on the top of a hill stands a girl wrapped up to the nose in scarf and the wind blasts through the wool and her hair and rattles her eyes behind her lids. She spreads out her arms and the cedar trees bend back and her cheeks bloom blast off
far away the mother hears, the mother knows where her daughter flies in the sky
Yuri Gagarin, the cosmonaut, was the first man in space on Suzie’s birthday in nineteen sixty one. Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet Hero. Yuri Gagarin knew where the best conkers fell. Yuri Gagarin could swing higher than anybody Suzie ever knew but only Valentina Tereshkova knew how to land. Parachutes.
It wasn’t Suzie’s fault the kitchen window smashed. Yuri Gagarin kicked the football too hard. It was Yuri who left the paints open and forgot to feed the fish and stole a marble from the boy next door.
When Suzie turned twelve Yuri Gagarin left to find Laika, the Space Dog. He returned only once when she was fifteen and her first boyfriend had cheated on her. But he didn’t stay. Space is demanding.
A girl lay propped up on her elbow, the duvet pulled up to her ribs and she ran her fingers through the hair of the frowning boy beside her. Laika snored from her basket. With solemn certainty the girl emptied the fish bowl, the goldfish floundered in a pint glass and screwed it round the sleeping boy’s neck. They were calling him back to Star City.
“Yuri Gagarin knew where the best conkers fell”
did you ever read “a conker as hard as a diamond?”
I never did. Google tells me it is ‘delightfully funny’ though.
Oh I did! When I was a kid. And the aliens came down and smashed it! How mean.
Gah! Stop triggering dead memories! It hurts! Good story, though. It sparked a conker-frenzy at my primary school in Weston.