Gone

ERASED FROM THE REPORT By Alexandra Down 8T

They ignored the statistics. They ignored the lives lost. They slipped away and are forgotten. People get ill and die but the government writes them out of history.

I watch as my mum comes home shattered, Her hard work is buried below millions of other numbers piling in every day. Patients tragically die but their names vanish into the sea of certificates. This is the story at hundreds of nursing homes nationwide.

Imagine your relative in a care home: They catch Covid like thousands of others, But they fall very ill and eventually pass away. Their names and legacies are just erased from the report. The forgotten victims of the pandemic.

I beg this like many staff working in nursing homes: Never forget them. Remember their triumphs and try to write them into the stories you will tell. Do your best to save others from falling through the cracks.

THE DOG-SHEEP

By Matilda Hardman 9S

I always loved playing this game - just the three of us, Nessie and I, chasing the ball each time our mistress, Mae, threw it across the field. Nessie always seemed to get there first but I didn’t care, at least until the day the children started laughing at me.

‘Look! It’s the sheep that thinks it’s a dog!’ shouted a small boy.

‘Not so much a sheepdog as a dog-sheep!’ he exclaimed and his friend laughed. I didn’t know what they meant but I didn’t like being laughed at.

I was pondering this when a pack of children scurried over to join their frenzied friends. They were criticising my every move but I couldn’t comprehend why. For my whole life I had tried to copy my perfect sister Nessie and lived in her shadow, yet everyone seemed fascinated by me. Did I do something wrong? I deliberated, ‘I know my paws are a little more angular than Nessie’s and it’s true, I can’t run as swiftly as she can but what does that matter?’

Mae put Nessie and me back on our leads and I juggled all the questions whizzing round my head as we walked home. All my thoughts just blurred into one, resulting in a crescendo of confusion. By the time I had reached home I was desperate to curl up in my bed on the cloudlike pillow, press my cheek on the cool velvet and submerge myself in the warmth and darkness of my blanket.

Yet the minute I crossed the threshold, I was faced by my worst nightmare - the shears! Mae had only dared to shave me once before and it wasn’t a success. But at least that was Mae, my beloved mistress and not the ominous hairy figure that loomed over me. I didn’t trust this man with his face enveloped in a mass of thick, wire-like hair. Mae greeted him as if he were her friend (and any friend of Mae’s is a friend of mine) but this man’s identity was as clear as mud to me. However, my uncertainty was resolved when Mae exclaimed, ‘Mr Fredson, that beard looks great on you!’ It was only the local farmer, although that still didn’t make me like those shears in his hand.

Nessie never had to endure the torture of the shears. But why? Mr Fredson pinned me down and I shuddered as the whirring blade descended upon my skin. It roared with a squeaky ‘Eeaaaarr!’ sound. I barked until my throat felt hoarse yet the minute I opened my mouth he dropped the shears.

‘Did he just bark?’ asked Mr Fredson, as if it was so unusual. He seemed quite taken aback by my bark and even more so when he saw me play with my squeaky ball.

Mr Fredson made a phone call to a ‘friend’ and within a few hours a man whose shirt read ‘Animal Talent Agency’ showed up asking Mae questions. He told her, ‘My, folks will die for pets like these! If you let me film him, he can make us millions!’ I didn’t like him - he had sly, shadowy eyes, not friendly puppy eyes like Mae’s. Had he come as a friend, I would have done what any polite pooch should and sniffed his bottom, but Nessie didn’t, so neither did I. She was surreptitiously sniffing his shoes and began to bark. I copied, although my bark sounded too high-pitched and feeble to intimidate this intruder. The man simply laughed and without Mae’s permission, pulled out his phone and began recording me. I gave up and comforted myself by kicking about my favourite squeaky ball. He seemed to find this hilarious too. I was only too glad to see him go and wiggled my stumpy little tail as he slammed the door behind him.

However, a sequence of strange events followed the man’s visit, including a post avalanche. The day after he came, Mae woke to find a pyramid of post from the Press barricading our front door. Later, I was watching the television with Nessie and amongst a cluster of pixelated paragraphs which I couldn’t decipher, I recognised the clip of me which the man took. The newsreader announced it had received millions of ‘likes’ on ‘YouTube’ , much to my perplexity.

But the strangest incident of all was my encounter with ‘the sheep’ . The Animal Agency drove Mae, Nessie and me to a field full of blonde, shaven creatures. I attempted a game of tag, dodging the numerous cameras but as I circled these curious mammals, I noticed they had the same cloven hooves and woollen coat as me. Mine was much shaggier but I’m sure that if Mr Fredson had succeeded in shaving me, we would have been identical.

That is when Nessie explained everything. I had been gossiped about and gazed at because I wasn’t one of Nessie’s kind. I was a ‘ sheep’ . Mae and Nessie had taken me into their home after my Mother was run over when I was a lamb. I finally realised that I didn’t have the physical attributes of a dog but this label meant nothing to me. As far as I was concerned, I was just like Nessie. I think like her, I play like her, I feel like her, I belong with her. So that night, after Mae warned that money-grasping man to ‘ get away from my family’ , we headed home and I felt a wave of relief surge through me. It was then that I realised that belonging maybe isn’t what we think it is. I felt that I belonged somewhere ‘I didn’t’ so maybe ‘belonging’ is a feeling of homeliness. A feeling of comfort and security. Not whether you can sniff or run or bark like someone else. If it took a sheep to notice that, then humans have got a lot to learn. Sheepdog or dog-sheep - I’m not going anywhere. Woof! Woof!

GONE

By Lila Patel 8T

I sat there, tears spilling out of my eyes, as if I were a cup that couldn’t contain the water within it. I couldn’t stop myself. I was a never-ending waterfall. My hood up and my arms wrapped around my legs. The one person I loved, trusted, the one person I could talk to, I felt I really belonged to, was gone. It was as if it was yesterday when Dad picked me up and held me up high in the air. As if yesterday when I ran into his arms after my first day of school. But it was yesterday I lost him.

I didn’t know where to go. It was too painful to be at home, to walk through all our memories. So I came to the place where I would go whenever I needed to escape, the one place I hadn’t ever been to with my dad. The jetty by the lake. The endless view of the vast water was a canvas of blues, tranquil against the towering mountains. The mountains stood robust as if they were my guardians, watching over me. The clouds were like a blanket of cotton wool, keeping me sheltered. The deep, colourless, formidable lake made me feel small and nothing compared to the immense world in front of me. Yet I was protected by nature too.

I sat there watching the seconds, minutes and hours go by. What could I do now? It felt as if the whole world was collapsing at my feet. I put my hands to my wet face, rubbing the tears off. The world had turned grey. The colour had left my life. I was lost. I belonged to no one now. Dad was gone. Gone for good.

Two swans peacefully drifted across the water. So graceful and elegant on the glassy surface. I watched them in admiration. It calmed me. How together they were. How they belonged. They say swans choose a partner for life, don’t they? How awful it would be for them if they lost their other half.

It was getting chilly now. And dusk was falling too. I reluctantly forced my body into a comfortable standing position and hesitantly headed for home, my arms hidden in my hoodie. My dark stream of hair covered my wet face. Arriving on the doorstep, even my door seemed to loom over me more than normal – as if to say I wasn’t welcome at home either. As if I didn’t belong. I wiped my tears and ran straight to my room.

Soft footsteps approached my door from the landing. My sister’s soft voice from the other side of the door saying, ‘I’m here for you, you know. You can talk to me about anything.

My mostly bossy, occasionally kind sister. Of course, she was there for me. She always was. What she said was a gift that I had somehow thrown away, so consumed had I been about Dad. But she’d lost him too, hadn’t she? I felt guilty as if I had committed a crime against my own sister. I pulled myself up into a sitting position.

'Amy, ’ I called. ‘It’s ok, you can come in.

She opened the door and stepped in, a smile covering almost her entire face. Her joy was infectious. I couldn’t help but smile too.

We sat there for hours, chatting, laughing, crying, shouting, smiling. She was there for me. We still had each other. We belonged. I’d been missing out on the best sister all this time. She was the light of my life when I couldn’t find any. She was brighter than the stars in the sky, more vibrant than all the colours of the rainbow.

I no longer had my hands hidden in the arms of my hoodie. I no longer had my hood up and my hair covering my face. My face was no longer tracked with tears. I had no reason to be sad. I was happy and would forever be happy for as long as I lived. And as for Dad, when I was with Amy, it didn’t feel as though he was gone. He was still with us. He smiled when we smiled. He laughed with us when we laughed and he cried when we cried. He was watching down on us and we did it all together now, not separately.