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

it was full to overflowing with more of everything wonderful than I could muster in a month of Sundays.

‘Mum. Mum, look. Do you see it?’

I leaned forward across the table to get a closer look at the upside-down certificate where his finger rested on a line of text.

Swansea’s Got Talent. Proudly sponsored by Hooper and Collins Urban Planning.

Never give up on a good plan.

Bloody hell. I saw it.

27NORMAN

First rule of comedy: If somebody laughs, it’s funny.

Even if I don’t ever go back to Swansea again in my entire life, I’ll never forget it. And that’s not just because I met Kathy and Tony or saw two Frank Sinatras in a dust-up, or even because I got given a certificate of encouragement for a talent show that I didn’t even know I was going to be in. Even though all those things were pretty cool, especially the meeting Tony and Kathy part. But the reason I’m never going to forget about my trip to Swansea is because it was the place where I had my first real, proper, couldn’t actually help myself laugh since the day before Jax went.

I remember, because two months, four days and seven hours is a long time to wait around for a laugh. Even though some comedians I’ve seen on late-night TV probably had to wait around for a lot longer than that. I wrote that down on a Post-it because I thought maybe I could use the line in a joke. But it was a bit hard to tell if it was really funny or not without having Jax around to tell me, that’s rubbish, Normie. Or that’s about as funny as a train wreck, you numpty. Or boom boom, that’s comedy gold, you bleedin’ genius! Which is all actually pretty helpful.

Anyway, you’d think that after what happened at Swansea’s Got Talent I wouldn’t have had much to laugh about, wouldn’t you? I mean, first of all I totally bombed in the talent show. Actually, first of all I was in a talent show, and who would ever have thought that would happen? Then I found out Tony was no way, no how, no sirr ee Bob my dad. Which if I’m honest did make me a bit sad, because Tony is a really cool guy and I reckon he’d be a pretty cool dad too.

So all up it doesn’t sound like a great time, does it? Because you name it and just about everything went wrong. But somehow all the lots of little things going wrong didn’t add up to a big disaster like you’d think. In fact, funnily enough, it kind of went the other way and actually all added up to something pretty good. Don’t ask me how that happened, but it did. And don’t bother asking Mum by the way, because she reckons she’s got no idea either.

When I was standing on that stage with a spotlight burning so bright into my eyes that I couldn’t see a thing, let alone my mum, while some guy went for a slide across the stage and landed on everyone’s laps, well, if someone had told me that half an hour later I’d be sitting in a café called the Cosy Tree proper laughing my head nearly off, no way would I have believed them. Never and not in a million years.

Only it really did all happen just like that. Before the laughing my head off part, though, there was the bit where Tony had to explain about his lazy old sperm and why he couldn’t be my dad. We already did sex education last year so I kind of know the general idea of what’s supposed to happen with sperms and ovaries and all that. Scientifically, I mean, not the sex stuff. Everyone knows about that.

Even though Kathy and Tony both looked a bit sad when Tony was telling us about the no babies thing, they kept smiling. And they still kept holding hands behind Mum’s head in the booth. Mum looked a bit like she was going to cry, though, and I think maybe she was even sadder than me that Tony wasn’t going to be my dad.

She didn’t say anything straight away, but I knew she would be thinking it was all her fault. Because Mum’s like that. Even when something could no way be her fault, like Tony not being my dad, she sometimes blames herself. Which Jax says is called Mother’s Guilt, and he knows a lot of stuff like that because he reads a lot. Well, he did.

Anyhow, he read about Mother’s Guilt in one of his mum’s magazines when he was home sick from school for a week after a really bad asthma attack last year. He was so bored he said he was going to read every single thing in the house and then put it all together to write a comedy skit. He did it too, because he always does what he says. And even though I Think She Prefers Hobnobs to Husbands, which came from reading all the newspapers, flyers, letters, biscuit packets and magazines in the house, maybe wasn’t really suitable for an actual audience, boy was it funny to us.

So anyhow, that’s kind of the reason I started laughing. Because when the lady from the talent show left after giving me my certificate, Leonard goes, hell’s bells, I wonder if she gave her husband an encouragement certificate too. Everyone cracked up, because it was actually pretty funny, but I cracked up because for some weird reason it reminded me of Jax and the She Prefers Hobnobs to Husbands skit.

Also, I think that maybe you have a certain amount of laughing that you’re supposed to use up every day or every month or something. And maybe the laughs just store up when you’re sad and you get to have them all at once when you stop being sad for the first time. Because once I