The Fib and Other Stories Quotes

“I was sick of Gordon Barraclough. Sick of his bullying. And I was sick of him being a good footballer. ‘Listen, Barraclough. My uncle is Bobby Charlton.’ ‘You’re a liar.’ I was. ”

“It wasn’t a gang really. I mean they didn’t have meetings or anything like that. They just went around together wearing their balaclavas, and if you didn’t have one you couldn’t go around with them.”

“Blooming Balaclava Boys. Why wouldn’t my mum buy me a balaclava? Didn’t she realize that I was losing all my friends, and just because she wouldn’t buy me one?”

“We were using some stuff called poster paint, and I got covered in it. I was getting it everywhere, so I asked Mr Garnett if I could go for a wash. He gets annoyed when you ask to be excused, but he could see I’d got it all over my hands, so he said I could go, but old me to be quick.”

“The coach started to move off. I felt frightened. All these weeks, looking forward to it, and now I didn’t want to go. Please, Mum, let me go home. She was running alongside, waving her hanky and crying . . .”

“I knew exactly the kind of balaclava I wanted. One just like Tony’s, a sort of yellowy-brown. His dad had given it to him because of his earache. Mind you, he didn’t like wearing it at first.”

“Tom and Barry both had one. I reckon half the kids in our class had one. But I didn’t. My mum wouldn’t ever listen to me. ‘You’re not having a balaclava! What do you want a balaclava for in the middle of the summer?”

″‘I’m not. Cross my heart and hope to die.’ I spat on my hand. If I’d dropped down dead on the spot I wouldn’t have been surprised. ‘Funny and moving...a rare gift.”

“We were using some stuff called poster paint, and I got covered in it. I was getting it everywhere, so I asked Mr Garnett if I could go for a wash. He gets annoyed when you ask to be excused, but he could see I’d got it all over my hands, so he said I could go, but old me to be quick.”

“He’d nagged his mother for weeks to let him go on the school exchange, swapping his home in the backstreets of a northern town for a posh house in London.”