One I have started this journal in the hope that something interesting and supernatural will happen to me but I fear this is unlikely I am not an orphan and I do not live in a cupboard under the staircase We do have a staircase cupboard it is full of gumboots and old newspapers but I don’t live in it and I have parents two of them Alive And they both love me A lot This is good but annoying as it is usually unloved orphans that have all the magical luck Mum actually gave me a cushion with You are so loved written on it I was like what is this I wanted the one with the black leafless tree lithograph on it It looks dark and 7
mysterious To be dark and mysterious is one of my lifelong goals If passing inhabitants of an alternate magical world see the You are so loved cushion on my bed they will keep walking When my dad comes home from business trips he tries to read to me books like Matilda best book ever but I am getting a bit old for it and I point kindly to my hardback series of Harry Potter with the ADULT covers so he will understand I am quite literate and stuff I also have two sisters and tragically one brother None of us can guess which one is Mum’s favourite because she loves all of us so much even Pig Boy slash the male sibling Annoying MUCH It’s a love festival at our house We range in age from twenty-four to eleven with me being the youngest I am the fourth child of an only child named John and a third adopted child named Letty who has no idea about her birth family which I must say does give me hope in the dark-and-mysterious department If I were Mum I would really want to know that sort of thing She could be royal or something My mum is 8
special but she could be authentically special I really love Kate Wills George and baby Charlotte They are sooooo lovely and I just know George is going to be an awesome big brother unlike the Pig Boy that resides in our house There are only two of us loved-up kids living at home at the moment so sadly we look like a really typical family Typical this is a terrible concept I hate typical It is the exact opposite of interesting and unusual I live at home naturally as I am only eleven years old My brother Linden AKA Pig Boy is fourteen He hates me and he lives at home And then there is my twenty-two-year-old sister Fern She is an Arts student who kind of lives at home when she is not cat-sitting I find it disappointing that she has never looked after a black cat now that could be interesting as it might be a familiar which is a witch’s magical lifelong pet But no they are all silvery blue or ginger typically shudder they are a very boring stripe Fern is not in residence at the mo YAY She always hogs Mum with her stupid love-life problems 9
My eldest sister Zinnia is aged twenty-four Zinnia has moved to Spain to be with her Spanish fiancé Manuel They are both working on a big engineering project This is very exciting except Zinnia is not excited about it because she is so boring Mum has to send her Vegemite bulk Cherry Ripes and Smith’s Crisps in a large box every month When she skypes Zinnia always ends up crying I feel like saying YOU ARE SO LUCKY TO BE IN A DARK AND MYSTERIOUS PLACE Go and explore a Gothic basilica and eat some tapas and stop crying for heaven’s sake But I don’t I am mature that way I am being packed off to my grandfather’s down south for two weeks because my parents are going away to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary They go away every year at this time and they think it is funny to say they pretend they do not have four children for two weeks of the year Hilarious NOT Fern has to come home with the three cats she is minding to mind Linden Mum says it is to keep Linden company as her strapping lad certainly 10
