SELINA

Mr Korsky brought his nephew Nigel to school

to help him because poor Mr Korsky

has to wear a neck brace for another week,

you know,

after the unfortunate flying Jacob incident.

Nigel has a nose ring,

two earrings

and an eyebrow ring.

He also has a tattoo of a snake

slithering up his arm

and when he flexes his bicep

it looks like the serpent is about to strike.

He showed all of Year Six this trick at lunchtime

when he was emptying the rubbish bins.

Nigel says he used to come to this school

ten years ago

and he tried to jump off the shed as well

only he wasn’t flying;

he was ambushing

his worst enemy, Mark Banbridge.

He told us about Mark

and some girl called Robyn

and how Mark

shouldn’t have got so friendly with her.

I swear when he was talking

the tattoo on his arm grew bigger and meaner,

and I moved to the outside of the circle,

just in case.

Cameron asked Nigel

if getting all those piercings hurt

and Nigel said,

‘Nah, the only thing that hurt was my eardrums.’

‘Eardrums?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. You should have heard the noise

Dad made when he saw all my rings!’