The Girl In The Blue Dress by Brian Doswell (read aloud txt) 📖

The Girl in the Blue Dress

Sometimes birthdays can be a bit of a disappointment. I have been looking forward to today for a whole year, ever since I was nine. Being nine was alright but actually reaching double figures always seemed so much more important. I was really looking forward to being ten.

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I sort of knew it was all going to go wrong when Dad came home from work with the brochure for a beach house on the Mediterranean coast. “Come and see where we’re all going for your birthday.”

The front page of the brochure looked like a holiday post card, bright blue water with miles of empty sand topped with tufts of grass and bits of old palm tree sticking up like grandpa’s gappy teeth. It looked really boring, with nowhere to play football or ride a bike. I was really hoping for a new bike this year. My old one is a kid’s bike with places to bolt on those extra wheels that stop you falling over while you learn to ride. I expect a holiday would be nice but I really need a new bike to ride faster than that spotty kid in the next street.

The family sat round in a huddle on the sofa while Dad explained how he intended to spend his annual bonus on a holiday home. “It’s not very big”, he said, “but I reckon we will spend all of our time on the beach.”

His eyes shone with excitement, it’s a look we all know. When Dad gets a big idea its better to go along with it or you could get mown down in the charge. I get visions of Dad throwing Frisbees all over the place and expecting me to run and get the lost disc like a dog sent to retrieve a bone. Why can’t he go and get it? He threw it.

Mum turned the pages of brilliant colour pictures. Pretty chintz curtains and great chunks of fruit bowls filled the foreground of each picture but I spotted the bunk beds in the background. Ugh! A shared bedroom with my sister. What sort of birthday treat is that?

My sister is eight, ‘going on thirty’, Mum says. She’s OK really but I like her best when she plays with her own friends. When her friends go home, she often comes and sits in my room and moves my things around as though she owns them. She says she’s dusting, except she isn’t, ‘cos she doesn’t have a duster. She must think I’m as dim as she is.

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It will be the end of school term next week. All the tests are over and our teacher has sent the report cards out. I did OK except for everything says, “I must try harder.” I never understand that because I try very hard all the time, except when its history class. I can’t see much use for history, after all it’s all happened and me knowing about it can’t change it so why bother?

Mum is washing all my stuff, “ . . . before we go on holiday.” which means my best football shirt is off limits. I don’t know what she expects me to wear when we play the end of term game against St. John’s School. I’ve told her that I was supposed to go to training camp this holiday but she says the Beach House will be more fun. Fun for who I wonder?

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The airport was chaotic. I’ve decided I’m never going to an airport again. We had to get up before daylight - on a holiday day - and drive for hours to get to the airport. Dad kept asking Mum if she had the passports, she kept asking him if he had turned the gas off. Really, if they can’t manage that between them, what’s the point of being a grown-up?

We had breakfast in a café at the airport. I had croissants and coke. Mum says everyone has croissants for breakfast on the beach. I bet some people have cornflakes but she says not, because there are no cows and no milk. I think she is making it up but I’m not sure so I tell my sister the same story which makes her cry because she likes milk. Then I’m in trouble and it was Mum’s fault really.

After about ten years in a queue, we eventually got on the aeroplane. I had no idea they were so big. We were sitting in the middle of this really long cabin, but I got to sit beside the window.

Wow! When we took off, we went straight up like a rocket through a cloud and out of the top of it, all in one minute. Above the cloud the sun was so bright I could only just see without blinking all the time. I saw two aeroplanes going the other way but they were a long way away, so we were not likely to crash.

When we landed it was really hot. Dad said he hadn’t tuned the gas off and we should all go back home, but Mum hit him with a Hello magazine and then we all laughed.

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The beach house was about half an hour from the airport and it was much bigger than it looked in the brochure. It really was on the beach, sitting on poles buried in the sand. There was no garden just a few piles of rocks that marked the boundary between our place and the next house along the beach. Best of all, there were three bedrooms, so I didn’t have to share with a girl after all.

When we arrived it took Dad ten minutes to unlock the doors and me two minutes to get my clothes off and get into the sea.

The beach was pretty sandy for miles and there were real fish everywhere in the sea. I tried to catch some but they were too quick for me. “. . . . . must try harder!”

The first week seemed to whiz by. We spent all the time on the beach except for one trip to a supermarket for cornflakes and milk. Just Mum’s joke after all . . . and two trips to see some old churches that were quite broken and needed rebuilding. Dad said the churches were historical which confirmed my idea that history is a waste of time.

I suppose because its holiday time, there were several other families in the houses along the beach. Most of them had kids and I soon made friends with two other boys, one who spoke English and one who spoke Dutch. We could all swim and play football together so talking didn’t seem to matter much.

My sister found a couple of friends and stayed out of my way, which was good - until today.

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Today is my birthday, so I have to have a party. I usually like birthday parties but Mum says we have to have all the kids along, including the girls. Ugh!

In England birthday parties are usually in the afternoon, with cake and jellies and stuff. Today we are having a barbeque. Dad has murdered some sardines. They looked OK until he put them on the grill and now they are like crunchy black bones with opaque eyes and no tails because they’ve all burned off. I’m glad that Mum has enough bread and cheese and bananas and peanut butter to feed us all, and there’s ice cream in the fridge, so we will be alright.

Mum and Dad asked me how I was enjoying my birthday holiday and I had to admit it was much better than I had expected. They gave me a birthday card in a fancy envelope and when I opened it there was a picture of a bicycle glued on the front of the card and underneath it said, “Your new bike is waiting in the garage at home.” It is quite strange, because I really want the new bike but I don’t really want to go home now. All my new friends have arrived with presents for me, books and things, all except one.

My sister has been playing with a crowd of girls all week. They’re mostly OK as long as they stay up their end of the beach, except for one girl, the girl in the blue dress with the pink sun hat. I don’t know her name but she’s sort of different. The girl in the blue dress gave me a present wrapped in really girly tissue paper, but inside was a Barcelona football team baseball cap, which I’ve always wanted, more than anything ever in my life.

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I suppose some birthdays are not so bad after all. Everyone’s gone home now and I’m left, sitting on the steps of our beach house, wearing my Barcelona cap and wondering what it would be like to be in love with the girl in the blue dress.

Publication Date: 03-17-2010

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