The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (sci fi books to read .TXT) 📗

a book, it’s actually five pieces of paper stapled together at the side, but it’s got a cover and a contents page and it’s the coolest present I ever got. It’s called The First Rules of Comedy.

Anyhow, even though we made sure we thought of everything we were actually wrong, because there was one thing we didn’t think of. Which was what would happen if the other person in your comedy duo died. Because you don’t expect that, do you? Although considering one never knows and Ronnie Barker, maybe we should have.

I think I’m OK about dying, just as long as it’s not people I know. Like when Marnie Cunningham’s father was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan when I was eight and we had a special assembly at school, I couldn’t really feel too sad because I didn’t know him. But I did do what the Head said, which was take a moment to think about him in silence and consider the ultimate sacrifice he’d made for our country. Even though Jax said that it was all BS and Mr Cunningham had actually made the ultimate sacrifice for a whole lot of stuff that had nothing to do with any of us.

It’s funny how your brain works, and I mean my brain really, because I don’t know how anyone else’s works. But I say that because when Mum woke me up to tell me about Jax the first thing that popped into my head was that I wished I’d gone up and patted Marnie Cunningham on the shoulder, or made her a card or given her a mini Crunchie bar. Anything apart from what I actually did, which was nothing except what the Head told us to.

I just lay there in my bed with Mum holding my hand telling me the worst thing I’d ever heard and I wished I’d said something to Marnie that might have stopped her from feeling like a massive hairy yin was trying to eat its way out of her insides with a rusty knife and fork, which was how I felt when Mum told me about Jax. That was actually my first thought, so you can see why I say my brain works in a funny way.

I can’t remember when my granny and grandad died because I wasn’t even born, so I can’t really feel sad when I think about them either. It’s kind of like thinking about Tommy Cooper, like you knew he was great and you wished he wasn’t dead and all, but there are no hairy yins chewing up your tummy from the inside when you think about him.

I know Mum gets sad when she thinks about them though. Granny and Grandad I mean, not Tommy Cooper. Grandad mainly. That’s her dad. Even though he never got as famous as all those other guys like Morecambe and Wise and Dave Allen and Norman Wisdom, I reckon Grandad must have been a really ace comedian, because he got to do absolutely loads of shows.

Apart from the photos of him and Granny getting married and having Mum and stuff, all the pictures of him are when he’s dressed up in his best suit standing in front of places like The Slip Inn, The Rose & Crown or the Suffolk YHA, with a big smile on his face and pointing to the name signs like he was about to have the most fun of his life. Which I reckon would have been true.

Mum says I look just like him when I put on his old velvet jacket, and sometimes I hold one of those photos right up next to my face in the mirror to check. I can’t really see what Mum sees but I just hope one day I can get as good at comedy as him anyway.

Even though Grandad would definitely have been a cool guy to know in person, he was pretty old when he died, so it’s different to being a kid like Jax and dying when you’re not even twelve yet. Plus Jax was my best friend in real life not just someone I’ve only seen in a bunch of old photos so it’s not even on the same planet really.

I know it’s selfish to worry about myself when Mum has to look after me and go to work and cook dinners and wash our clothes and pay the leccy bill and all that other stuff. But with Jax gone it’s just so hard for me to stop thinking about how I don’t have a best mate any more. And how much I miss him every single second of every single hour of every single day.

The worst thing is how it feels like there’s always so much room around me now, because I’m used to all the space being taken up by Jax. Now it’s just me. And I’ll tell you something, I think I might be half gone too because when I look in the mirror all I can see is a big red scab with none of the good parts left. I think maybe all the parts of me that were good were actually made of Jax. And I think about that a lot because I’m pretty sure it’s true.

Even though I didn’t take the Five Year Plan off the wall I decided to stop looking at it, because every time I did it just made me think of Jax. And not in a good way. It was kind of hard not to look at it though, because of it being so big, and it may as well have had flashing lights around it. Actually Jax did want to put flashing lights around it when we first made it but then we thought about Mum’s leccy bill and decided maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

You know what it’s like when you try not to look at something so hard that it just makes you want to look at it more? Well, the Five Year Plan