One of the sisters pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Sam, a letter that their brother had written for him at the hospital but they had forgotten to post it. It was unopened and Sam decided to wait until he got home before reading it. He sat on his bed and was greeted with a faint hospital-esque smell as he unfolded the paper. With his hands shaking with trepidation, he took the letter out and read it:
Hi Sam!
I am feeling tired most of the time but other than that I am okay. Keep getting headaches but they go away after a while. The nurses have been really nice, but the matron and the doctor are older than my parents and seem a bit grumpy. I saw something really funny happen in the corridor the other day and I can’t wait to tell you about it. The hospital always smells funny, I wish they would wash it away.
Hope to see you soon
Your friend Nolip.
Sam read the letter once and then immediately started reading it again. Then he read it again. And then again. He put it back into the envelope and placed it up on his shelf. A minute later he took it back down to read one final time.
Emotionally spent, he lay down on his bed and fell asleep.
Chapter 5
Sam could hear the drone of planes overhead, noting how much louder they seemed to be and how the anti-aircraft fire seemed more furious and intense than he remembered it being. He had seen demonstrations of the AA guns during a school outing and in his mind he pictured the lazy swoop and sweep of the searchlights as they strained to pin-point the distinctive shape of the German bomber planes. Watching the spread of the AA fire, he wondered how a plane could ever survive such an overwhelming onslaught and he put it down to the fairytale villain, Goering, somehow piloting every single plane in the whole of the Luftwaffe.
Sam had also seen short films about the brave fighter pilots who went up there to shoot down the enemy bomber planes. Although most of the boys in his school went nuts about the Spitfire, Sam preferred the Hurricane and his bedroom wall was covered in posters and pictures of these magnificent machines.
A sudden series of large explosions made Sam jump and nearly fall off his seat. The bombs sounded closer than any he had ever heard whilst down in this shelter and the three of them looked at each other in alarm. More explosions rang out and this time Sam and his mother looked over at his father, their gazes full of questioning and doubt as their fears about the shelter started to become something that they could no longer ignore.
The date was 29th December 1940, a point in the calendar that was unremarkable to the people living in Britain during that time: it just another night of misery and worry, something which they had already experienced many times before.
To the bomber pilots flying above them the date was also an unremarkable one. It was just another routine bombing run over a part of Europe that hadn’t yet succumbed to the immense might of the German war machine, a machine that was relentless and almost invincible.
The date of 29th December 1940 was remarkable for one, simple reason - that night, Britain suffered one of the worst bombings of the entire Blitz as hundreds of homes were destroyed, children woke up as orphans, parents found themselves childless, and entire families were wiped out.
Sam and his parents clearly had no way of knowing this but they were more than aware of one very important thing: the crack that had suddenly appeared in the ceiling of the shelter. Dust and bits of concrete drifted down onto their heads and into their open, gaping mouths as the thunder of anti-aircraft guns and exploding bombs merged into one, gigantic continuous roar of explosions and noise.
Sam felt the air being ripped from his lungs and when it returned a second later it was scorching hot. He felt himself being thrown forward, the boiling hot earth enveloping his face, his fingers, and his entire body. He closed his eyes, his mind filling itself with a thousand thoughts as he remembered his father teaching him how to ride a bike, his mother cooking cakes on his birthday, the school teacher giving him a gold star, looking through a keyhole to see the headmaster caning a classmate, the old man in the bakery, his friend, his friend and then his friend again, all in an instant that lasted an eternity.
***
The next day, rescue teams and volunteers descended on the devastated area. Many of them rescued survivors, whilst others were left with the sad and thankless task of recovering the lifeless bodies from underneath the rubble. After some digging, they came upon what appeared to be a family of three - a man, a woman, and a boy of about school age. None of them were moving or showed any sign of life and the bodies were slowly, and carefully, brought round to the front of what was left of the house.
The workers searched through the pockets of the three victims but only the boy had anything that could be used to identify any of them, a letter from a local school that mentioned the boy’s first name. The head of the team took out a label, scribbled something onto it and tied it around the boy’s arm. A wagon was called up and the three bodies were placed on the top of the pile. Some of the other bodies in the pile also had labels tied to their arms but most did not. One labelled body in particular stood out from the rest, the body of a young boy of about school age. The label just said ‘Sam’ and nothing else, but it was the faint smile on his face that made him stand out: no-one would ever know it but the last thing that went through the boy’s mind was
“Now I can say hello to my friend Nolip and hear about the funny thing that happened in the corridor.”
***
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Two examples of what is on my website:
Lord of the Rings hobbit extra worried about being typecast
22-year old Kevin Barner has lashed out at Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson for “utterly ruining my life” after “casting me aside once I had finished playing my part of 13th hobbit on the left sitting at Table D.” The then 10-year old Kevin initially thought that he “had really hit the big time” but has not heard from Peter Jackson since collecting his £73 appearance fee back in January 2001.
“I showed a lot of guts doing that part and I even threw in some improv to show them what I could do. If you look closely near the start of the film when the fireworks are going off you can see that I raise a mug to my lips. You would never guess it but that part wasn’t even in the script, it was all my own work. I had a bellyache that day but the subtle belching was so well controlled that it just looks like part of what is happening in the scene. No-one else could have pulled that off so naturally.”
The neglect that Kevin has felt ever since appearing in the critically acclaimed multi-million pound grossing film has “permeated every aspect of my life.” Even something as simple as “sitting at the back of the bus and minding my own business” leaves him feeling stressed due to the fact that “everyone is staring at me knowing that ten years ago I was sitting down in the exact same pose and pretending to be a hobbit.”
A recent summer BBQ was ruined because “the moment I sat down and picked up a drink a girl asked me if I wanted to take my shoes off and go for a paddle in the pool, clearly poking fun at the fact that hobbits go around bare foot all the time.” Kevin was so distraught that he “stormed out in anger” and almost screamed when someone asked where he was going as it was “obviously a reference to the bit where Gandalf is shouting at the fire demon.”
“Still, I had the last laugh because I stole one of Legolas’ fake ears.”
Justin Bieber’s Diary
Dear Diary
Mummy woke me up this morning and said that as it had now been two weeks since I last wet the bed, I could have an extra boiled egg for breakfast as a treat. I
asked if I could butter and cut the soldiers myself and she said yes. I got up and found my ‘Three Blind Mice’ music tape and left it playing in my tape player whilst I had a bath. I had to call mummy to help me wash my hair because I have to use both hands to hold a flannel to my face so that the shampoo doesn’t makes my eyes sting.
I usually have my Coco Pops in a Winnie the Pooh bowl but it was still in the dishwasher so I used one of the grown up bowls that Daddy uses. The grown up spoons are still too big for me so I used one of my plastic crocodile ones instead. When I had finished I looked down at my bib and saw that I had managed to eat the whole bowl without spilling anything.
Later on during the day I went upstairs to my bedroom and looked at my naughty notebook. Sometimes when I am angry and upset I will open this notebook and write down the naughty words that I wouldn’t dare say out loud over and over again. Two days ago Mummy wouldn’t let me go out and play in the garden because it was getting dark. I had left my afternoon banana out there by accident but Mummy said it was too dangerous to go out there now as a fox might be sniffing around. I screamed really loudly and went upstairs and wrote ‘poo’ in my naughty notebook.
When I am angry I press down really hard with my crayons but after half a page I will calm down and sharpen it again so it still looks nice on my bookshelf.
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