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sorrowfully. “I’m as sorry as you are, Ruby, but it has to be done.”
    Ted went into the pub and came back a moment later with his Viking helmet on and a photograph. He came and showed it to us. It was the picture of him with a gun standing on a pile of pies. Underneath it said, Ted Barraclough, champion pie eater. 22 steak and kidney, 4 pork .
    Then he walked across and showed it to the Bottomly sisters, and said to them, “Have some respect, girls. Thy father only ate ten pies and then had to go and have a bit of a lie down, so bog off somewhere else.”
    The Bottomly sisters looked at him and then they got up and sloped off.
    Ted went back into the pub singing, “I am the king of hellfire!!! PIES, I’m gonna teach you to burn. PIES, I’m gonna teach you to learn!!”
    I went to bed happy after seeing the Tree Sisters. But I gave my nose a good scrub in case any of Cain’s molecules had got into it. And besides, I am sleeping on Alex’s letter and don’t want to besmirch it.

There’s no people like show people
     
    I WOKE UP EARLY the next day partly because I’m excited about starting college but also because it was like sleeping in a zoo.
    Birds had been tweeting and carrying on in the trees outside my window practically since I’d gone to bed. How can anyone sleep in the country? I think some of the birds have got secret mouth organs. And drums. Like a really bad band rehearsing. A band of birds singing with no tune. Like those people in bygone days who wore black polo-necks and played jazz that had no tune. Beatniks they were called. I think my dad was one. Hey, perhaps the birds are … beakniks!!!
    Not beatniks but BEAK-niks.
    I must write that down in my notebook because one day it may be comedy gold.
    Especially if I do a bird opera.
    Which I might. Following on from the triumph of my bicycle ballet.
    I could call it Feather !
    Or maybe Saturday Night Feather !
    We Will Flock You !
    Grouse !
    Pheasant of the Opera .
    Right, so this is the official start to my performing-arts notebook.
    I need a name for my secret notebook.
    What shall I call it?
    What does the book suggest? I looked at the cover. Plums, dark …
    Dark, fruit … unanswered questions … questions that need answering.
    Something like …
    The Darkly Demanding Damson Diary.
    That’s me, that is.
    It’s going to be my spontaneous stream of consciousness. Here goes …
    I’ll start a new page after the Labradad entry. I may need to add drawings, and so on, of the Labradad. So I’ll start a new blank page and begin. Right, I’m just going to go mad and improvise. I’m going to let myself go and not censor myself at all. Let my pen flow over the pages.
    Oh, hang on, I’ll just get a pen that has a thicker point.
    Hmmmm, good, good. Nice thick pen. Right.
    Now, my stream of consciousness begins … No, no, my feet are all wrong. No one can improvise with squirrel slippers on. I’ll put my ballet shoes on for inspiration. Yes, good, good. Ballet shoes, good. And … oh, crikey, now I’ve got the squirrel slipper’s tail sticking in my bottom … I’ll just … anyway, off we jolly well go …
     
    Aaaah, once again I can smell the crowd and hear the roar of the greasepaint. This is where I belong. I want to go to the tippy top of the toppermost. I know that Sidone Beaver has said that we will pay the price of fame.
    She said, “Your feet will bleed before you wear the golden slippers of applause.”
    I am ready. I am girding my feet and my loins to suffer what I have to for my art. Here in the wilds of Yorkshire I feel the spirit of Charlotte Brontë filling my snug winter tights. And in my heart I hold the letter from Alex. And so my Winter of Love begins with his letter.
    Performance note:
    When I say I am holding the letter from Alex with my heart, I don’t mean this in a weird way.
    I know that hearts can’t hold letters really.
    Although I could make a papier-mâché heart with little arms.
    I hid the diary under my pillow