Flypaper

I was trying to watch TV. Champion the wonder horse. Michael kept getting in the way, crawling and rolling in front of me. I picked him up and put him on the settee behind me but he came back down. I told him to be a good boy. Then I told him he wouldn’t even get his breakfast if he carried on. He’s little so he didn’t really get it. He just giggled. I tickled him for a bit and told him I’d play when my programme was over. He kept going. I picked him up and rolled onto my back holding him way up over my face. He liked it. I knew that because he started up this ki-ki-ki thing he does when he’s too excited to even laugh properly. He was getting sloppy spit all over me. I got a bit mad when he did that so I squeezed his leg till he started up wailing. That’s all he does. It’s enough to drive you to drink. Mum says that. It just means you get so cross that you get tired and you want a drink of beer or a glass of wine. Actually you also want just five minutes peace. A lot of the time we both go into the bedroom to play quietly. And nicely. I was hungry now. Mum wasn’t back for ages and she’d want to sleep. I can get my own anyway. Quite a lot of times I get mine and Michael‘s too. He eats just the same but he likes more gloopy stuff like rice pudding or custard or something like that. I was saving up a wagonwheel till Michael was asleep. He stares at you if you’re eating and he’s not. It puts you off. He was still wailing by now. I couldn’t even hear the TV. I told him to shut up and I turned it up. I couldn’t hear it properly even when it was really loud because of him.
Then I saw the flypaper. That’s these sticky strips hanging down from the ceiling. They were new ones from yesterday but they had six flies on them already. They all had their black legs waving, really slow. Their wings were flat onto the goo. I got a chair, and I got hold of two of them by the unsticky bits. I pulled them slowly. Then they came off and I got down. You have to hold them so carefully or else they get all tangled up. I got Michael to lay on the sofa. He was still wriggling about, going wah wah wah. I put one of them across him mouth and pushed it on. He didn’t like it a bit and he started up louder, even through the flypaper. He was going red and wriggling all over the place. His arms were pulling about but he’s too small for them to work properly so he didn’t know how to get it off. I tired to stick it to the cushion he was lying on to hold him still but it didn’t stick very well. And then it was starting to come off him too with him crying so much, so I just pulled it off and rolled it up into a ball. It was funny rolled up because it was still sticky a bit and you could make it stay on your upside-down hand. I thought maybe it might make a magic trick but it would only work as a magic trick if people thought it was ordinary paper and not sticky stuff. I thought I might keep it anyway so I put it into my pocket for later. Michael had gone quiet by now. He was just lying there but he wasn’t asleep just really quiet. I rolled back onto the floor but my programme was over and there wasn’t anything else good on.