Eating Things on Sticks by Anne Fine

holiday homework.
    â€˜Sunday: The strangest day. I feel as if I have been given a new life. Everything seems brighter here. I stare down at the clumps of grass outside the door. They shine like scattered emeralds among the rocks. I gaze at the sky. It glows like the bluest sapphire. Is it me, or have I moved into a different world?’
    She raised her eyes and looked at me with love and admiration. ‘This is your daily diary, isn’t it? And this is how you felt on the first day you came! I’m moved and touched.’
    Behind me, I heard Uncle Tristram mutter, ‘Certainly touched .’ I was quite worried they’d get in a spat and we would end up spending the night in the car or the coal shed. So I just did a bit of Titania-style simpering, and kept my mouth shut.
    Morning Glory looked at the paper in her hand again and read some more.
    â€˜Monday: This morning I woke fearing the magic might have vanished and I’d be back to my same old dull grey plodding self. But, no! Again today I seemed to walk on air. The mice scurried as I strode with heart aloft between the dark walls of this place. I think they sensed my growing confidence.’
    She turned to Tristram. ‘See?’ she said. ‘Unlike yourself, your nephew has a heart.’
    â€˜Pity he doesn’t have a brain,’ said Uncle Tristram.
    Morning Glory read on. ‘Tuesday: I’ve seen an angel! Speak to me last week and I would have told you she was nothing more than a pretty young lady. But I see more clearly now. She is a shining angel! I want to shout to those around me, “Look at her! Don’t you see her radiance?” But I know better than to spill my secret. So I said nothing.’
    Morning Glory turned to me. ‘You saw her, then! Up on the hill, you saw my angel Dido!’
    â€˜Maybe he didn’t,’ Uncle Tristram said, trying to make mischief. ‘Maybe with all that radiant angel stuff, he’s really talking about you .’
    All right, then. So I blushed . But anybody would have blushed. It doesn’t mean a thing. Except that Morning Glory leaned across and whispered, ‘ Was it me you meant? You can say! I promise I won’t tell.’
    I snatched the holiday homework out of her hand and left the room. The last thing I heard as I ran up the stairs was Uncle Tristram sniggering.
    FUNNY, THAT
    I can’t work out what woke me in the middle of the night. It might have been the rain, but after two full days and nights of water tippling down, you’d think that I’d have been accustomed to that.
    Opening my eyes, I saw, behind rain-stippled panes, the jet-black silhouette of the hill looming outside my window.
    Funny, that. Because it hadn’t been there the night before. Or the night before that. Or any night since we’d arrived. I’d lain in bed and seen a lot of things. I’d watched clouds billowing across the sky. I’d seen the dawn one morning. I’d seen a host of seagulls and more than one helicopter. I had seen thousands of raindrops scudding down the windowpanes.
    But I had never seen the top of the hill.
    Either the hill was getting higher, or this side of the house was sinking fast. And on a tilt.
    I can’t believe I just went back to sleep.

Sunday

Saturday

    THE LURE OF THE PORK PIE
    I came downstairs to find Uncle Tristram frantically sweeping water out of the kitchen door. It was a losing battle. There was a flood all down the hall and in the living room.
    â€˜You find another broom,’ he ordered me. ‘We’re getting swamped in here.’
    â€˜That isn’t going to work.’
    He glared at me. ‘Have you a better idea?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said, and I walked down the hall to open the front door. All of the water went rushing that way.
    â€˜This house is now on a slope,’ I said. ‘And that end’s down .’
    We watched as the living room and kitchen gradually emptied. Soon there