Picture Book Moss Side

James was about to suck the last bit of ice-cream through the bottom of the cone, when suddenly next door opened and out came Aunty Mary wearing a hairnet, night-gown and fluffy pink slippers. Mum insisted you call all the old people either Aunty or Uncle even if they weren't. James didn't mind with Aunty Mary. She always gave him sweets and cakes. 'Come inside, young man. I've something for you.'

For a nine-year-old, James had seen a great deal. Three men on the moon in a basket and three balloons, Jennifer's mum bash the living daylights out of Dave Higgins's dad, and a man killed on Great Western Street. It wasn't a man really, just the lollipop man. A van ran him down and broke his head all over the road. Classes were cancelled and everyone went home, it was great. James had seen a great deal but never a budgerigar's funeral. Joey was its name. They were burying it in Aunty Mary's backyard: a bricked-up pile of dirt with plants, flowers and a small bush with yellow caterpillars. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want sang Aunty Mary, still in the hairnet, night-gown and pink fluffy slippers. 'If Arthur had been alive, flush it down the loo he'd say.'

'The loo?' asked James.

Aunty Mary's face went as pink as her slippers.

'The loo, you know, the Jimmy, the lav, you know.'

She continued to sing, this time in descant. In pastures green He leadeth me... 'James, did I ever tell you Joey could talk?'

She said a lot of things did Aunty Mary. A brass band played in Alexandra Park every Sunday lunchtime. The supermarket on Moss Lane East was a lake with goldfish in it.

'There's a bomb across the road on Fernleaf Street just waiting to go boom.'

Aunty Mary said a lot of things. Still, she made lovely cakes and pies.

'Your mother tells me you'll be moving soon.'

'Yes, Aunty Mary, I'll come back and visit.'

'Don't mind yourself with an old woman like me. Besides, you'll be making new friends.'

'Mum says there's a garden.'

'That's nice.'

'And two trees, one at the front, one at the back.'

'Arthur would've loved a house with a garden but things didn't quite work out.'

'Things? What things?'

'Things, you know, just things.'

'I'll come back to see you, honest, every week even.'

'Of course you will, dear. And I'll make your favourite: apple pie custard and a nice cup of tea,' said Aunty Mary.

'Umm lovely,' said James...

 ...Mum continued to sew as if nothing had happened, drum drumming on the sewing machine, five pounds still being so hard to earn.

Suddenly the sun came out and in seconds everything was dried to a sunny summer's day. The trumpets went back to being loud and brassy, just like Shirley Bassey.

'A million Mo-Jos, Whizzer and Chips for hundreds of weeks, a double ninety-nine with twist cone strawberry chocolate syrup nuts hundreds and thousands every day for the rest of your life...'

James's favourite game. What he would buy if he won the pools. Now it was even more fun being accompanied by a full orchestra.

'A houseful of gobstoppers waaah wah, a zillion bags of fish and chips wah waaah wah , that Scalectrix set in the toy shop on Denmark Road...'

(Forever and ever amen, pages 6 to 10)