You may think that growing up as an alien is fairly easy. I mean, after all, we are far more advanced than you lot. Now, had I been an only child, maybe my life would have been a lot easier. Unfortunately for me, I was the youngest of four.

To say my brother Tuc had an inventive streak where our games were concerned would have been an understatement. The lengths he would go to in order to make things as realistic as possible were unbelievable. There was the time we were playing at being in the French Foreign Legion when he buried me up to the neck in the sand and left me like that for a good hour, but that's another story.

This particular day we were playing cowboys and Indians. Tuc the Indian; me the cowboy he had captured. As part of my torture, I was tied to the shed roof, very tightly! No amount of squirming would free me. But he didn't stop there. On a BLAZING!! hot day in the middle of August he went missing for an hour, leaving me squirming away up on the shed trying to get loose. When he arrived back, he had with him three jumbo bags of birdseed and a stale loaf. Clambering back up on the roof of the shed, he then proceeded to cover me with the birdseed and stale breadcrumbs. He then carefully climbed down from the shed and started calling all the local kids, charging them 10p each to watch the show!

Five minutes and I was covered head-to-foot in birds pecking away at me with their sharp beaks, to cheers from the crowd. Just at that moment my mother came out of the house. I couldn't see her, but I knew she was there, as she started shouting. I could hear this above the noise of the birds, because my mother just happened to have a voice that could be heard in the next city 30 miles away when she whispered!

'What the hell is going on here?' she yelled, eyeing all the local kids trampling on her prize flower beds. 'Tuc Fortuneswell! If this garden is not cleared in two seconds flat I'll have your guts for garters!'

The garden had cleared before she'd finished speaking; my mother had a reputation for being quite a formidable character with the local kids. Now, with the garden being clear, her attention was drawn to me.

'Cal Fortuneswell, if you fall down from there and break both your legs, don't you dare come running to me!'

Now if I fall down and break both my legs, surely I won't be running anywhere, unless I was Wolverine and could heal myself.

'Now stop attracting those vermin and get down. I've got my washing out.'

I whimpered at this point, knowing I couldn't move. Tuc, though, was in arm's length of my mother (a seriously bad place to be) and was daring to laugh. I heard a smack as she clipped his ear, then the next thing I knew my dad was on the roof shooing the birds away. 'Cal, I don't know how or why you get these wild ideas, but I wish you wouldn't
involve your brother.'

I blinked slowly in complete disbelief.

'And don't look at me like butter wouldn't melt. You're grounded for a week.'

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Cal Fortuneswell

07.12.06 Front Page

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