Skulduggery

Skulduggery is trickery or, if you like, fooling people. Of course, it can be very wicked indeed but, to tell the truth, just about everyone does it in a small way at some time or other. These four stories are about skulduggery and how different people use it in different ways for different reasons and about how it sometimes just seems to happen anyway without any help from anyone €¦...

The first story, €œAuntie€s Present€, is about me and my next door neighbour, Arnold, who live in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. We are very different people €“ different interests, different schools and different ages €“ so we are acquaintances rather than friends. But then my Auntie sends me a ridiculous present for my ninth birthday which changes everything€¦€¦

€œThe Steepford Disaster€ is about how an ordinary day with ordinary people doing ordinary things can be transformed in just a few seconds by a ordinary dog doing something that dogs everywhere think is ordinary.

€œBertie€ is brought up on a remote farm and doesn€t learn to speak when he€s very young like most children do. The farmers who bring him up don€t like the way the doctors want to treat Bertie so they hide him on the farm but tell the authorities that he has gone to live abroad with his uncle. The story is about what happens to Bertie and how it isn€t always such a bad idea to take a different point of view to everyone else €¦€¦ I mean, Bertie was really happy and he didn€t have to go to school, did he?

The final story, €œThe Happening€, concerns how things are usually much less frightening when we realise what is really going on rather than worrying about things which might be happening. Just so long as we really do understand what€s going on€¦€¦€¦

Four short stories about children for children and adults.
And Cecil, of course, whichever he is.


Mike Alcock
December 2011