One Young Fool in Dorset by Victoria Twead

worth keeping my skis!”
chortled my mother, and ordered my father to fetch them down from
the attic.
    Being Austrian, she was very much at home on skis,
and I think she was secretly pleased not to drive Ivy for a while.
She happily skied into Wareham to pick up bread and other
necessities.
    If late December was cold, January was even colder.
The sea froze for a mile out from the shore at Herne Bay in
Kent, and the upper reaches of the Thames began to freeze over,
thick enough for people to skate on.
    To me, Dorset became a fairytale setting of
pristine, sparkling snow and silver icicles. Jack Frost painted his
patterns on my bedroom window, and the world outside was blindingly
white and silent.
    Snowy Twinkletoes was moved into the garage for a
while, but not before I’d set him down in the snow to see what he
thought of it. Not much. He flicked the snow off his paws at every
hop. I was surprised to see that he wasn’t as white as I thought he
was; against the virgin snow he looked quite yellow.
    At the end of the Christmas holidays, school started
again. Because of the weather, the trains had been cancelled, and a
special bus was laid on. The bus set off valiantly but scarcely
travelled a mile before it turned back, unable to negotiate the
snowdrifts blocking the road. We were forced to stay at home and my
happiness was complete.
    That bitter winter dragged on for three long months.
We went out very little, but that didn’t bother me. I’ve always
been happy in my own company, a dreamer. I was perfectly content in
my room, weaving stories in my head, making things or reading. As
my reading progressed, I developed an insatiable appetite for Enid
Blyton, but I also remember a book called A Tale of Two
Horses , and another, Rascal the True Story of a Pet
Raccoon . I devoured whatever books I could lay my hands on, and
never had enough.
    But that was all about to change. New neighbours
moved into the house two doors down from us. I was about to make
lifelong friends.

6 Things That Go Bump
    “ D o our new neighbours have any children?” I
asked.
    “ Ach, I believe they have one girl, two years
younger than you.”
    I was walking past their house one day, and being
curious, turned my head hoping for a glimpse of the new people. A
lady was working in the front garden.
    “Hello!” she said, straightening up from her task.
“Aren’t you Victoria from number 24?”
    “Yes, I am,” I answered shyly.
    “Well, Victoria, I’m very pleased to meet you,” she
said, shaking my hand. “Come in and meet Annabel. She’s making
plaster of Paris models, perhaps you’d like to make some too?”
    I followed her up the drive.
    Plaster of Paris models? Now, that sounded like
fun…
    Annabel had curly hair and round, red cheeks and was
even shyer than me. But after she’d explained the art of plaster of
Paris modelling, and how one mixed the plaster into a paste and
poured it into the rubber moulds, we were friends.
    We set the models in rows to dry, then pulled off
the moulds and hand-painted the features of the little hedgehogs
and mice we’d made. Time flew past and we both forgot to be shy.
Annabel’s mother came in and admired our industry.
    “I’ve just a baked a big chocolate cake, would you
like to stay to tea?” she asked.
    Chocolate cake? Would I! My mother rarely baked as
she was far more interested in the plants in the garden. I couldn’t
believe my luck.
    “Well, you’d better pop home and check that it’s
okay with your mother,” said Annabel’s mother. “And why don’t you
call me Auntie Jean?”
    I did pop home and was back in a trice. We sat down
at the big table in the kitchen; Annabel, Auntie Jean, Uncle Frank,
and me. The chocolate cake was delicious and we drank cups of tea
out of china teacups and saucers decorated with flowers. I was in
heaven. This was the first of many, many teas I would be invited to
over the years. As Annabel and I grew up, her house became as
important to me as my