JACKIE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE

3.00pm

Me and my little brother Josh are playing out with the kids who live on the next block, Kaliegh-Anne and Levi. Kaliegh-Anne is my age and her little brother Levi is the same age as Josh. The whole of Eastern Green calls their mum and dad, Jackie Potato, because their mum’s name is Jackie and their dad looks like a Potato.

Everybody says Jackie Potato are nutters, and that when Potato disappeared for six months last year he was in prison for nicking rare birds eggs (as if you can go to prison for that!). I don’t mind them though.

 Jackie is really shouty, even when she’s in a good mood she shouts, ‘DO YOUSE WANT ANY SQUASH?’. She sometimes buys us McDonalds when we go round though, and lets us go on her running machine in the garage. She’s really thin, has black hair that she spikes up at the back, and always wears heels, even her slippers have heels on! I think that she could be anywhere between thirty and fifty years old, she wears so much make-up you can’t see her real face.

Potato eats Doritos and watches sport on the telly all day with the curtains shut, I’ve never heard him speak or even seen him move (there’s no way he’d get up a tree!).

Me and Kaliegh-Anne are helping the boys build a den out of the grass that’s just been cut on their block. The boys are collecting all the grass and we’re making walls.

3.15pm

Josh starts crying. When I look round there’s a load of older kids from Tile Hill with water guns, they’ve soaked Josh and now they’ve started on Levi who has ran onto his front lawn and is banging the door for Jackie to let him in.

Jackie opens the door and goes totally nuts at the Tile Hill lot, they laugh at her and call her a mouthy cow, which makes her turn red and lob one of her heels them. Once we’ve all ran inside Jackie slams the door. From the blurry porch window we can see the Tile Hill kids sitting on the grass out the front. They wreck the boy’s den and start squirting the neighbours windows.

3.30pm

Jackie smokes loads of fags to calm down and Potato switches from the football to the cricket.

Jackie Potato’s house is like ours on the outside but inside its really different. Everywhere has flowery wallpaper that’s gone yellow, and there’s a light up picture of Jesus next to Jackie’s ashtray on the coffee table. Above the fake fire there’s a massive family photo that they got done in West Orchards Shopping Centre. In it, Jackie and Kayleigh-Anne are in matching pink dresses, Levi’s in a little suit, and Potato is in the massive John Smiths t-shirt he always wears.

Jackie says she recognised one of the lads, and that his mum works on the make-up counter in Debenhams. I think she’s going to phone his Mum up at Debenhams but she comes up with another plan.

3.35pm

We all go into the garage with Jackie and she digs out two Supersoakers and some water bombs, which we take into the kitchen. Jackie gets a massive jug out of a cupboard and tells us all to fill it with any liquid we can think of. Jackie pours in a load of milk and I put some Robinson’s Tropical Fruits in, then Levi adds some vinegar. Kayleigh-Anne gets some Toilet Duck out from the cupboard under the sink but Jackie says, ‘I ain’t going back to court for those little shits!’ and makes her put it back.

3.50pm

Once we’ve filled the jug me and Kaleigh-Anne help Jackie to fill up the supersoakers and waterbombs with Jackies Marevelous Medicine. I start to think that maybe Jackie is a proper nutter and that I might need to take Josh home.

Before I can make up an excuse Jackie starts shoving me into one of the yellow macs you get free on the log flume at Drayton Manor. I look round and Kayleigh-Anne has one on too. Jackie hands us a water gun each and pushes us out the door.

The Tile Hill kids laugh their heads off when they see us, and start shooting water at me and Kayleigh-Anne. We start pumping up the water guns slowly at first, but when they start calling us soggy slags we go for it! Kayliegh-Anne’s ready before me and starts shooting at them. 

They keep laughing at us, and the girls in the gang do really stupid screams and tell the boys that they’re wet. Then when they realise their tops are stained and they smell like tropical milk and vinegar, they stop laughing and do real screams.

Jackie comes up behind us laughing like mad. Levi and Josh are handing her water bombs and she’s lobbing them at the kid’s who have started to run away.

Josh tries to chase one of the boys with a water bomb and trips. The boy turns back and starts kicking Josh in the face. We all jump on the him, but he won’t stop kicking. I start screaming and crying, but before I can run to our block to get help, Potato comes out and grabs the boy by his feet. Jackie grabs his arms and they drag him down the grass toward the brook. Potato has dark green circles around his armpits on his t-shirt and sounds like he’s just run a marathon after smoking a thousand fags. (THERE’S NO WAY HE’D GET UP A TREE!!!)

I start worrying about the boy. I’ve fell in the brook loads. It’s not very deep so you can’t drown in it, but when I have fallen in, mum’s made me have a bath with a whole bottle of Dettol in, because she says there’s rat wee in the brook and that can make you really poorly. What if the boy doesn’t know about the Dettol?

When they get to the brook the boy is crying and shaking, they let go of him right by the edge and he gets up and legs it.

I grab Josh and start legging it too! 

4.00pm

When we get home mum cleans Josh’s face, he’s just a bit scratched but Mum makes his favourite butter and sugar sandwich to cheer him up. I tell Mum all about Jackie Potato and she says Kayliegh-Anne and Levis can come and play round ours next time.