Doctor Who_ Time and Relative - Kim Newman [6]
Now, she is wondering if I'm not.
Later –
Gillian started calling John 'the Martian'. She says he looks like the Mekon, Dan Dare's enemy in The Eagle, which annoys John because the Mekon (apparently) is Venusian. When Gillian says 'same difference', John delivers an illustrated lecture about the Solar System and the respective places of Venus, the Earth and Mars. Gillian thought Pluto was a cartoon dog and laughs out loud whenever Uranus is mentioned. John gets frustrated when Gillian pretends to be stupid to cover up for her ignorance. It's not her fault that she's grown up in a house without books or proper newspapers, where the telly is always tuned to the channel with adverts.
Gillian calls me 'Forehead'. When she first did it, I went home and examined my face in a mirror for hours, combing my fringe different ways. Finally, I realised Gillian was making a joke about my name not my face. There's nothing unusual about my forehead.
I live under the name Foreman like Winnie-the-Pooh lives under the
name Sanders. It's written up on the gates of the junkyard. I don't know where it comes from, and I only started using it because Grandfather needed two names to put on the forged documents.
If I think about it, it's funny that the children say that John is from outer space. He wears thick specs, which he tampers with –using transparent pink Sellotape to make them sunglasses (or 'anti-snowglare' glasses, though they're also the proverbial 'rose-coloured spectacles') or wiring two thin torches to the arms so he can see in the dark. In every subject, he's either second from top or second from bottom.
Unlike me.
I'm top in Maths and Science and bottom in everything else, though I was top in one History test when the question was about Renaissance Italy. I'm hopeless at Geog – I always forget what countries and capital cities are calling themselves this year ('even old New York was once New Amsterdam ... why they changed it, I can't say ... people just liked it better that way'). Mademoiselle ('Madame Weasel') Quelou says my French sounds like it comes out of the middle ages (I get Latin mixed up with it). I am only picked for netball when Gillian is captain. My English is 'all over the show', as you, dear diary, must have noticed. I have to concentrate hard when doing essays not to lapse into Fonetik Speling, which is a lot like Ronald Searle Meets Gillian. Somehow, writing this is different. Maybe because I'm doing this by choice not because I have to.
I was sent to the Head for saying that Religious Education is just History with more blatant fibs. I'm much better on the Gods that came from Outer Space than the ones people made up so they would feel better. Mr Carker consulted the list of permissible punishments in the School Rules, as if hoping to find public burning of heretics still on the books.
When Grandfather asks me how I'm getting on in School, I lie.
Friday, March 29th, 1963
A morning of eternal torment. Double Geography. Ghastly made us draw diagrams of a barkhan, the distinctive type of crescent-shaped Saharan sand dune I recognise from Lawrence of Arabia. All with the prospect of an afternoon of Games to make things worse.
But a miracle came about: Lo, Games was called off. The showers couldn't be used because of the frozen pipes.
Gillian says parents have complained about the cuts and scrapes. Not her parents, though. She always has cuts and scrapes. She lives with just her Dad, because her Mum took off when she was little.
The whole of Year Four was put in the Assembly Hall and given board games. Only the most suicidal soccer players among the boys complained. Wendy Coburn asked Mr Chesterton if we could play records on her Dansette, and he said it would be all right and that we could even dance to keep warm. He would be only too happy to keep an eye on us and had to be persuaded not to join in.