Arsehammers and Voice

By the time we get to the home I have decided it is defiantly a sad day. Mam has made egg sandwiches, which I hate, and cheese sandwiches, which I hate even more than egg, and Claudia has been sick down her dress.

However, I feel a lot happier when we go inside granddad’s new home. Lots of other grandmas and granddads live here. And granddad’s room is a lot bigger than his old one and it has a television and a button he can press if he wants ‘assistance’. The lady smiles a lot and seems nice, so I ask if all the other grandmas and granddads have Arsehammers. She says, ‘Yes this is a special home with lots of experts who try to make things better for your granddad and all the others like him.’

I am over the moon. It suddenly all makes sense to me. Granddad isn’t being put in a home. Granddad is going to help save the world! Granddad is even more of a hero than he was before. Experts. Experts are going to train granddad and all the other people with Arsehammers to transport themselves to proper places, planned places, where they can suddenly turn up and over throw dastardly villains and listen in to secret spy conversations, and generally go where no man has gone before, and suddenly appear and say ‘Boo’ and frighten the life out of the most hardened of criminals. I laugh, I am happy, I think granddad will be happy here too.

Mam is upset, though. In the car going home she cries. Claudia and I pretend not to notice but she cries a lot. When she stops crying and is just snuffling Claudia asks why granddad isn’t coming home with us. Mam is quite for a minute or two before she turns around to explain to Claudia that granddad has a disease of the brain, which makes him very poorly and confused, so that he forgets where he is, where he is going, who he is and who mam and dad and me and Claudia are, and that he has to stay in that special home because he will get worse and worse. And then mam starts crying again. I sulk the rest of the way home.

The next morning mam tells me that granddad has died peacefully in the night. She tells Claudia that granddad has gone to live with the angels.

Later that afternoon I tell Claudia that there are no such things as angles and granddad has simply Arsehammed his way back to live with grandma.

Underlined word/phrases are over excaudate to stress the importance of the characters attitude and awareness of what she is saying.

After underlining the words and phrases that need to be said in an excaudate way, I thought of how I could develop further and decided to re go over the monologue and highlight to show how the character may have used their voice to show her emotions:

Louder happiness

Quitter sadness

Faster pace excitement

Louder complaining

Supporting and reassuring