What I Did In My Christmas
Holidays - Holidays - By Sally Sparrow By Sally Sparrow By Sally Sparrow
My name is Sally Sparrow.
I am 12 years old, I have auburn hair, braces you can hardly see, a dent in my left
knee from where I fell off a bicycle when I was ten, and parents. I also have a little
brother called Tim. My Mum told Mrs Medford that Tim Wasn't Planned, and you can
tell because his nose isn't straight and his hair sticks up and I can't believe you'd do
all that on purpose. Or his ears.
I am top in English, and Miss Telfer says I have an excellent vocabulary. I have
sixteen friends who are mainly girls. I haven't taken much interest in boys yet,
because of the noise.
This is the story of the mysterious events that happened to me at my fat Aunt's
cottage at Christmas and what I discovered under the wallpaper of my bedroom,
which caused me to raise my eyebrows with perplexity.
I was staying at my fat Aunt's cottage because my Mum and Dad had gone on a
weekend away. Tim was staying with his friend Rupert (who I don't think was
planned either because of his teeth) and I found myself once more in the spare
bedroom at my Aunt's cottage in the countryside, which is in Devon.
I love my Aunt's cottage. From her kitchen window you can only see fields, all the
way to the horizon, and it's so quiet you can hear water dripping off a leaf from right
at the end of the garden. Sometimes, when I lie in bed, I can hear a train far away in
the distance and it always fills me with a big sighing feeling, like sadness, only nice.
It's good, my bedroom at my aunt's. Really big, with a wardrobe that rattles its
hangers when you walk past it and huge yellow flowers on the wallpaper. When I
was little I used to sit and stare at those flowers and when no one was looking I'd try
to pick them, like they were real flowers. You can still see a little torn bit where I tried
to peel one off the wall when I was three, and every time I go into the room, the first
thing I do is go straight to that flower and touch it, just remembering and such. I've
talked about it with my Dad and we think it might be Nostalgia.
It's because of that flower and the Nostalgia that I first met the Doctor. ©BBC, 2012
- 3 -
***
It was three days before Christmas. I'd just arrived at my fat Aunt's house, and as
usual, I'd hugged her and run straight upstairs to my room, to hang all my clothes in
the rattley wardrobe. And as usual I'd gone straight to the torn yellow flower on the
wall, and knelt beside it (I'm bigger now) and touched it. But this time, I did
something different. I don't know why. I heard my Aunt calling from downstairs that I
