Look Back in Envy

Here I sit, beneath the ‘Crabs & Lobsters’ wall-chart that I got free with the Guardian, toking on a fat one and pondering the future of the female serial killer. Today I read three books about murderous women and shelled a pound of peas straight into my mouth. I lunched on Ritz crackers smeared with Gentleman’s Relish and Danish Blue and I had a soft-boiled egg for breakfast. Why does violence make me so hungry?

Last night I dreamt I went to Junior School again, back to the spire and the hills surrounding. Junior School was a wonderful place. I might not have learnt my times tables, but I did learn how to sew a guinea pig from brown velvet curtains and how to make chocolate mint creams. Sometimes the man who lived as a Roundhead came to give us a history lesson, and once the Great Jam Sandwich Machine rolled in, operated by men riding ostriches, and with much clanking and juddering and eruptions of glitter it produced a perfect sandwich for every last child.

Halcyon days. I still like to sew funny animals and draw lopsided pictures, but these days I try and intersperse my daydreaming and playing with more grown-up activities like washing pants and growing herbs and taking the cat for her jabs and, of course, reading my Children’s Encyclopaedia, because education should never stop. Although if I ever see that Great Jam Sandwich Machine again I will jump up on it and I will ride it to the ends of the Earth.