t was a time of the year when it rained a lot, and whenever a thunderstorm started brewing, I would run outside to watch the clouds in the sky as they churned about, pushing and shoving other clouds out of the way.
The lightning from the previous day had struck the old tree - the one just down the lane, and somebody had decided that the best thing to do was to cut the tree down. My mum explained that it was now unsafe and had to be cut it down before it fell and hurt somebody. If it was going to fall, why would anyone stand underneath it, I wondered.
My mum was in a good mood. She was making the beds and singing some dumb song about rabbits. I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to leave the house.
The strangest thing happened to me one day. I was playing beside the canal near the bridge when this new kid showed up and started talking to me. When I say that he was new, I meant I had never seen him before - he wasn’t new new. He said that he lived on one of the houseboats.
Although my mum had been told not to near the canal, I had ignored her warning, and had survived going near the canal. I just hadn’t told my mum. I thought to myself if common sense was the seventh sense, did that mean that there were other senses?
A few days later, I had this feeling that I should go back to the rabbit. On the way to the warren, I wondered why we had two eyes and two ears.
It was decided - without my approval, I might add - that we should get a dog. My sister wanted a dog because I didn’t want one. My mother wanted a dog for protection - from what, I didn’t know. My dad wanted the majority to be happy, and I ended up being outnumbered, and so we all went to see this lady who had some puppies.