight on the bench, trying to make himself look taller. 'My uncle Fred said that my great-uncle George started work when he was fourteen.'

'I see,' said the tramp again, looking Dave up and down. 'I didn't realise you were so old.' Dave said nothing, thinking it best to keep quiet about being only eleven and three-quarters. 'So I guess you don't like school much then?' the tramp said, before taking another swig of his milk.

'It's alright,' said Dave, 'but that's not why I've left home.'

'Family problems?'

'Yeah.'

The tramp drained the milk bottle and then wiped milk from his mouth with the back of his hand and set the empty bottle down on the ground. 'Want to talk about it?' he asked.

The sun was higher in the sky and Dave could feel its heat on the back of his head. 'There's not much to talk about,' he said. 'My dad died, you see… When I was three, so I can't really remember him.'

'And your mum married again, did she?'

'Yeah. Well sort of married... to Bryan.' Dave, still looking at the tramp, had noticed that despite him being quite scruffy, he seemed to be very clean and didn't smell at all.

'And you don't get on?' the tramp asked.

'No, not really.' Now Dave noticed something else about the tramp. Something that was very strange indeed; he was casting no shadow. Dave looked at his own shadow, and then at where the tramp's should be, but before he could say anything, there was a terrific screech of brakes, and as he turned and looked towards the little road that lead to the bridge, he saw his mum leap out of his uncle Fred's Volvo and come running towards him.

'David, whatever are you doing, sitting down here, all by yourself? If it wasn't for your uncle Fred, I wouldn't have known where to look for you.'

'I'm okay, Mum,' Dave said, getting to his feet, and looking first at his mum and then at his uncle, who had also jumped out of the car. 'And I'm not all by myself, I'm...' Dave had turned to look at the tramp but he'd vanished; there wasn't a sign of him anywhere. There was just the empty milk bottle on the ground beside the bench. Dave's mother wrapped her arms around him then, and began to cry.

'We've found him,' said Uncle Fred, ruffling Dave's hair. 'No harm done. Now how about a fry-up, back at my place?'

As Dave was driven to his uncle Fred's house, with his mum sitting with her arm around him in the back of the Volvo, he was thinking about the tramp and wondering where he had gone. Then he remembered the tramp's twin brother. 'Mum,' he said, 'do the Watsons, next door, have a milkman?'

As Dave's mum frowned and shook her head the car arrived at his uncle's house and Fred yanked on the handbrake and turned to look at Dave. 'What did you say?'

'I just said, “Does next door to us have a milkman?”'

Fred looked at his sister-in-law. 'I didn't tell you why I came round so early this morning, asking to see Dave, did I?'

'No, but I was wondering why, and how you knew where to look for him.'

'It was because I had a dream and it woke me up.' Fred looked at Dave. 'I dreamt that your dad was still alive and that he was a milkman. But in the dream he was crying because you had fallen into the canal by the old swing bridge and you were drowning, and he was pleading with me to come and save you, and when I woke up I could remember every detail and... Well, it all seemed so real, I thought I'd better go round to your house and see if you were okay.'

'Was there a tramp in your dream?' Dave asked.

'No,' Fred answered. 'Why do you ask?'

But before Dave could say any more, his mum burst into tears again. 'And what did Bryan do when you came round, and we found David missing?' she asked between sobs. 'Just went back to bed! Well, it's the last time he sleeps in my bed, or my house. When I get home, he can pack his bags and get out!'

Slowly, a smile spread over Dave's face. 'Can we have bacon, eggs and fried bread, Uncle Fred?' he asked.

***

My granddad came back into the kitchen then and sat and read the rest of my story. 'By heck,' he said. 'I think we've got a writer in the family.' And so I typed:

THE END

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