The document describes two diary entries from different dates. The first entry describes a teacher feeling uneasy while grading tests and wondering how their life might have turned out differently. The second entry is from a 12-year-old boy describing being picked up from school by his mother and going home, where his uncle has arrived to install a new washing machine.

1. 5th December 2010. Heroes.
I’m supposed to be marking these test results. That’s the trouble with the education system days, it’s
‘teaching for the test’ as some might say, but I tend to believe the more they rehearse the answers in
their mind, and write them down, then the more they are going to remember about the subject. I look
at each paper, but it’s like when you’re reading a book and your mind wanders, you can ‘read’ pages
and pages and then not remember any of it. I keep looking out of the window, well, staring really. I
feel, uncomfortable. No, that’s not it. It’s a butterflies feeling, a feeling of nervousness. I have no idea
why. It’s raining outside, each time there’s a gust of wind the rain slams harder into the window.
Maybe I’m worried about getting wet on the way home. No, that can’t be it. Sometimes I just get this
feeling, even when everything seems to be perfect with my life. My mind keeps wandering and
wondering. Wondering how different things might have been had my life not turned out this way. That
one day, that one minute. So annoyingly frustrating. For fuck’s sake. The bastard that was the 25th
August 1984.
24th July 1980. Xanadu.
I am twelve years old. My mother, Adrienne, has come to pick me up from school. I’m twelve years old
and my mum has come to pick me up from school. This, whilst I have now kind of got used it, is
mortifying on a daily basis. She says it’s because she worries about me, I know this to be true simply
because my younger sister was killed in a hit and run four years ago. She was ten at the time. My
memories of her are hazy, they would be I guess. I have pictures in my mind, like photos, no videos
though. Us playing in the back garden, she loved caterpillars. I’m always a little bit scared, I don’t
mind them when they’re on my hand, they kind of tickle and some of them are cute. But when I see
one I get a bit nervous. Karen wasn’t like that, sometimes she would look out of her bedroom window
with a sheet of drawing paper on the window sill and her pack of crayons resting next to it. She might
have been ten, but she was the best drawer I know, I and none of my friends at school can draw like
that. Her drawings look like proper art, the same as the teacher can do.
Usually, she would draw caterpillars. One’s she might have seen, or sometimes she would make up
the colours. She used to tell me about their life cycle. ‘Once they’ve eaten enough, they go into a
cocoon, and then they turn into a butterfly.’ To her, when this happened it was like a death. Well, it is
when you think about it I suppose. But to Karen it really could be the end of the word, these tiny
creatures, which she had put into a small plastic container and fed every day, were suddenly gone.
She used to say that that must be what heaven was like. You spend all of your life on Earth, and then
you’re put into a package and the next thing you know you’re flying into the sky. I wish I believed that.
I don’t think that I believe in God. God is supposed to be nice, if he is then why does Cathy Kirkland
try to trip me up every time I walk into the classroom. Cathy’s chair is right next to the door, she’s
really sneaky about, she does it so the teacher can’t see. This makes the my teacher, Mrs McGlens,
think I’m a right dozy cow, every time Cathy trips me up I don’t fall over, I regain my balance. But Mrs
McGlens always looks up, sighs and shakes her head.
Anyway, Mum has come to pick me up. As I get into the car she says ‘your uncle’s at home, he’s
come to install the new washing machine’.
When I get home, the first thing I always do is go straight to my room. Usually I put the radio on, I
don’t have many tapes because mum can’t afford to buy them, but I’m happy enough listening to the
radio. My favourite time of the week is Sundays when the Top 40 countdown comes on Radio 1.
Every week I write down every artist and the song, Mum says it’s stupid and if I wanted to know what
was in the chart and in what week then I could just get a newspaper on a Monday, because it’s
printed in there. But that wouldn’t be the same, it’s the fact that I write it down myself, and put it into its
file that makes it fun. I don’t know who my favourite singer is, it changes all the time. I’m always
confused by people that say so and so is their favourite singer or band. They spend all of their time
just listening to that person. Where’s the fun in that? And it makes them say stupid things about a