LERNERT ENGELBERTS Real Bad People - De Harmonie

had a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth, so I couldn’t understand a word he wassaying.‘You know, perhaps you shouldn’t try to talk with a cigar in your gob,’ I said.Maybe saying ‘gob’ wasn’t such a bright idea, because he called me a ‘rude little boy’and said he wasn’t going to sell me anything at all. So I told him I was sorry and saidthat everyone always said ‘gob’ instead of ‘mouth’ where I came from, and that Ididn’t mean any offence. Then everything was all right and he gave me almost thewhole roll of sandpaper for my two pounds.My mum and my sister cycled along, with their new hairdos blowing in thebreeze, giggling away like a couple of girlies. All the way back home, they just keptexchanging compliments and saying how lovely the other one looked. I rode someway behind them and all I could smell was the scent of singed hair.When we were home, I got straight down to sanding the board. The paintturned into powder beneath the sandpaper and floated up into the air, but some of itended up in my nose too, which kept making me sneeze. I’d tied my jumper aroundmy face, so I looked like a football hooligan. It reminded me of that time Dad hadtaken us to a football match between Aberdeen and Liverpool, and one of theLiverpool fans had smuggled in a bottle of beer and thrown it from the stands and ithad hit one of our team on the head. The hooligan had been wearing a football shirtover his face so that he wouldn’t be recognised, and he looked really hard. In the caron the way home, Dad had said that you weren’t allowed to throw beer bottles atsomeone’s head, but it had still brought the game to an end. And that meant thatAberdeen had won the match, so it all worked out okay, and that was a bit confusing,because there was lots of blood coming from the head of the player who got hit.The sun was hanging low behind the school building. Mum came out with a jugof ice tea that had been steeping in the sun all day, and right then we must have