there was a kid i knew growing up, jimmy sleeves was his name, a strange boy, ate alphabetti spaghetti for dinner every night; anyway he was cousins with bobby underhand, who through his on-again-off-again girlfriend sally broadbeans got into business with this shady fellow, a rather portly teenager, much older than us, peter porkinson, or porky as we used to call him; now porky used cobra — cobra was bobby’s nickname; he could spiffle a can from 10 yards — cobra used to smuggle porky pva glue out of the supplies cupboard, we never did find out what he used it for, but he paid cobra a pound a litre for the stuff, which was a lot at the time; now porky was dating the waitress at pizza pirates and she used to walk our headmaster’s dog, big reg, a giant schnauzer; big reg once bit owen ankles right on his nose, that caused quite the stir, i remember jenny bubblebath being quite upset about that, she used to eat rubbers if i recall, that’s why some of the girls called her eraser-wouldn’t-faze her, she’s married now with two kids, married gary lapels would you believe, even don longtoes wouldn’t play with him in the playground, and he could eat a corn on the cob through a letterbox, could tickle his ears with his canines, mother was romanian i believe, we called him drac-uncool-la, though even that wasn’t as bad as poor stubnips, poor boy shaved his chest one night before swimming and never lived it down