LERNERT ENGELBERTS Real Bad People - De Harmonie

when she got her words wrong. I’m telling you, a Mongol can’t do a thing wrong. Itwas a bit of a bummer, but it’s not as if it was her fault. To be honest, I’d takecomplete advantage of something like that too if it worked in my favour.We weren’t allowed to go anywhere near the school building or even to touchit. When Kevin and I were kicking a ball against the wall one evening and making apoint of keeping as far away from the little stained-glass windows as we could, Dadcame storming out of the house with a red face and yelled at us, ‘Clear off out ofthere, you two!’What was even more annoying was the busloads of rich people that wouldsuddenly appear on Saturday afternoons and stand around in our garden,accompanied by someone from the local council. They’d come all the way fromanother town to have a look at that ugly school and its architectural features,because it was a very old and unusual building, or something like that. It wasn’t justbecause it was built by some famous architect whose name I’ve forgotten, but alsobecause it was made of very unusual bricks.I want to be rich when I’m older too, but you won’t catch me wearing those dulltrousers and hanging around with some old bag with scary grey helmet hair, wastingmy Saturdays on boring trips.Dad had left really early in the morning to do a job in Aberdeen, which is a really longway, at least two hours by car. I’d have loved to go with him because I had the dayoff school anyway and I could have seen my friend Chris again.‘Out of the question,’ my dad had said the evening before. He saw me puttingon a disappointed face to try and change his mind, but he wasn’t going to fall for that.He just said, ‘Go and take your grumpy old-lady face somewhere else. Write Chris aletter and I’ll take it with me.’