After watching real trains I like to get out my train set. I only have one train and two carriages and the track is a circle. It needs two batteries to work and they are expensive and Dad says I need to reserve power and I have to be careful to remember to disconnect everything when I finish playing. I don’t understand why Andrew likes the train set but doesn’t like real trains but he always wants to play with it even on days when I haven’t been at the station first, which is stupid. I am beginning to think that his behaviour means he isn’t the right person to go at the top of my list after all. Jill can’t go there as she is a girl so that is a problem. Sometimes I let Andrew drive the train. He likes to make it go as fast as it can which means it comes off the track. I tell him that he needs to be more careful and make it like the speed of the train real even though it’s tiny compared to the real thing. Because he doesn’t go to the station like me he doesn’t understand this and he keeps making the train crash. In the end I tell him the battery is going to run out and that we have to stop. He doesn’t seem to mind but I feel quite annoyed and hope he moves to Essex soon and someone new and better moves into his house that I can put at the top of my list. Afterwards we go outside and plays trains by walking along the garden wall making train noises. As we are doing it the ten to six from Holborn Viaduct arrives and all the people walk up the road past us on their way home. One of them is the lady who was sick, so I do a really fast train along the wall to get away from her.

When I grow up I want another carriage.

Tuffin 18

I tell mum about the sick lady and she says that most likely she is going to have a baby because that makes you sick. I don’ t understand because I thought having a baby made you happy. If it makes you sick why bother.

Next morning I watch out the window until I see the lady walking down to the station again to catch the two minutes past eight stopping service to Blackfriars. I do this watching most mornings while Mother tidies up after Dad has gone to work. He catches the ten to eight which is the fast train. The number 83. I notice she has a fat tummy that sticks out of her coat and mum says her name is Rosalind and something about her skirt being too short. If there is a baby inside it must be being jiggled about because she is rushing. I think mum is wrong because there is no way a baby could get out of there without making a terrible mess so more likely her big belly is what makes her sick. I get that after too much strawberry pink ice cream especially if it’s a hot day. I wonder if all babies come through worm holes like me and if they do what has that got to do with bellies and being sick. If Rosalind has a worm hole in her belly that would make her sick for sure because of all the gravity swirling round. Also people would be swirling around her getting sucked into her belly and appearing in the future or the past rather than catching the train and going to work.

When I grow up I don’t ever want to be sick again so I will never eat strawberry pink ice cream on hot days.