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I was getting up there was a booming loud voice yelling, ‘Come ‘ere you two sneaky barstards,’ and it was Reg Fluke and his best friend Perce. So I felt quite silly, but not nearly as silly as Brian Thing, who had almost got down to the village by this time, with his glasses off.

    â€˜Wot you up to, then?’ said Reg. He was standing on the steps of the caravan and Perce was leaning out of the little window. ‘Couple of sneaks.’
    So I told them, and Brian Thing came dragging back, and we all looked at each other, and Reg said, ‘Stinks terrible inside. You want to smell it?’
    So we went up to the caravan and it was all ruined inside, with bits of old rag and papers everywhere. The roof had a huge hole in it which I hadn’t noticed before, but there was nothing inside really. Reg had chucked the stove out anyway, but there was an old frying-pan, all rusty, and a little glass-fronted door hanging on its hinges, and more old rags and a torn mattress, and on a wall a cardboard picture of a lot of people sitting in rows, like a school group, with a big ivy-covered house in the back, only, it was quite hard to see because it was all mouldy. And that was all.
    â€˜I reckon someone’s been through this before, and more than once. Probably come up here and do a bit of snogging from the village, I shouldn’t wonder.’
    I didn’t know what he meant, and anyway it was terrifically smelly and sad looking and there were no cats, and it did stink rather of them. So we all got out and Perce started kicking away at a big log under one of the front wheels.
    â€˜Wouldn’t take much to shift this,’ he said.
    â€˜And do what?’ I said.
    â€˜Shove it down the hill, why not?’
    â€˜I don’t think we should, it’s not our property,’ said Brian Thing suddenly speaking for the first time.
    â€˜Coo. ‘Ark at ’im! Toff-talk! “Not our property” indeed! Don’t belong to no one anyway. No kith and kin she didn’t ‘ave,’ said Perce and started really kicking the log. Then Reg started at the other, and they got a bit of tree branch and started to bang about with it. The caravan started shaking all over, and then bits fell off it, and the shutters closed and opened like eyes, and it felt awful really . . . like a person struggling sort of. But they got the two big logs rolled away so that the rickety caravan stood just tilted at the top of the track, and you could see it wouldn’t take much to send it down the hill.
    It was quite an exciting feeling suddenly, and when Reg yelled at us two to come and help we just went and did what he said. The four of us all pushed very hard at the back part and it started shaking and wobbling and groaning and Reg kept yelling, ‘Shove!’ So we shoved like anything and suddenly it went away . . . just like that. Everyone jumped aside and the caravan started to rumble very slowly down the track, hit a bump somewhere, and went high up over it. A bit of the roof fell away, and then the whole thing went clattering and crumbling down the track and exploded into a mass of wood and wheels and the tin chimney stack when it hit the chalky bank at the bottom. Then everything was quiet except for the sound of the larks and somewhere a sheep bell going ‘tonkle tonkle’, which made Perce a bit worried because he suddenly said,‘We best be off then . . . ruddy old shepherd about somewhere,’ and he and Reg started running down the track, laughing and waving their arms in the air. When they got to the wreck of the caravan he picked up a long piece of broken pink-painted wood, waving it over his head like a cricket bat, and they disappeared into the woods.
    â€˜I think that was a pretty foul thing to do,’ said Brian Thing.
    â€˜But you did it,’ I said. ‘When they said, “come and shove,” you did.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. Part of