He looked at her sorrowfully. “I’m as sorry as you are, Ruby, but it has to be done.”

Ted went into the pub and came back a moment later with his Viking helmet on and a photograph. He came and showed it to us. It was the picture of him with a gun standing on a pile of pies. Underneath it said, Ted Barraclough, champion pie eater. 22 steak and kidney, 4 pork.

Then he walked across and showed it to the Bottomly sisters, and said to them, “Have some respect, girls. Thy father only ate ten pies and then had to go and have a bit of a lie down, so bog off somewhere else.”

The Bottomly sisters looked at him and then they got up and sloped off.

Ted went back into the pub singing, “I am the king of hellfire!!! PIES, I’m gonna teach you to burn. PIES, I’m gonna teach you to learn!!”

I went to bed happy after seeing the Tree Sisters. But I gave my nose a good scrub in case any of Cain’s molecules had got into it. And besides, I am sleeping on Alex’s letter and don’t want to besmirch it.

There’s no people like show people

I WOKE UP EARLY the next day partly because I’m excited about starting college but also because it was like sleeping in a zoo.

Birds had been tweeting and carrying on in the trees outside my window practically since I’d gone to bed. How can anyone sleep in the country? I think some of the birds have got secret mouth organs. And drums. Like a really bad band rehearsing. A band of birds singing with no tune. Like those people in bygone days who wore black polo-necks and played jazz that had no tune. Beatniks they were called. I think my dad was one. Hey, perhaps the birds are … beakniks!!!

Not beatniks but BEAK-niks.

I must write that down in my notebook because one day it may be comedy gold.

Especially if I do a bird opera.

Which I might. Following on from the triumph of my bicycle ballet.

I could call it Feather!

Or maybe Saturday Night Feather!

We Will Flock You!

Grouse!

Pheasant of the Opera.

Right, so this is the official start to my performing-arts notebook.

I need a name for my secret notebook.

What shall I call it?

What does the book suggest? I looked at the cover. Plums, dark …

Dark, fruit … unanswered questions … questions that need answering.

Something like …

The Darkly Demanding Damson Diary.

That’s me, that is.

It’s going to be my spontaneous stream of consciousness. Here goes …

I’ll start a new page after the Labradad entry. I may need to add drawings, and so on, of the Labradad. So I’ll start a new blank page and begin. Right, I’m just going to go mad and improvise. I’m going to let myself go and not censor myself at all. Let my pen flow over the pages.