Sally and Jane live next door and we call them the Fairy Canaries and they are always interesting, always unfailingly kind and always say really good things.
Sally says its good that they don’t live too far away from us.
We think so too.
This afternoon when I arrived home from the shop, Max has just spilled off his little bike into the grape vines and is fairly unhappy.
Sally and Jane can hear him from over the fence.
After school each night Sally and Jane have a rainbow life in their garden, front and back, and also out on the road with all their friends, racing thought the warm sunlight, inventing games and multiplying their ideas, their health and their life every hour.
When they hear Max, they ask after his health. They say: is Maxy ok? Is he all right? Kerry, can we see him?
I hold Max up and he stares over the fence in amazement at Sally and Jane being right there and he is covered in tomato sauce, biscuit crumbs, vine leaves and tears.
Sally said that when she was a bobbler she also had a fall from her bike and she showed me with her foot the exact place that she fell, which is where she is standing right now. She measures out a line and explains how she crashed right there. Then she examined the line and rubbed it out. She redrew it carefully about five cm to the left and said: no, actually it was there.
They told me that they are practicing for sports day.
They said that Max needs a bath.
They said oh well, never mind, Maxy, these things happen and then will you be ok again.
Then they went away and the afternoon continued on, moving through the dazzling warm light and the dust and the children playing and Max not wanting to go inside for a bath.
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