When Mum Went Funny Read Online Free Page A

Robinson says new ones are getting hard to come by. We don’t use it often enough to keep the battery charged, and there’s the water and oil to remember. Of course, none of you would think of keeping an eye on them and topping them up. As for those blessed coupons! I’ve a good mind to get rid of it, and put Old Pomp back in the buggy. It’d be a sight less trouble!”
    That night, Mum sent me and the two little ones off to bed, but Kate sat up with her and listened to the nine o’clock news from the B.B.C. I liked hearing Big Ben. The boom of the bells banging out the time shook the air the whole way from London and round the world to our farm where it just about shook the wireless off its shelf. But Mum didn’t often let us sit up late enough to hear their Bim, Bom, Bang, Boom, and put our hands on the side of the wireless to feel it shake. I lay keeping myself awake so I’d hear Big Ben, trying to feel the house shaking, and holding my breath just in case.
    “On the news last night, a tanker carrying oil got torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat,” Kate told us on the way to school, next day. “The sailors jumped into the sea, but the oil caught fire and burnt them to death. Mum turned the wireless off and said it was far past my bedtime, and she pretended to be angry, but I could tell she was crying.”
    “Mum cries a lot sometimes,” said Betty.
    “It’s because of her funny ideas,” Jimmy told her,and she said she knew that. Betty didn’t like it, being told things, but then who does?
    Mr Robinson came out next week and put our Chev up on blocks in the car shed. He drained the benzine out of the tank, and the oil out of the sump, and he took off the wheels. He got underneath and turned a little tap so the water ran out of the radiator and made a puddle. And he lifted out the battery to take into Waharoa with him. He shook his head, but supposed Mum knew what she was doing.
    “You’re not the only one,” he told her. “The Bells up Richmond Downs, they’ve done the same thing with their Ford. And the Macdonalds out the Gordon, they’ve put their car on blocks and they’re only using the lorry. It’s giving Old Grizzleguts something to complain about – people not using enough benzine coupons.”
    We thought it was just one of Mum’s crazy ideas. Then we remembered the men trying to swim in a sea ablaze with oil, and Kate said, “Good on her!”
    We pulled the buggy out of its shed, and tried putting Old Pomp in the shafts, only some of the harness needed mending. For several nights, we rubbed neat’s-foot oil into the dry leather, and cleaned the rust off the buckles with emery paper, and Mum hunted around for an awl and replaced some of the stitching with special heavy thread. It took ages, poking holes through the leather with the awl.
    Mrs Kemp rang and told Mum to stand the buggyin the creek so the wood in the wheels swelled up. Otherwise, she said, Mr Kemp reckoned the iron rims would come off. So we carried buckets of water from the cowshed and sloshed it on the wheels for a couple of days. Then Old Pomp pulled the buggy down to the creek, and we let it stand in the water, and the rims were okay after that.
    It was good fun, getting the old buggy lamps going. They burned carbide and hissed and threw a powerful light. Waharoa wasn’t that far and, as Mum said, we could pick our time to go in during daylight and when it wasn’t going to rain. She said she felt a lot happier with the old Chev up on blocks. “When things are back to normal, we can get it going again,” she told us.
    Some people said we were mad, going back to the buggy, but we didn’t mind. It was fun. Billy Kemp sang, “Horsey, Horsey, don’t you stop, just let your feet go clippety clop,” at us all the way to school one morning. Then he forgot, and rode his pony close to Old Pomp, and Kate gave him such a clip over the lugs, he sulked half a mile behind us.
    After a few weeks, Billy and his sisters started cadging a lift in