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       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

      Copyright © Alan Garner 2018

      Cover photograph provided by the author

      Design by Jack Smyth

      Alan Garner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins..

      Source ISBN: 9780008306007

      Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008305994

      Version: 2019-02-14

       Dedication

      For Tom

       Epigraph

       Pancake Tuesday’s a very happy day.

       If you don’t give us a holiday we’ll all run away.

       Where shall we run to? Down Moss Lane.

       Here comes Twiggy with his big fat cane!

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Bomb

       The Nettling of Harold

       Rocking Horse

       Monsall

       Porch

       Mrs E. Paminondas

       Mrs Finch’s Gatepost

       St Mary’s Vaccies

       Widdershins

       Bunty

       Bike

       Mr Noon

       Half-Chick

       DOWN MOSS LANE

       Bomb (1955)

       St Mary’s Vaccies (1974)

       The Nettling of Harold (2001)

       Also by Alan Garner

       About the Publisher

       Bomb

      John and I were going up the Hough to pick watercress in Pott Brook and to look at the anti-aircraft battery in Baguley’s fields.

      DANGER. DON’T TOUCH.

      The notice was on the board outside the police station on Heyes Lane. A red arrow pointed to pictures of a high-explosive shell, small bombs with fins, a hand grenade; and there were some harmless-looking things too. And underneath was printed:

      IF YOU FIND ONE OF THESE, TELL TEACHER OR A POLICEMAN.

      DO NOT TOUCH IT, EVEN WITH A STICK.

      AND DO NOT THROW STONES AT IT.

      Pott Brook goes under Hough Lane, and we jumped from the bridge into the field and began to look for caddis fly larvae in the water.

      Caddis larvae build tubes from grit and bits of leaf and twig bark to protect their bodies, with only the head and legs poking out. They showed the water was clean. If there were no caddis flies we didn’t pick the cress.

      It started to rain.

      We walked along the bank to where the cress grew, and John found five tubes. We left the cress to be gathered on the way back and went upstream to look at the guns.

      We were nearly across the field when we saw it.

      It was on the other side of the brook, floating in a tangle of alder roots. It was grey, with a neck,

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