Dear Grandad,
There’s an old man who walks around The Plain that Annie and me find a bit scarey. We call him Old Shuffler and if one of us goes out there with Mum or Dad then when we get back the other one always says “Did Old Shuffler get you?”.
Old Shuffler is quite a tall man, taller than Dad, and he’s always wearing a grey suit with a sort of white shirt underneath and sometimes a thick grey coat. He looks odd because the suit is too big for him. The sleeves cover up half of his hands and the trouser legs brush against the pavement and are all tatty. He’s got grey hair and needs a haircut – it sprouts out from underneath the hat he wears. His face looks worn out and he’s all shakey. He walks along the pavement sort of leaning over to one side like he is carrying a heavy bag except he doesn’t have a bag. And he walks with a shuffle, dragging his feet along like it is SO much effort to move. It makes me wonder why he bothers and why he doesn’t just go home and have a nice cup of tea and watch some TV or something.
There are two other things that Old Shuffler does and these are the things that make him most scarey to me and Annie. He talks to himself, well mutters really. All the time. I don’t know what he’s talking about but no-one is listening. I don’t like that. And then the most scarey thing of all is that when he’s shuffling along towards you, just when he comes up level with you he does a kind of sideways lurch and it is like he is coming for you but then he just carries on as if you were not even there.
Mum and Dad say that he is harmless, just an old man who is probably alone and not very well and I suppose they are right. But if he is not very well then he needs help and his family should be looking after him. He shouldn’t be out and about shuffling around. He should be at home nice and warm and protected. I reckon that if he is going to go out on The Plain he needs a shell, like the snails have. It wouldn’t matter so much then if his own body was a bit broken, he’d have his shell to protect him and then maybe he could find someone to talk to and not have to mutter away to himself all of the time. I asked Dad why he did that and he said something about his mind having gone. Does that happen? Where has it gone? I suppose that even if he could have a shell to sort out his broken body he’d still have a broken mind and I don’t know HOW that could be sorted out.
I don’t like to think of Old Shuffler being broken on the inside like that. I don’t like to think about people breaking at all. There should always be ways of mending broken things, like Dad did with glue when Mum trod on my favourite hairband.
Sorry, this isn’t a very happy letter. I’ll try to write something more happy next time, I promise. Perhaps I’ll see the blackbird again. That would cheer me up!
Watch out, watch out, Old Shuffler is about!
Love,
Kate
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