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There was a flat blue sky the morning Milky White moved in down Barratt’s Road, first week of the summer holidays when me, Daz, Skinny and Dodge were bored to death, perched on the wall and drumming it with our heels, flinging stones against the kerb. By elevenses our mums had their tights off, feet up with cups of tea and Woodbines, lines sagging while the washing dripped. We gobbed on passing ants, the bubbles popped and dried on the hot pavement. It would soon be flippin’ hotter. Back gardens white with butterflies on the cabbages as we waited for the flying ants to rise from nesting cracks between the kerbstones, each suggestion leading into argument. We could git some worms an' goo darn Feobalds. Caught masses o'roach larse toime dint we ? You never thin. Anyway, you owe me a packet of 'ooks thin walked to the corner to determine if there were any bloomers on Edna Haunt's garments line. 'Ere you lot ! He screamed, pointing up the road. Removal wagon ! We jumped off the wall prepared to run after it, either down the hill so far as the pond or up one of the cul-de-sacs, but Daz asserted what we all knew : Oany forty-nine's empty. He was right as it turned our way, shifting gears and stopping at our feet. Bliiiii-mey. enormous and green, dented by low bridges, it was actually the size of a whole house. BARNEY & sons MAIDSTONE. We perked up at this and looked for boys among the newcomers. They came up behind in a black Humber Hawk, developing like pups into the wild, one about our age, one a squirt and the third a sister. We swaggered for their benefit, if swaggering means three foot of dribble or lobbing fistfuls of gritshot on the van roof. We re-arranged ourselves on the wall and waited for the show to start. The trail sloped upwards behind us, therefore the wall rose higher, higher than the van, to the empty house at the top. They all went up there as the men began to open the truck doors. So we stayed put, and there it was, these newcomers' sitting room as it must've been in real life, all prepared to sit and read comics in. The oldest boy came down first to cart his own effects up the trail. He would not let the men touch them. Under one arm a remote controlled ship, under the other an enormous Scalectrix set. We pardoned him that, you had to show something off, but this boy swamped us. Up and down he came and went, like a moving toyshop at Christmas. Cluedo, Etch-a-Sketch, Junior Chemistry Set, Dan Dare Radio, Sealey Octofloat hollow fibreglass float rod and Mitchell 324, Diawa Air pistol, frisbee, gyroscope, fighting gloves, and more and more and more, all preserved like new. Blinkin big'ead Dodge said, gobbing in the dust and rubbing it in with his plimpsole. The boy was back again, clapping dust from his hands, an upright, soft treading boy, his lips compressed with purpose, his face not one of our faces. We didn't trouble disguising our disregard when he wheeled his bike out. No Chopper for this nancy. His was the ideal bike, leading it out the lorry and down the ramp like a girl's first pony, light blue and turquoise, white saddle, white-walled tyres, 3-speed twist grips, white rubber pedals. Its sober handlebars were for steering on straight clean roads. Its mudgaurds knew no mud. Dodge had a tracker made from bits off the dump. Daz had a chopper with cow horns and one brake. Namby-pamby they exclaimed. Andy Pandy more loike skinny asserted, whose bike had one pram wheel and you stopped it with the hole in your shoe bottoms. We giggled, just as the boy's father came down to the van to give orders. He sounded just like our fathers, so we assumed they must've won the pools. When the lorry was empty and the beds were in their rooms, the man stood with his eldest boy by their new front gate. Those boys look your age Melvyn. Goo an' make mates with 'em. We didn't think much of that name and smirked. Melvyn pouted but his father held the gate open, fiddled with the catch and said he'd better go get his toolbag and some lubricant. 'Ere comes Mouw-vyn, thin recounted. We pretended to ignore him. Daz chanted in a Yankee drawl : 'Ere comes the jurdge, 'ere comes the jurdge, righdy-righdy-righdy-righdy 'ere comes the jurdge. The judge was upon us, his jeans pressed to a knife edge, checked shirt shining, his fender boots just out of tissue paper, a knitting pattern boy, that hair brushed into waves and corrugations you might stand an Airfix model ship on. There were even little daisy fields of freckles either side of his snub-snob nose, but his mouth was set hard for the ordeal he could see we intended it to be. We looked sideways now, envious, acting bored, bad-tempered, but our ears open like traps all set to catch his spick and span words, the words of a boy whose pa has concepts for him and tells him to mind his words like ours told us to bathe our mouths out with soap and water. Do you live down this road ? He said. Wouldn't be si'n 'ere if we didn't yer twit, Dodge asserted, passing his fists under his nose and sniffing them.
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