The Ice Cream Pirates

It was a Tuesday afternoon when I lost my first tooth.  I know it was a Tuesday because Granny always takes my sister Annie and I to the chip shop for lunch on a Tuesday and I could still taste fried haddock with chips.  I also know it was summer because bigger boys were all around the seafront playing pirates near the harbour.  They were using headscarves as pirate hats and Darren from up our street had one with a Jolly Roger on it and a smart eye-patch.

‘Granny, when can I start playing at pirates?’ I asked.

‘Next year I expect,’ she replied.  ‘When you’ve started school and made some new friends.  Those boys are a bit too old for you.’

We left Granny’s house and were about to go to the bus stop to take us home when another bigger boy ran down from the high street shouting ‘Van crash!  Free ice cream!’ at the top of his voice.  Darren and the pirate boys started to run up the side street to where the other boy stood.  There they stopped and cheered and ran off again up to the high street.

Annie smiled.  ‘Come on!’ she cried, ‘Or there won’t be any left for us!’

We hurried after the boys.  When we got to the high street we stopped and gasped; Mr Rossi’s ice cream van was on its side and everywhere we looked were ice lollies, fizzy drinks, chew bars and cold, lovely ice cream.  Mr Rossi was not hurt and was shouting at another man a few feet away, waving his arms in the air while local children helped themselves to what had landed on the ground.  We checked to see Mr Rossi was not looking and picked up an ice lolly each and crammed several handfuls of treacle toffees into our pockets.

Darren had picked up a huge vat of ice cream the same size as himself from the van and was hobbling around trying to balance it.  Mr Rossi suddenly turned round.

‘You boy!  Get yer hands off that ice cream!’ he shouted running back to his van.

Mr Rossi grabbed Darren by the arm causing him to topple over and the vat fell to the ground, opening and covering them both in vanilla whip.  Everybody laughed and I did too, but I hid mine behind my hands because Annie says that if Darren ever sees someone smaller than him laughing at him he will deck them.

‘We’d better catch our bus’ said Annie taking my hand.  So we walked back down to the seafront unwrapping our ice lollies.  It was very sunny and I couldn’t wait to taste the delicious, cold orange flavour so I bit hard on the corner.  My tooth, which had been wobbly for the past week, broke loose in my mouth and I nearly swallowed it thinking it was a hard piece of lolly.  Annie told me to keep it safe and place it under my pillow that night for the tooth fairy always rewards you if you do.