I’m An Alien, Get Me Out Of Here

During my last year at primary (elementary) school in England in the 1960s, we had a girl in our class who, for the purposes of data protection, I shall call Martha Ann Dickens. Martha managed to inform all of us several times each day that her initials spelled out MAD, and that she was indeed mad. That was her claim to fame apparently.

Having, myself, a mother who managed to inform me at least once a day that all four of my grandparents were “off their heads”, I lived in constant fear of the crazy gene spontaneously and uncontrollably leaping out and manifesting itself in myself, thus alerting all around me to my own inherent madness. So Martha’s pride in her craziness astounded me – she was not trying to hide but to advertise it, and if you didn’t get it straight off after a couple of minutes, she would jump out and bang you on the nose with it.

Martha was, according to her own statement, an alien. I don’t mean that in the resident without a British passport sense, but in the like she was from another planet sense. She would attach herself to her person of choice for that day and spend the rest of the day following them about spouting on about herself. Usually it was me. With Martha there was not much in the way of conversation, it was more of a long monologue for whom she required a listener. She talked as much as possible in school, during breaks, in the lunch hour and on the walk home – unfortunately we lived only two streets away from each other.

Fish And Chips In The Park

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

John had almost finished making breakfast by the time Aileen came into the kitchen. She closed the sliding door behind her, the one he had made and fitted last year after he had had all his ideas about saving space in the kitchen – installing a sliding door, making a table by fixing a large piece of wood to the wall by brackets and dispensing with table legs. She sat down at the bracket table and looked away as he placed a cup of tea in front of her.

"There's toast," John said.

“I don’t want toast.”

“Well, there’s… eggs.”

“I don’t want any damn eggs.”

He sighed. He helped himself to a fried egg and some toast and sat down with a cup of tea.

“Why do you have to humour her like that, Lizzie’s just a bloody spoiled child! Needs a damn clip over the ear!”