The Trouble with Sister Francis

by Matt Coyne

Genres: Humor & Satire

Synopsis

A heartwarming and hilarious new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of FRANK AND RED.

_______

Sister Francis is an unlikely nun.

She's sixty, sweary, drives like a lunatic and smokes like a stacked chimney . . . and she runs the Blessed Assumption Boys Club.

Richie, Bennett, Kenny and Stan are four best friends from the Whittle council estate with little to do but get up to no good. After a run-in with local bullies, they discover the crumbling, forgotten club and find themselves in the company of the most remarkable person they will ever meet.

Set against early 1980s Britain, THE TROUBLE WITH SISTER FRANCIS is a funny, heartwarming, and heartbreaking story of unlikely heroes, quiet rebellions, fierce loyalty and unexpected hope.

And at the centre of it all lies a long-forgotten journal that might just change everything.

Praise for FRANK AND RED:

'Best book of the year!' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

'A fantastic debut' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

'A lovely feel-good treat' The Times | 'Simply perfect' Daily Mirror | 'Hilariously funny . . . and beneath it all really quite lovely' Metro | 'Brilliant, just brilliant' Huffington Post | Debut of the Year Woman and Home | A Prima Book of The Year

Release date: August 27, 2026

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 448

Sample

It’s houses now, the playground where we used to meet at the corner of Stubbin Road. I drive past there now and then, when I’m home to visit Mum, and find myself sad that it’s gone. It’s a strange thing to miss, that patch of concrete. I’m sure when it was first built it was greeted with excitement by the kids on the Whittle. But by the time it was ours it was all white dog muck and nettles. The roundabout was held together by flaky rust and layers of paint. The bottom of the slide puddled with brown water all year round. And, more often than not, the swings had been wrapped round the top bar by the older kids, so most of the time there wasn’t even anywhere to sit.

I miss it anyway.

Every Saturday, I’d get to the park early, sometimes as early as eight. But I always knew as I turned the corner that Kenny would already be shimmying up to disentangle a swing or hanging from the monkey bars, trying to beat his own record for just dangling there.

It was only when I got older that I realised that Kenny was always the first to arrive, and the last to leave, because he didn’t want to be at home.

Sometime over the next hour, Bennett would turn up, his hair defiantly sticking in all directions and still half asleep, pushing his purple Raleigh Chopper. Always pushing that damn bike. It was the last thing his dad bought for him before he got sick. But Benny didn’t really know how to ride a bike, and it was far too big for him, so he just pushed it everywhere by its giant handlebars.

Finally, Stan. Stanley was always the last to arrive.

So it was, on that Saturday, when Sister Francis came into our lives. In the early summer of that year. The year that Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married. The year that the Yorkshire Ripper was caught. The year that everybody seemed to be getting shot: the Pope got shot, so did Ronald Reagan; someone even fired a starting pistol at the Queen. In the year that riots were breaking out all over the country, in Liverpool and Manchester and Brixton, and the temperature of the Cold War made it seem like Nuclear Apocalypse was just round the corner.

And so little of this entered our world.

Because we were eleven, and we had much bigger things to worry about.

Stanley R. Staniforth was always the last to arrive at the park due to the paper round he’d inherited from his older brother. Each morning, he had to deliver forty or fifty newspapers before he could do anything else, and Saturdays were no different.

Stan was kind of a bully’s dream. Scared of his own shadow. Short, baby-faced and overweight (back when people called each other fat). And he permanently sported a home-made haircut, with a straight-line fringe that followed the line of Mrs Staniforth’s best mixing bowl. He was also the kindest kid I ever met.

Looking back, it’s sort of amazing that Stan was overweight, given he was one of those kids who always ran everywhere. My mum used to call him the Whittle Batman on account of this, and the fact that he wore his parka like a cape, buttoned at the neck, his arms free of the sleeves.

That morning, though, Stan’s cape was not flapping in his wake. That morning, he was trudging.

I was the only one to notice as he came round the corner, his fluorescent-orange newspaper bag hanging across his body, and bashing against his knees. I was sitting on a swing, Bennett was checking the tyres on his bike and Kenny was lying on his back on the roundabout, staring up at the sky and turning it slowly. His long legs in drainpipe jeans, feet pushing against the concrete. He was talking some bullshit about Star Wars.

‘Ewoks are not cannibals,’ I said, refusing to rise to the bait.

‘Course they are.’ Kenny propped himself up on one elbow and blew his fringe out of his eyes. ‘Have you even actually seen the film? They use Stormtroopers’ helmets as drums. What do you think they did to the Stormtroopers?’ he said, as though the answer was obvious. ‘They ate ’em.’

I rolled my eyes, not buying it.

Bennett looked up from his bike. Kenny never stopped talking, but if Bennett said more than three or four sentences in a day it was a miracle. People thought he was slow, but he wasn’t. He was just . . . Bennett. And sometimes, out of the blue, he’d offer some nonsensical wisdom or settle an argument with a word.

His one contribution of that day: ‘The Ewoks did put Han Solo in a cooking pot.’

‘Thank you, Benny!’ Kenny shouted triumphantly, before lying back down with a self-satisfied sigh, his hands interlaced behind his head and a huge grin on his face. ‘Ahhh. I rest my case.’

‘Knobhead,’ I argued.

Finally, Stan arrived. He let the newspaper bag drop to the ground at his side as he sat heavily on the swing next to me.

‘What do you say, Stan? Kenny reckons that—’ I stopped. Because of his constant running, Stanley was always red-faced, but right then he looked bone pale. ‘Y’alright?’

He didn’t answer. So I waved a hand in front of his face. ‘I said, Are. You. All. Right. Stan?’

‘Eh?’ he finally managed, looking my way, but right through me.

‘Bloody hell,’ Kenny said, noticing him for the first time. ‘What’s a matter wi’ you?’

Stan blinked twice and seemed to half snap out of whatever it was that was bothering him. ‘Nothing.’ A pause. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

This was the worst thing he could have said. Even Bennett glanced up from his tyres.

‘Whoa.’ Kenny’s eyes narrowed. ‘Talk about what?’

‘Nothing,’ Stan said firmly, underlining his position by folding his arms.

‘Come on, Stan, you great ball-bag.’ This was Kenny’s latest insult. He’d read it scrawled on a bus shelter and was trying it out. ‘Spill it!’

Stan shook his head once more. So Kenny picked up a piece of gravel by his feet and tossed it towards him. ‘Staanley,’ he sing-songed. With an expectant grin on his face, he tossed another that bounced off Stan’s arm. ‘Staaaanley.’

Kenny was relentless about this sort of thing; Stan didn’t stand a chance.

Finally, he broke. ‘Alright! God!’

Breathing deeply, he then looked at each of us in turn. When he next spoke, it was with the air of a grizzled veteran recounting a story of war.

‘Isawmrsbolcheksboobs.’

It came out in a rush as a single word, barely audible.

‘What?’ me and Kenny said in unison.

‘I said, I saw Mrs Bolchek’s boobs,’ Stan said again, still too quietly for us to hear.

‘Eh?’ Kenny’s lip was now curling impatiently.

‘I said, I SAW MRS BOLCHEK’S BOOBS!’

There was a beat of total silence, before Kenny sat bolt upright.

‘You never,’ he said, eyes wide.

‘I did.’ That haunted expression had now returned to Stanley’s round face. ‘Both of them.’

Again, there was a moment of still, awed silence. Until finally Kenny rolled over on to his stomach, collapsing into laughter. ‘Oh my God!’

My mouth was just swinging open, useless.

Still in fits, Kenny sat up again. ‘What the hell!?’

Finally, I regained speech myself. ‘Mrs Bolchek must be five hundred years old!’ I said, horrified.

Stan winced. ‘I know!’

‘How the bloody Nora did you see them?’

‘I told you, Rich – I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Oh, no way, Stan!’ I said. ‘You have to tell us now! You have to. What happened?’

Stan shook his head again, but this time his heart wasn’t really in it. So we just waited with wide eyes and expectant expressions, until Kenny jumped to his feet and shook him by the shoulders. ‘Stan? Talk!’

‘God! Bloody hell! Fine!’ he conceded through gritted teeth.

And for the next minute Stanley R. Staniforth enjoyed the most captivated audience of his young life.

‘So I was doing my paper round like normal, right. But it’s not like normal, is it? Because Lady Diana’s getting married . . . and all the newspapers are massive and dead thick with loads of pictures of her in them. And so Mrs Bolchek’s newspaper was really, really massive, and it wouldn’t fit through her stupid letterbox. So I could’ve left it on the doorstep . . . I mean, I would normally leave it on the doorstep . . . But Mr Mo says not to leave it on the doorstep if it’s raining . . . or if there’s even any chance of it raining . . .’

‘Jesus, Stan.’ Kenny picked up another pebble, and it pinged off the swing’s chain as he tossed it towards him. ‘Get on with it.’

‘Right, yeah. So it looked like it was gonna rain. So you have to knock on the door and there was no answer, and I was just about to go when she answered –’ he grimaced again – ‘with just a towel covering her thingies.’

‘Oh my God.’ Kenny turned once on the spot and collapsed to the ground again, attacked by another fit of the giggles. By now, I was laughing too.

‘So I gave her the newspaper,’ Stan continued, ‘and some of the leaflets ’n’ that fell out. So she bent down to pick them up and her cat tried to get past her – you know she’s got that cat? And, anyway, when she tried to stop the cat, her towel fell off.’ Stan shuddered and swallowed once. ‘I saw everything.’

‘Holy shitballs!’ Kenny said. ‘No wonder you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘They were NOT like the ones in the newspaper,’ Stanley continued solemnly. ‘They looked like someone had . . . had . . . I dunno . . . let all the air out of them.’

Kenny made a comical throwing-up sound and, finally, Stanley Staniforth chuckled a little himself.

Bennett just looked confused and returned to kicking his tyres.

‘So, is she, like, your girlfriend now or what, Stan?’ Kenny puckered his lips and pulled at his Thin Lizzy T-shirt as though he had breasts.

‘Shut up,’ Stan said, attempting a temper.

‘Oooh, Stanley,’ Kenny continued in a lady’s voice, playing to the fact that I was still in stitches.

‘Well,’ Kenny said, after I’d finally stopped laughing, ‘I don’t know what the big deal is anyway. I’ve seen loads of boobs.’

‘You never have,’ Stan replied simply.

‘I have. Loads.’

‘Reeally?’ I gave him side-eyes. ‘Chinny reckon. When?’

‘When my dad used to take us to Spain on holiday. In Spain everyone walks about in the nuddy with no clothes on, like, all the time.’

‘You’ve never been to flaming Spain!?’ I said.

It was true. None of us had been outside of England. Kenny had barely been outside of our little Yorkshire town. He hadn’t even been on any of the works’ trips to Skegness.

But facts didn’t matter.

‘Yeah . . . well, this was before we all knew each other. Besides, the reason you don’t know I went to Spain is because I have to keep it quiet because of my dad and his job and stuff.’

Kenny was in full bullshit mode now. On his roll. One we’d heard a thousand times before. About to tell us one of the stories about his dad. Not his stepdad, but his real dad. The gangster, the spy, the professional footballer, the one who walked away from him and his mum before he could even remember.

‘So I can’t talk that much about it. But basically—’

But Kenny’s story would have to wait.

He was interrupted by an almighty mechanical bang in the distance, and the approach of something that sounded like bricks in a washing machine.

We all looked up in the direction of the sound, shielding our eyes against the low sun, just in time to see the ancient blue minibus as it appeared in the distance. There was a cloud of black in its wake and the sound of the gears being found was a thing of horror.

Completing the turn into Stubbin Road, it narrowly missed a parked car before straightening up with a wobble.

We then watched open-mouthed as, with one final grinding gear change, the van bounced up and on to the kerb at the entrance to the park, where the minibus was brought to a skidding and dusty stop.

The driver turned off the engine of the van, while it was still rolling forward, pulling the handbrake on with a painful crrrrrrrrk.

And there she was, the most remarkable human I’ve ever met.

In full habit.





Monday 26 December 1938

This is my first time writing in this journal. It was a gift for Christmas Day, which was yesterday. It has a picture of a tiger on the front. I am not sure why I am writing that down? Obviously, anybody who is reading this will already know what the front cover looks like.

My name is Reginald Hartfeld, and I am fifteen years old. I have brown hair, blue eyes and I am of average height. My favourite things are books, films and animals. Did you know that elephants are the only land mammals that can’t jump? And the collective noun for rhinoceroses is a ‘crash’? (I received a book called Amazing Animal Facts for Christmas too, and some socks, and a jumper.)

I live on Payton Street which is in Vauxhall in London, between the Builder’s Arms and the park. I live with my mother Emma and my father James. I do not have any brothers or sisters.

Honestly? I do not know what I will write in this diary. There are so many pages in it and my life is rather boring. I am not a movie star or anything like that.

. . . But my father says that a young man should journal his thoughts, and that there are no dull lives only dull people.

Sorry, I cannot think of anything more to write. It has just started snowing!

It’s hard to gauge how old somebody is when you’re eleven. At that age, everybody over thirty looks to have one foot in the grave. Anybody over forty has two feet and at fifty you’re waist-deep. It’s even harder to tell how old somebody is when all you can see of them is their face framed in a wimple. But the nun seemed to be at least as old as my Grandad Bob. So it was with surprising agility that she jumped down from the driver’s seat of the van and on to the pavement.

It was even more of a surprise to find she was immediately followed by a large German shepherd, which bounded across from the passenger seat and through the open driver’s door to land at her side.

The dog, cheerfully panting, immediately began sniffing the grass at the pavement edge as the nun straightened the front of her black, floor-length vestments and dusted off any ash. The smoke from the cigarette that was hanging from her lips was making her squint and she took one last drag before dropping it and crushing it underfoot. Looking up and down the street, she then leaned back into the van to retrieve something from the dashboard. A handful of yellow papers.

She didn’t seem to notice that we were there – the four boys observing all this, from the other side of the waist-high chain-link fence.

‘What the bloody hell?’ Kenny said under his breath.

The rest of us just watched, dumbfounded. I don’t think any of us had ever seen a real-life nun before. Apart from on TV, or maybe in films, and it was difficult to imagine this one joyously spinning in the Swiss mountains.

She tucked the papers under one arm and again reached back into the minibus, this time to retrieve a roll of Sellotape. Then – taking one of the sheets – she set the rest on the ground at her feet. Holding the page against the lamp post, she found the end of the roll of tape with her teeth and then wrapped it twice and three times around the post to hold it in place.

Satisfied that the poster was securely stuck, she ran her palm down her handiwork and then vanished the tape into her habit before bending to pick up the pile of remaining papers, just as a breeze caught them.

It was a still morning, warm and sunny, as they all seemed to be in our young summers. But it took the slightest breath of wind to disturb those pages. The top sheet was peeled away and then the second. Before they could be stopped there were nine or ten loose. The nun managed to stand on one and grab another. But the rest skimmed the pavement as they flopped away or wafted down the short banking towards us.

Even from a distance you could tell she was annoyed. Some people have that aura when they’re exasperated; you can see it, feel it. Right then, though, we didn’t need to see an aura. You could hear the nun cursing under her breath. It was in an Irish accent, and it sounded like she was casting spells, with muttered mysticals of ‘feck’ and ‘shite’. She only stopped when she saw the four of us gawping at her.

‘Well, will you be helping or what?’ she called over, gesturing towards the papers, some of which were now stuck to the fence between us or lazily passing through the playground.

None of us said a word. We just looked at each other, unsure who she was speaking to.

‘You, you gormless buggers.’ She waited a moment for us to respond and when we remained mute she huffed, shook her head in frustration and continued to retrieve the loose papers herself.

It was Stan who moved to help first. A moment later, I joined him in picking up the few posters that had made their way to our side of the fence. Eventually, with a shrug, Kenny and Bennett started to help too.

A minute later, we’d gathered up all the pages we could see, and the nun approached the fence to take them back. She added them to the ones in her hand without saying thank you and then took a moment to eye each of us suspiciously. Licking her thumb, she took the top sheet from the pile and handed it back to me. Turning on her heel, she then walked purposefully back towards her van.

The giant dog didn’t follow her; it just stayed panting and staring at us from the other side of the fence as we watched her go.

‘Hey!’ Kenny called after her. ‘What’s your dog called?’

The nun continued to walk and didn’t glance back as she answered.

‘Bridget.’

Hearing its name, the dog’s ears twitched, but it didn’t move. It just tilted its head slightly.

Stanley leaned over to stroke its collar.

‘Bridget?’ Kenny scoffed quietly. ‘What kind of name is that for a dog? . . . Does she bite?’ he called again.

Again, the nun didn’t turn round. ‘Only when she’s hungry.’

Stan snatched his hand back as the nun reached the minibus and pulled open the driver’s door with a whining groan of metal on metal. She gave a light whistle and the dog instantly turned away and bounded up the short bank, back to the roadside and up into the van. It was seated in perfectly good order, in the passenger seat, looking out of the front windscreen like a co-pilot, before its owner was back behind the wheel.

With the cataclysmic sound of the engine firing and a gear being found in the very depths of hell, the minibus bounced off the pavement and peeled away.

Reaching the far end of Stubbin Road, it clipped the kerb as it turned the corner and then accelerated into the distance.

‘Did you see what it said on the side of that van?’ Kenny said as, excitement over, he pushed the roundabout. ‘Ass. That’s American for “arse”.’

‘That was a big dog,’ Stanley said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog that big.’

‘That’s not a big dog, Stan. We used to have a dog that was waaay bigger than that,’ Kenny said. ‘But it was too dangerous, and it would only listen to my commands, so we had to give it away to the army.’

We all knew that Kenny had only ever had one dog. A mongrel terrier that had been no bigger than the average cat.

‘You mean Sooty?’ Stanley said, innocently enough.

‘No, not Sooty, Stan, you knobhead. It was a different dog. Durr. You never saw it because we couldn’t let it out on the street, obviously.’

But at this point I wasn’t really listening. I was reading.





Sunday 1 January 1939

Uncle Lucas and Auntie Freda came over last night. They live round the corner on Jepson Avenue. My Auntie Freda is rather glamorous and used to be on the stage when she was younger. They brought their dog Whiskey with them, and he was wearing a bowtie for New Year’s Eve! (Whiskey is a mongrel dog, but Auntie Freda doesn’t like him being called a mongrel, so she says he is a ‘vira-lata’, which sounds fancy, but actually just means ‘a dog that tips bins over’ in Portuguese. (Ha!)

I had a glass of beer, and, at midnight, we could see some fireworks from the backyard. We played charades and ‘The Minister’s Cat’ and then sat in the good room while Mum and Auntie Freda sang songs. I had no idea my mother had such a beautiful voice. She could have been on the stage too, I think. Stayed up super late and now I’m dog-tired. Happy New Year!

Monday 9 January 1939

Arrived late to school. Most boys have left school by the time they are my age, but I did very well at my eleven-plus and got a council grant and scholarship, so I am at the grammar. It is quite posh, but okay.

There is still a little snow on the ground and me and Donald Mallinson (best friend) got ambushed by some fifth years from St Stephen’s. We were really outnumbered, but I managed to hit one of them right in the chops with a snowball! They had to stop chasing us when we got to our school gates. Otherwise, we would have been dead meat.

I gave them the double fingers, but I didn’t see Mr Gillott standing right behind me. He nearly pulled my ear off! He gave me 500 lines, and I had to write:

‘Swearing is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself.’

At lunch, Don said that was ‘effin’ bollocks’ and I laughed so hard milk came out of my nose.

My hand feels like it is falling off now though. I may never do the V-fingers again!

Tuesday 24 January 1939

My father got a promotion at work. He has quite a good job at the LGOC. I’m not entirely sure what he does there. (Something in the offices. Whenever I’ve asked him he just says that he counts beans all day.)

I don’t know what I want to be when I leave school. Definitely not work in an office, or a factory. Maybe a bus driver? Don says that I would be a terrible bus driver because I have a bad sense of direction. He says I’ll end up like ‘Wrong Way Corrigan’ the pilot fella from America who flew across the Atlantic by accident. What a clod.

I told my father about what Donny said, and he said I could be anything I wanted to be. But if I was worried maybe I could be a train driver instead because you can’t really go the wrong way if you’re on a track. It is a good point.

Passing the flyer between ourselves, Stan was the only one who showed any enthusiasm.

‘Whoa. Table-tennis,’ he said. ‘Sounds alright.’

‘Are you joking?’ Kenny had already snatched the flyer from my hand and was reading it himself, his lips moving. ‘It sounds absolute dogger.’ He was a slower reader than the rest of us, but if he took his time he could make sense of most things. ‘Board games?’ He pretended to snore and then nod off, letting his head fall forward on to his chest. ‘I’d rather chew me own foot off.’ He continued to trace his finger down the page. ‘And! Have you read this? It says Bible class on here! You know what that is, don’t you?’

We didn’t. Not really. But his face had become wonky, as though he couldn’t believe what he was reading.

‘It’s where you have to learn about God and stuff.’ He held up the paper and pointed out the words we had clearly all missed.

‘Bible class,’ he read again, scoffing with disdain. He shook his head as he handed the flyer back to me. ‘They basically get you to go to stuff like this by saying that it’s going to be a good laugh – with table-tennis and everything – and then, once you’re there, it’s all Jesus this and Jesus that. It’s basically a trap,’ he concluded, jumping for the first rung of the monkey bars.

‘There is no trap so deadly as the trap man sets for himself,’ Bennett said, as though this would make sense to anybody other than Bennett. Kenny just rolled his eyes.

‘Church isn’t all that bad,’ Stan said.

A couple of years earlier, Stan’s mum had briefly become a big fan of church after their ginger tomcat had come back from the dead, scratching at the door after being run over.

‘I used to go every week for a bit,’ he continued. Which was true, right up until ‘Hamish’ fell pregnant and Stan’s mum realised that it was probably someone else’s cat. Stan’s mum – and Stan – had stopped going after that.

But, as Kenny was quick to point out, this was real church. ‘This is not your mum’s church, Stan, where they clap and sing along and hug each other.’ He turned round and pretended to make out with himself.

‘Shut up, Kenny,’ Stanley said. These three words were basically Stan’s catchphrase.

Kenny turned back round. ‘This is proper church where they pray and everything. My mum used to make us go to proper church all the time before Neil moved in, and it was the worst thing ever. It’s boring times maximum times infinity.’

‘Well, I think—’

‘And,’ Kenny interrupted Stan again, ‘they make you go to confession.’

‘What’s that, Ken?’ Bennett asked, genuinely curious.

Kenny hated being called Ken, but didn’t seem to mind it from Bennett. ‘So, basically, confession is when you go in a wardrobe and there’s a priest in there and you have to tell him every single thing you’ve ever, ever done wrong. Ever.’ He let that sink in before he grinned widely. He nodded at Stan. ‘You’d have to tell them you’d seen Mrs Bolchek’s wibblies for a start.’ He spun round and began making out with himself again, this time with smooching noises.

‘Shut up, Kenny,’ Stan said, but half-heartedly this time as he turned to me. ‘Well, I think it sounds alright, Rich?’ he said hopefully.

But I was dubious too. I was looking at the address of the Blessed Assumption and once more Kenny was ahead of me.

‘It’s down the Deepings anyway,’ he said. ‘It’ll be full of ponces.’

Stockston was always a town of two halves divided. The Whittle and Beal council estates on one side served the works in the valley bottom. The Deepings was the name of the other side where the houses were all privately owned, with bowling-green lawns and driveways. The church almost straddled the invisible border between the two, but it was just far enough into the Deepings to not be part of our world.

‘Besides it’s fifteen p a day,’ I said to Stan, as though this fact was the final straw. ‘Where are we supposed to get fifteen p from? Each? A day?’

It was all right for Stanley – he had his paper round and by Whittle standards his family was pretty well off. His dad worked, they had a car and a TV that didn’t take coins. To cut a long story short, Stan was the only one of us who didn’t queue up for school meals with a pink ticket.

‘Well, I’ve got my birthday money,’ he offered.

‘Forget it,’ said Kenny, drawing a line under the whole thing and tossing the leaflet back to me. ‘Dogger.’

Stan turned away, disappointed, but Kenny was already on to other things.

‘Well, gentlemen, I am off to nick a Curly Wurly from the Co-op.’ He saluted, turned on his heel and set off in the direction of the shops.

Bennett pushed up the kickstand on his bike and trotted after him.

‘Wait up,’ I said as they both passed through the park gate. ‘Come on, Stan.’

I’m not sure why I folded the piece of paper and slipped it into my jeans pocket. I’d like to think it was fate. But really? Everything went in my jeans pocket.





Friday 3 February 1939

School. It was quite cold today, but at least it has stopped raining. Played football in morning and afternoon break. We won 19–11. It would have been more, but Eddie Simms said Don was bog-lining for one of his goals, then took his ball inside and that was that. When he came back out, Don did waaahing noises – like Eddie Simms was a baby – and Eddie Simms called Don a beggar and said that he had teeth like a beaver. Donald was furious and they started to scrap, but Scratcher Harrison came out and we all scattered. Mr Harrison is our Latin teacher.

(I do not know why we have to learn Latin. Only Romans speak Latin, and they are all deader than doornails.)

Friday 17 February 1939

I think I may finally have a moustache. You can only see it when I drink milk, but it is definitely there. It is just in time, as there is a dance at St Mary’s in a fortnight. Perhaps I will meet a girl.

Saturday 18 February 1939

Finally, the weekend. Don, me, Jim Gallagher and Jim’s little brother went to the Victoria to see Lost Horizon. It is a very good film. I think Jane Wyatt may be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my entire life. Jim said that he thinks that Carole Lombard is more beautiful, but he is only saying that because she has blonde hair, like the girl he fancies at the post office. He says he doesn’t fancy her, but he goes super red when she’s there, and the one time he tried to speak to her he sounded as though he’d been kicked in the head by a horse.

The news at the start of the film was all about the possible war with Germany. Jim Gallagher said that it was quite exciting and if we had to become fighting soldiers he would probably be a sniper. I don’t think so! His eyes are dead wonky. Don said he couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a shovel and that made me really, really laugh.

I said I would be a pilot like Richard Dix in Devil’s Squadron. But, really, I do not think I would like to be any type of soldier.

A half-chewed bouncy ball, a one-pence piece, a Wham bar wrapper, some fluff, a spring, a pebble in the shape of a dinosaur tooth, crisp crumbs (cheese and onion), a completely flat bottle top.

It was a few days later and my mum was emptying the pockets of my jeans on to the kitchen table before putting them in the wash. It wasn’t often that my jeans went in t