Fruit and Nutcase
Authors: Jean Ure
For my very own Fruit & Nut Case … and for Sydenham High School who gave me such a warm welcome
My dad’s an Elvis Presley look-alike. He’s got a white suit just like Elvis had, and a guitar, and he sings all the songs that Elvis sang.
Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Love me Tender, Love me True.
He knows them all!
I’ve drawn a picture of my dad being Elvis on my bedroom wall. I’ll draw it again, now.
I’m always drawing on my bedroom wall. When I’ve filled up all the space I’m going to start on the ceiling. I’ll be taller by then. I’ll stand on a stepladder and I’ll be able to reach.
This is how one bit of my bedroom wall looks.
It’s instead of having a garden. As a matter of fact there is a garden at the back of this house, but it belongs to old Misery Guts that lives downstairs and she won’t let me play in it. It’s only a bit of moth-eaten grass and dustbins, anyhow. If I had a garden I would grow all flowers in it.
My
garden
wall is right opposite my bed where I can see it when I wake up in the morning. My
people
wall is by the windows.
Unfortunately, that is all the wall there is as the room is not very big and there is a huge great enormous old-fashioned wardrobe just inside the door, taking up loads of valuable space.
The wardrobe used to belong to my nan. I hate it! When I was little, like four or five, I used to think fierce monsters lived in it. I don’t now, of course; now that I’m older. But I still hate it because it is
ugly.
I hate things that are ugly!
Dad is always promising that he will chop it up and make me a shelf out of it, but so far he hasn’t. He’s better at being Elvis than at D.I.Y.
Sometimes, like if we’re having a bit of a party, Dad will put on his Elvis suit and sing
Love me Tender
specially for Mum.
Love me Tender
is her favourite. She goes really gooey over that one!
In case there is anybody who has just dropped by from another planet and is thinking “Who is this Elvis person?” I maybe ought to explain that Elvis Presley was a very famous singer way back in my nan’s time. Mum says he was called Elvis-the-Pelvis because he used to wiggle his hips around as he sang, but Dad says he was the King of Rock, and that is what some people still call him, “the King”.
My dad is a dead ringer for the King! He looks really great when he brushes his hair back and puts gel on it so that it puffs up in front, the way the King’s did. And he wears his white suit and his high-heeled boots and he sings all these old songs. OK, and Mum loves it.
They get all moony and swoony the pair of them. It’s like they’re teenagers again, before I was born.
Once upon a time, Dad used to do Elvis gigs in the local clubs but he hasn’t done one for a while now. Last time he did one he had a bit of an accident. He tripped over his guitar lead and fell off the stage and busted his ankle.
astrophe!
Dad’s always doing things to himself.
He’s a real disaster area!
My mum’s not much better. She does the daftest things!
Honestly, my parents! They’re going to turn me into a right fruit and nut case, I know they are.
