GOINGTOTHE PARK
He was going to the park. He was going to run and prance and dance and swing on the swings and slide and play football with jumpers for goalposts. Harry galloped as he threw his football high into the sky, until it was as high as the sun and watched it thud onto the ground and float back upwards, staring at the Newcastle badge on his leather ball. He gawped as the badge shrunk and grew when he lobbed the ball up and down. He was going to the park. Harry skipped while the ball clunked into the smooth concrete paving that hopscotched down the street. The ball dropped and thumped and bounced again and again until it squashed an itsy- bitsy spider from up the water spout. Harry looked at the spider and remembered that spiders were like worms and you’d get two of them if you cut them in half. Now, there’s a Mummy spider and a Child spider but there’s no Daddy spider even though he loves Mummy spider and the Child spider lots and lots. The Child spider knows this as the Mummy spider says so all the time. Harry’s mum smiled softly at him, as she glanced up towards the sky. It looks like the sky is getting ready for a nap, she says; we had better go to the park before he goes to sleep. Harry looks at his mum and his football bounces on a crack of a paving slab and rolls into a rosebush, like in the garden when he kicked the ball through his dad’s legs and scored. The crack was sharp and jagged like his pair of crocodile scissors. Harry remembered he mustn’t run with scissors, so he walked carefully over the paving. Quick, quick; go and get the ball, his mum giggles. She giggles in the way she does when Harry gets
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