Chapter 3. Egg and Bacon and the Invisible Ball
March 1973
Finally, I've got a friend. A real friend. His name's David. Every day we play together at break time. The other children call us Egg & Bacon. But we pretend they're not there. The other day we made a promise .
‘David, let's play together all the time. I'll never call you Bacon. Will you promise that you'll never call me Egghead?'
‘I promise,' said David.
‘What shall we do then?' I asked.
‘Let's run,' said David.
David likes running, so at every break time we run round the playground. The playground is very big, but sometimes we even run round it ten times before we have to go back to the classroom. Ten times! Just imagine.
‘We're going to run every day,' said David. One day, we'll run for our country. You'll see. We'll become famous, and then nobody will bully us anymore.'
That seemed like a very good idea, and so we ran. Every day we ran. When we ran we felt free. When I ran I forgot school. I forgot about all of my problems.
But things can change very quickly at school. One day, after running with David, I went back into the classroom. We were going to do geography.
‘Graham, what's the capital of Sweden?' asked the teacher.
This was so easy, but not for Graham.
‘Er, Copenhagen, no, Oslo, no, … wait a minute … Sweden! No! er… What was the question again, Miss?'
While Graham was changing the map of the world, Kevin said something in my ear.
‘Poo, Egghead. All that running you do,' he said. ‘Why do I have to sit next to you? Anyway, I read in the newspaper that it's bad for you to run too much. Your legs can break.'
It was always the same. Whatever I did, someone had something bad to say about it. Could my legs really break? Probably not, but this was something I had to speak to David about.
‘Really?' said David when I saw him. ‘Our legs can break! Well, we have to stop then. We're running too much. And if it's dangerous…'
‘What are we going to do now then?' I asked.
David didn't know about Andrew. Maybe he had a secret friend as well, but I didn't know for sure. At that moment, Andrew had an idea. David couldn't hear it, but I could. Andrew said to me. ‘Bring a ball to school. You can play football.' What a brilliant idea! I didn't tell David about it. I wanted it to be a surprise.
The next day I brought a football to school. It was a beautiful ball. My Uncle Terry gave it to me for Christmas. It was red and white, like the colours of Arsenal, my favourite team.
David and I started to kick the ball around. I pretended to be an Arsenal player, Charlie George. He scores lots of goals for Arsenal, and David pretended to be Pat Jennings. He's a brilliant goalkeeper.
But soon, something incredible happened. ‘C'mon Egghead, pass the ball to me,' said a voice. It was Kevin. He started to play with us and then Clive came, and then some other boys. Soon there were about 20 children playing football with us, Egg and Bacon. I couldn't believe it. It was brilliant.
When lessons started again, Kevin said to me. ‘Bring the ball tomorrow, Egghead. We'll play again.' So that's what I did. Soon we were playing football with the other boys every day.
But then one day, the fun stopped. We had to stop playing. It was all because of Mr Williams. He was the P.E. teacher. One day, we started to play, but then he blew his whistle. ‘Stop boys!' he shouted. ‘This is too dangerous. The ball is too hard. Play football in the park, but not at school.'
The other boys went away. I picked up the ball and put it in my bag. ‘Oh well, that's another idea gone wrong,' I thought.
‘Bring a smaller ball,' whispered Andrew. I heard Andrew and smiled to myself.
The next day we were playing football again. This time with a much smaller ball. It was soft and difficult to see. But it was better than nothing. For three days we played with the small ball. At first, Mr Williams didn't say anything, but then he blew his whistle again.
‘Stop boys. No balls in the playground. Put it away, Freeman.'
So that was that. ‘Oh well,' I thought. ‘At least you tried, Andrew. That's the end of football for us.' But Andrew had one more idea.
‘Play with an invisible ball,' he said.
The boys were just about to go away, when I said ‘Stop!' They all looked at me.
‘What is it, Egghead?' asked Kevin.
‘I've got a ball here, look. It's so small that even Mr Williams can't see it.' I started to kick the invisible ball up and down.
‘I knew it,' said Kevin. ‘Egghead is crazy. What's he doing?'
Then I kicked the invisible ball to David, David kicked it to Clive, Clive kicked it to Kevin, and then something incredible happened. We were all playing invisible football, with an invisible ball.
It wasn't as good as a real ball. But it was still great fun.
Now when the boys shout ‘We want more men,' they let us join the group. Now we're a part of something.
At the weekends I often go to David's house. His house isn't like mine. He lives on a farm. It's very exciting, and there are a lot of things to do.
We catch insects, and help David's dad to collect the eggs from the chickens. I'm glad Kevin and Clive aren't here when I do this. I also help to give the pig his food. His name's Hector. Sometimes David and I have tomato battles.
A tomato battle is really quite simple. David's mum and dad grow a lot of vegetables and they can't eat or sell them all. Some of them go bad. We use the bad tomatoes for our tomato battle. We both find a good hiding place and then we throw them at each other. One point for every time we hit each other. It's great fun.
When I came home after my first tomato fight I was worried. ‘Now Mum will be really angry,' I thought. ‘My clothes are so dirty, and they smell bad.' Mum was surprised when she saw me walk through the door. But she wasn't angry at all.
‘Did you have a good time?' she asked.
‘Yes thanks, Mum. It was great!' I replied.
She smiled.
