CHAPTER ONE

fifty sleeps to christmas

A year is a very long time when you’re an idiot.

When you think about it, there are very
few things you could do for a whole year. You
couldn’t spend a year growing your toenails,
for example, or you’d require some kind of
hacksaw to trim them. You couldn’t eat nothing
but honey for an entire year, or bees would start
growing in your belly. That’s a fact – I looked it
up. And you should avoid whistling the same
song every day for a year or your classmates
will eventually turn on you and staple your
shoes to the ceiling – possibly while you’re still
wearing them, depending on the song.
To cope with the curse of the calendar,
Martin Moone had developed the habit of
dividing each year into smaller sections of

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 roughly fifty days. Give or take a week here and
there. These year sections, or “yections” as he
liked to call them, helped Martin cope with the
vastness of time before him. He even named
these yections, as a way of remembering them.

Boxing for Love: St Stephen’s Day to Valentine’s Day

Lovefool: Valentine’s to April Fool’s Day
Fool’s Gold: April Fool’s to 20th May (my
birthday, when I always ask for gold gifts)
Golden Days: 20th May to end of term!
Days of Wonder: summer holidays!
Wonder what happened to the New School
Year: start of term to 5th November
Why won’t it end?: 5th November to Christmas
Day

The yection which always seemed to take the

longest to pass was from 5th November to
Christmas Day. The evenings were long, the rain
was extra chilly and there were no birthdays to
distract Martin. (It was actually his sister Sinead’s

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 birthday on 18th November, but every year one of
the things she asked for was that Martin got none
of her birthday cake – that was one of her actual
presents, that Martin got no cake! – so he did his
best to ignore her celebrations altogether.)
It was Friday 5th November in the Moone
home, and Martin and I decided to check his
yection schedule to see what was in store for the
fifty days ahead.

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 “Hmmm. Not much to get us excited there,
buddy,” I grumbled.
But the one upside to entering the saddest
yection in his made-up calendar was that it was
now only FIFTY SLEEPS TO CHRISTMAS. You
probably already knew that because you’re a
maths genius. And, also, this chapter is called
“Fifty Sleeps to Christmas.” But that had only
just occurred to Martin, so he leaped to his
feet and rushed into the kitchen to inform
his mother. He knew it was unlikely she was
aware of the significance of the day because
her maths was pretty terrible and she probably
hadn’t yet read this book.
“Great news, Mam!” the boy blurted. “It’s
only fifty sleeps till Christmas!”
“Did we not just have Christmas?”
“What?! No, silly,” he chuckled.
“That was over six yections ago!” I told her.
Not that Martin’s family could actually see me
or hear me, but I liked shouting stuff at them
anyway. “Keep up, Moones!” I yelled.

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 “Anyway, not to put the pressure on,” Martin
continued, “but I was wondering how your
Christmas-present-buying was going?”
Debra paused, which was a bit worrying, and
glanced at Martin’s dad, who was buttering
some toast.
“Ahm, good, yeah,” Liam lied. “We’re torn
between getting you new school trousers or
fixing the sink in the bathroom. You love that
sink, don’t you?”
“You’re funny, Dad!”
Liam and Debra shared a look that suggested
they hadn’t been joking at all.
Over the years, Martin had learned to keep
expectations low around Christmas. He’d
learned this by initially having extraordinarily
high expectations (motorboat, diamond-
encrusted tennis shoes, volcano holiday, etc.)
and always ending up slightly disappointed
(boat motor, new slippers, lava lamp, etc.).
“Give ’em the pitch, buddy,” I urged.
Martin nodded and laid out his demands to

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 his parents. “I’ve put a lot of thought into this,
folks, and after weeks of having my mind set on
some kind of flying carpet for Christmas, my
mind is now set on a Game Boy!”
“Your mind seems to set quite quickly,” Debra
noted.
“Well, before it was only set like jelly, but
now it’s set like cement.”
“Who or what is a Game Boy?” Liam asked.
“It’s a magical thing, Dad! It’s like having a
whole games arcade* in the palm of your hand!”
“Are these Game Boyos given out for free
somewhere, by any chance?”
“Very funny, Dad. I can’t imagine they cost
less than a small fortune, but they’re so worth
it. Trevor at school has one and sometimes he
lets me watch him playing it. It’s really exciting.
I can’t even imagine how exciting it would be to
actually play it.”
DICTIONARY

*GAMES ARCADE – a massive room containing

MOONE

games, toys and shady characters. This

room was later replaced by the internet.

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 “The thing is, Martin, money’s a bit tight at
the moment,” Liam said.
“Is it because Mam spends so much on
vegetables? Because I’ve already offered a
solution to that.”
“We can’t just send all the vegetables to hell,
Martin,” Debra sighed, as if this was a regular
argument.
I checked out the dinner Debra was preparing
and it actually looked like most of it had come
from hell already, so her point was valid.
“Martin,” I said tentatively, “I have some bad
news about dinner.”
Martin peeked into the oven hoping to see
his favourite Friday meal – pork shoulder,
sausages and meat waffles. What he saw was
disappointing.
“Are we having flippin’ fish again?” he
complained. “We’re not sharks, ya know!”
“Imagine if we were sharks though, buddy –
living with a creature from the deep with razor-
sharp teeth, the personality of a dead-eyed

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 demon and jaws that could rip you apart!”
Just then Martin’s sister Sinead entered the
kitchen and we realized we already knew what
that was like.
“If that bathroom sink leaks on me again, I’m
gonna destroy it with my bare hands!” she said,
scowling.
“Or your flippers!” I
quipped.
Martin’s shark sister
leaned down to look
through the oven
window, dead-eyed.
“Are we having flippin’
fish again?!” she grunted
through her gills.
“C’mon now, Sinead,”
Liam sighed. “We all agreed
at the family meeting* that we need to tighten
our money belts for a while. So that means

*FAMILY MEETING – a weekly get-together

ers.
arranged to shout at fellow family memb

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 more cheap fish dinners, and no – I repeat, NO!
– casual destruction of bathroom hardware.”
As this debate looked set to get violent,
Martin and I skulked* away towards the safety
of the living-room couch.
“Ya know what, buddy,” I started, “I think if
we really want that Game Boy, we might have to
buy it ourselves.”
“Well, Sean, I could see how the back-of-
the-couch account is looking. We haven’t
withdrawn from it since I bought those magic
beans from Declan Mannion.”
“What a waste of money that was.”
“How were we to know they were just peas?”
“Bottom line is, buddy, if we want a Game
Boy, we can’t just sit around relying on the
kindness of strangers.”
“Or my family, for that matter,” Martin
added glumly.
“No, there’s only one person you can

*SKULK – to quietly move out of sight.

Originated from when the Incredible Hulk,
renowned for his smelly bottom, would
drop a fart and amble away, ashamed.

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 really depend on, Martin.”
“You?” he asked.
“No, definitely not me. I meant you!”
“Me?”
“Yes – who loves you more than you?”
“I don’t know. You?”
“No, definitely not me.”
“So I need to rely on my own kindness to
myself?”
“Exactly! What we need is a regular wage,”
I said, as I perched on the back of the couch in
prime thinking pose. “Then we can buy all the
Game Boys we want! We need to get you a job!”
“Yes! I’m twelve years old for crying out loud!
It’s high time I got a proper job.”
“A real job. For a real man. Making real money.
And if we’ve got enough left over, we can get
Christmas presents for the rest of the family too!”
“Let’s not go bananas, Sean.”
“You’re right, let’s buy you a Game Boy and
let the family watch you play it.”
“Perfecto!”

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