TEST DRAFT 3 With LLaregub footnotes The Boy Who Shot Flimzy Bubbletrumpett- macbook 2

pistol and I pulled it out as if I had touched a live coal from the fire that burned in front of me.
Milan was too busy boiling water and adding extra sticks to the fire to notice.
I’m sorry, there’s just and onion and some bread tonight.
Don’t worry, just give me the onion. I have the dried makings of a soup in my pack.
He rummaged in his pack and took out a little canvas sack of dried beans, barley, lentils and
herbs, thyme, parsley, sage, rosemary and put them into the hot water. He chopped the onion
finely and added that.
In half an hour or less we should have soup.
We sat on the stone seats and watched the soup simmer on the embers of the fire.
Do you think I could have The ‘ooting of operatic owls in ‘orrible Oxfordshire?
I think that might be stretching things a little far, I replied. Glad that he had returned to the the
task of composing his poem.
So do I, he said. I can see that I’m going to have problems with the letter O. Can you think of
anything?
I couldn’t and I agreed that O was going to be a particularly difficult line.
The soup when it was ready was very good, though it may well have been because we were
both tired and hungry that we appreciated the simple meal so much.
This is excellent! I said. I am amazed you could make something so good with so little.
It’s all down to the herbs and spices, said Mi. There’s plenty of wild rosemary and sage to be
found round here and I know a bank where the wild thyme grows. I mean blows, it’s the
violets that grow 50. And I’ve added one or two spices that I’ve forgotten the names of. And
your onion.
By the time we had finished eating and had rinsed our bowls in the spring the shadows were
lengthening in the twilight so we made our selves rough beds on the ground inside the shelter
while it was still light enough to see. Indigo returned and made a kind of nest out of dry
bracken and curled up inside. We were both tired after two days of walking and glad of the
comfort of a bed, even though it was only leaves and bracken. I stretched out resting my head
on the black bag.
The reason I want to go back to the farm soon is that I am starting to forget, said Milan
suddenly. That frightens me. Some times I can’t remember their faces, or the sound of their
voices. Not clearly. How can I forget like that!
I don’t really think you have forgotten. Memories will come back when the time is right. You
can’t force them
I tried to reassure Mi
You are probably right. I have nothing to remember them by either. When I go back I’ll find
something. Some little thing must have survived the fire. That will help I think.
I lay awake thinking about my own memories. Like Milan I found I could not summon up the
image of my parents faces, or even Dys’. I tried to hear the sound of their voices. I closed my
eyes and tried to imagine them together, laughing and calling my name. But I could not. All
that I saw with the eyes of memory and imagination was a thick grey mist all around, where
dark shapes rose and faded and called out in muffled unintelligible voices. I snapped my eyes
open and looked up to see the yellow moon through a gap on the sticks that made the roof
above me. I was shaking. I realised that I could not remember who or what I had been. How
old was I? I felt I could be old. That I had suddenly grown up. Like some child in a fairy tale
where only magic makes sense and time does not really matter. The only thing I knew was
what was happening to me now. Milan was right I should think of the moment I was in not try
to think of anything else.
What was happening to me now was that I was in a rough shelter made of sticks and branches,
crudely thatch with gorse and broom and yellow moonlight shone down through the gaps in
the thatch. And Indigo and Milan were quietly asleep beside me. And I was tired.
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