In my hand I have something called… well, I don’t exactly know what it’s called.
It’s a sort of magic, crinkly, looky, holdy, thing. But it’s my absolute, all time, best-ever, favourite thing in the entire world (since Pink Ball). It’s pink and it has crinkly-dangly bits and you can hold it in your hand and – sometimes – it makes music, but best of all it has a looky bit that shows you little pictures.
It’s not a toy exactly, it’s far more than that. It has magical powers. I don’t mean the pointy hat, wavy-wandy stuff that Curly Top does with his cape and his playing cards – I’m talking about real, absolute power, full-on magic.
Do you ever have those days where there’s just too much world?
Well, what the magic, crinkly, looky, holdy, thing does is it takes the entire multi-coloured, loud, weird, flashing, confusing world of shouty, flashing, bright stuff and shows you only the teeny-tiny most important bits so that you can study them and see exactly what’s going on without all the rest of the overwhelming too-much-stuff-ness of life. And if it isn’t showing you a teeny-tiny bit you like, you just tip it slightly and it shows you a completely different teeny-tiny bit. How cool is that?
Sometimes I use it to look at Smiley and he looks back at me and we both do looking at each other for a while and we just know that we’re two guys sharing a guy moment. Or sometimes I look at Frowny when she’s busy doing all her busy stuff. Ok, she’s usually far too busy to look back at me, but sometimes I do catch her looking very quickly. And even if she doesn’t look my way I like to watch her because I know the world is really very alright indeed when I can see her doing all her busy things.
Sometimes I look at Curly Top and his friends, running around and being very shouty. He never, ever looks at me because he’s too busy being really happy, but that’s ok too.
The best place to do looking is while I’m sitting on the fourth stair up from the bottom. I’ve tried the one above and the one below but the fourth step is at the exactly-most-rightest height to give you the best view of everything that goes on in the house.
I’ve tried using the magic, crinkly, looky, holdy, thing in the car but the pictures move too fast. They’re quite pretty and I sometimes look at it for a long time, but I can’t really make any sense of it. I’ve never been allowed to take it to school but I don’t think it would work very well there either; at school people are always trying to talk to you and make you do stuff. For the magic to work properly you need peace and quite and for people to leave you alone for a bit.
It used to make a noise – I think it was supposed to be music – it sounded really tinny but I quite liked it so I just kept my finger on the button. But, after about three or four days of me sucking on it, the music stopped for absolutely no reason and then it never made any more noise. I handed it to Smiley for some fixing and he tried the clever screwdriver thing but lots of sticky, wet, brown stuff came out of the back. So he gave it a wipe and a squirt of some smelly stuff, replaced the lid and gave it back to me. Then it didn’t make any more music for ages, until one day it just started again, all by itself.
Actually, now I come to think about it, there’s another weird thing: I’ve had the magic, crinkly, looky, holdy, thing for as long as I can remember, but sometimes I forget where I put it and it goes missing for a few days. But when it comes back it sometimes looks much shinier and smells funny and the crinkly bits are much crinklier and the tinny music noise works again. Maybe sometimes it just needs to have a rest for a while for the magic to come back.
Even weirder, I once saw another magic, crinkly, looky, holdy, thing at the bottom of my toy basket… but this one was all scratched and you couldn’t see in the looky bit very well and the crinkly things had come off – so I knew it wasn’t mine.
Spooky.