The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (e book reader online txt) 📕

as well. And she did, and it was the best Saturday night ever, even though we had so much fun we totally forgot to decide who we liked the best and now I’m never going to know who would have got Jaxy’s vote.

Another time we were just sitting in my room talking about what cheese we reckoned was the best for melting and kapow! Jax came up with the Ultimate Cheese-Off Experiment plan. We made a banner out of an old pillowcase with U.C.O.E 2017 on it because the whole name didn’t fit, and Mum took us to Tesco’s and we bought loads of different kinds of cheese. Even the expensive ones. Then Jax made a list with the names of them and five columns labelled gooey, gooier, gooiest, rubbish and totally rubbish to put our ticks or crosses. It turned out he needn’t have bothered with the last two, because they stayed totally empty, but then we ended up writing a really cool joke about never meeting a cheese we didn’t like. So that was like two ideas out of the factory for the price of one.

A lot of Jax’s best ideas pop into his head when he’s supposed to be doing other things, like homework or sleeping or taking out the bins for his mum. Or watching the One Show Children in Need special, which is when out of nowhere he goes, Norman, I reckon we need to make a mega-genius-super-supreme comedy plan so we know where we’re going. And all I knew was that if Jax was going somewhere, I wanted to be with him when he got there.

When we finished Jax and Norman’s Five Year Plan, Jax goes, Norman Foreman you are the bee’s knees and I am the dog’s bollocks and there’s nothing in the world that can stop us now. And I knew straight away that he was right, because not only did we know for absolute sure where we were going, we also knew exactly when we were going to get there. Which was 7.15 p.m. on the first Friday in August after two changes on National Rail.

6Sadie

Norman’s been different right from the start. It’s like he was born already knowing everything he needed to know and anything else is just going to be gravy. He’s also got more guts than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’m not just saying that because I’m his mum. I mean, who’s braver than a shorter than average kid who’s spent the better part of his life covered in a solid scale of psoriasis that hurts like hell, looks like shit and who still keeps smiling? A kid who stands up beside his naughty best mate and tries to get people to see the good in him, and keeps on trying, even when it’s pretty hard to see. A kid whose only parent can barely rustle up the enthusiasm to walk out into the world every day, even when the world’s just a half-pint town at the bum’s end of Britain. And he still manages to love her. You tell me who’s braver than that guy.

I spend a lot of my time wishing I were better. Better at cooking, better at cleaning, better at making conversation with strangers. And people I know. But mostly, when I’ve got some hours to idle away, I like to spend them wishing I was better at being Norman’s mother. That’s the one that snores away in the background and regularly wakes up to jab me with a pointy elbow when I don’t show up for parent–teacher meetings, or forget to buy ham for school lunches, or when he has to wear yesterday’s underwear because I watched six back-to-back episodes of Come Dine with Me when I got home from work instead of doing the washing. And still couldn’t cook a decent dinner.

If you could take all the thousands of random moments of poor mothering, dry dinners and crusty undies and knit them into a lovely warm blanket of denial to pull over your head for about a decade, you’d get a pretty accurate picture of where all my wishing has got me. Nowhere. And definitely not better.

But Norman’s always been OK, in spite of me. He’s polite, he’s kind to old people and animals, he’s got good hygiene (despite his poor, tortured skin and the occasional two-day-old underpants, neither of which is his fault) and he’s smart. He can usually figure people out a lot quicker than they figure him out, which is a pretty handy talent that he definitely didn’t get from me.

Being shorter, cleverer and a hell of a lot scalier than everyone else isn’t exactly a recipe for winning friends and influencing people in the school playground, but since Jax came along Norman’s never needed anyone else. And as Jax always said, one really and truly best friend is a hundred times better than having a whole bunch that aren’t quite sure.

So, apart from his chronic, bastarding psoriasis, the only other thing I’ve ever really had to worry about with Norman is the almost certainly unhealthy amount of cheese on toast he eats (see problem number one), and his most definitely unhealthy habit of worrying about other people. And by other people, I mean me.

When the boys came up with Jax and Norman’s Five Year Plan to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when they turned fifteen, they were ten. Which shows you how serious they were about comedy. I mean, how many ten-year-olds do you know with a five-year plan? I’m thirty-two, and the closest I’ve ever come to a five-year plan is signing up for a sofa on Tesco no-interest store credit. Come to think of it, apart from Norman, that sofa is the biggest commitment I’ve ever made.

Their plan was so outlandish I actually believed they just might do it. Because the thing is, despite their age and lack of credentials, as a comedy double act those boys were