Itchy Feet

I have itchy feet. I think I might have caught something awful because I'm scratching at them all day and all night and last night it was so bad that I woke up with my fingernails dug between my toes. If my mother catches me she'll slap my hand away: Don't be picking at your feet like that.

I've been back in Wales for some weeks now. Needless to say, most of my other friends have moved away. Last week two Russians turned up in the village pub. It's always big news when strangers turn up in the village pub, especially if they look Russian and lost and confused. Who's this then, who's this? people hiss.

Not me though, I don't hiss. Who are you then? I asked them. They were lost, they said, looking for Caernarfon. They had wanted to visit the castle.

But we have a castle right here in Dolwyddelan! I said. It's your lucky day, gentlemen.

Now, we all know that Dolwyddelan castle isn't really as good as Caernarfon castle, but the Russians didn't know that, and by the end of the night I had taken them home with me; promising them sleeping-bags and a dog and a log fire and a cooked breakfast. Please stay, I was thinking. Please just stay here forever and ever.

Who are those men asleep in the living room? my dad asked me the next morning.

The Russians, I mumbled, still half asleep in my bed. The Russians are coming.

But the Russians were going. They left later that morning on their long, slow journey to Canada, and now my feet are itching. It's like I have some kind of awful wasting disease.

Well, you have, says the voice in my head. You're wasting your life away, it says.