Travel Book
Doctor Mooze by Erik Ryman
Introduction
Doctor Mooze was originally meant to be a short story, something that could be read to my then unborn son but, as with most things in life, it was not quite that simple. Instead it became the final diary of a ten-year-old boy, Panton di Villa, and was published in his name...and man was he a brat.
Reviewers loved it, hated it, and weren’t sure whether it was true or not. Too neat to be true, I think, was the general opinion - although no-one was really sure.
Which of course was the original intent.
But that was then, and as it is being reissued I thought I’d better come clean. At least this way Jack gets his dedication, even if it will be a while before I let him read it.
Erik Victor Ryman
for Jack
Saturday 21st December
Hi! Welcome to my blog. I’m going to be writing it every day from now on until it gets really big. Then I’ll sell advertising on it so millions of people read it.
OK, it’s not on the internet yet, cos I haven’t got round to learning how to do that, but I’ve got a copy of Word my Dad lifted from work and I know how to use it. I thought I’d wait ’til I’ve got a bit more and it’s worth the effort. I can’t see the point in learning how to do all that shit and then getting bored with writing this and it’s all a waste - I mean, who’s going to pay for advertising if there’s only one or two pages?
Cool. I’ve done half a page already and it ain’t sooo very hard. Man, that sbentter Matthews - he’s in my class and he’s been trying to do a blog for months and all he’s got on it is stuff about his holiday in Portugal. Some of the pictures of women were cool – his Dad had done this sneaky thing where he took photos of Matthews’ Mum on an air bed - well stupid she looked - and had made sure that there were these real cool girls in the background. Matthews used Coral Picture to cut his Mum out and put a pic of himself in the middle so it looked like these cool girls were checking him out. They looked German – well my brother Toto said so and he knows cos he’s got these magazines hidden in his bedroom. It was sooo funny the other day when Mum started tidying his room, and he had to try and get her out. It was sooo cool, cos me and Toto were saying ‘Hey Mum, there’s someone at the door’. Then Toto said that he’d broken his foot and started hopping around and stuff like a real nonno. I was laughing, and Mum kept telling him to stop ‘trying to be clever’ which made me laugh even more cos he just looked sooo very stupid.
My blog’s going to be about real things. I’m on my second page now and haven’t even said what it is I like to do. Oh man, this is going to be easy. Maybe I will learn that internet stuff so people can see it.
I’m going to shoot some rabbits now with Dad. We’ve got a problem with vermin and we’re willing to take a responsible approach to managing it. That’s what he told the smelly reporter when those hippy blokes with beards and those ugly women told on him to the papers and the radio people kept coming round to his work and telling lies about him.
We have to kill the rabbits when it’s dark now so that no-one can see us and we’ve got to do it tonight because the man from the fur factory is coming round in the morning and he pays us money for them. My Dad says it’s secret, so not to tell anyone, especially not reporters.
Panton
Sunday 22nd December
Hi again! Welcome back to my blog. I guess I’ve got to keep writing every day if I’m going to sell it to someone and get adverts, but I had an awesome day today cos we went to see a football match.
It was really good – not like when you play it on the PS2 and you don’t really get involved. You can shout at people and sing songs and stuff. Dad got funny when these people kept singing songs with dirty words – I think he thought we hadn’t heard them before. He tried to pretend like he couldn’t understand what they were saying, and Toto kept asking him what the words were so he could join in. I think Dad knew that Toto knew and he kept raising his eyebrows in my direction, but Toto kept pretending that he didn’t realise. I mean, I’m ten years old and he still thinks I’m a kid or something. Like I don’t know how to say ‘fuck’:
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I mean it’s not hard is it? Every fucking television show says fuck and we always watch films and things where people say fuck and worse words. He does though - he really does think I’m a kid still.
I guess all Dads are like that - they want to be your best buddy – but when it comes to things that your best buddy wouldn’t want you to do, like cleaning and homework and putting your light out when you’re on Havoc Hotel or something, well then they get to be Dads again and look lame.
Toto says that he could be a Dad if he wanted to, because he’s got hair starting to grow on his balls. He’s older than me. I’m not sure if I’d want hair on my balls - it looks kind of itchy. I don’t know why having balls with hair on them would let you be a Dad either. I know my Dad has got hair on his balls too – I saw them once when we went swimming and shared a changing room.
Once they put a big monster in the middle of the pool, and me and Toto were running from one side of the pool, up the monster’s legs, over its body then bombing into the little kids like that blubber belly bloke in the TV advert. That was wicked, but then Dad became a Dad again and stopped us doing it just because some little girl broke her arm or something.
I mean, we didn’t hit her or nothing - one of her friends jumped on her, not us. But Dad kept talking about insurance (like so what?) and how lawyers ruled the world and things, and then we had to go.
Toto said that it was Dad who threw the girl’s friend into the water and that was why we went, but I don’t know – I never saw nothing, cos I’m no grass and he’s family is Tony.
Anyway, after the football we went to McDonalds (another thing Dads do when they’re in Buddy mode – like calling you ‘mate’ and trying to chase after you until they run out of breath and start smoking again).
Dad’s meant to have stopped smoking, but I saw him outside his office when we went on our school trip on a coach and he was definitely smoking and it was definitely him, you know? I’m keeping that to myself though - cos I ain’t no grass and he’s, like, family.
I like the Sopranos - we saw them when we stayed at Nan’s house. She’s my Dad’s Mum, my Mum’s Mum is dead. I think it was in the war or something, least that’s what Toto says and he’s older than me. I guess he means the Iraq one that was on when I was born. That was like really cool, like a computer game or something – Dad kept his old videos and we saw it on Fox last Christmas. Dad says there’s going to be another war with Iraq and that we’ve got to do the job right this time. I don’t really know what that means cos all the films I saw were wicked and we smashed all those Iraq tanks and things to pieces. I don’t know if maybe it took too long or we ran out of time. Toto just laughed at me because I wrote ‘run out of lives’ like it was a real computer game, not a thing on TV. Toto says that the Americans had a cheat where they always had extra lives, but that they were English lives. I don’t get that and he won’t explain. Ever since he started getting fur on his balls he’s been saying things like that, like I’m stupid or something for not understanding what he’s on about, you know? I told him he’s getting to be more of a Dad everyday. He ain’t talking to me now – and I don’t care.
He’s started hanging out with Becky Allen as well. He reckons she’s his girlfriend, but Becky’s sister Kate who’s in my class and plays football with us and is like quite cool for a girl – she looks like Avril Lavigne, who did that song, Skater Boy – well she said that Toto wants to go out with Becky but that Becky wouldn’t let him feel her up or even kiss her with tongues. Kate says Becky's a cockteaser, but she didn’t know what it meant when I asked her. I think that’s what Toto does sometimes, he uses big words so that he looks cleverer than he really is in front of girls – but I don’t reckon he knows what he’s talking about.
I think that’s the worse thing to be, somebody who pretends to be cleverer than they are just to look cool or something. I just asked my Dad and he reckons you call it a ‘Phoney’ – like I didn’t know that. He said John Lennon (that singer from the old days) got shot because someone thought he was a phoney.
Anyway, gotta go to bed now cos Dad’s being a Dad again and still trying to lay that ‘Got to be good for Father Christmas’ stuff on me.
Oh yeah, The other thing I like did today that was sooo cool was to have a look at Toto’s magazines – the ones that he has to hide from Mum and Dad cos they’ve got pictures of German women with no clothes and stuff. Mum would go sooo mad if she knew that Toto had them under his bed in this hole he cut in the carpet like the trapdoor under our tree house. You can’t see it until you get really close, which is hard cos it’s under the bed and you’ve got to take these big drawers out that are full of games Toto used to play when he was a kid and all – Lego and Meccano and shit. I don’t think he ever played with the Meccano, though, cos when Dad gave it to him for Christmas – well we thought it was still Father Christmas then - Dad made Toto sit with him while he made this really big crane that went up and down and swung round. It took my Dad hours and Toto was saying ‘Can I have a go?’ but my Dad was really into it and just kept saying that Toto should watch so that he could do it himself next time. But once my Dad had finished the crane was really big and used nearly every nut and bolt and bit of holey metal and stuff - well he wouldn’t let Toto take it apart in case he couldn’t put it back together the same. All Toto wanted to do was play and make like a tank or a car or something but in the drawer under the bed it’s still like the crane Dad built except Toto bent it all up to fit it in.
Most of the magazines Toto’s got are stuck together cos they were wet when he found them in the park and he had to dry them under his bed. They smelt weird and like bleach and they all seem to have crap stories and pictures of women with no clothes or anything. Toto doesn’t know that I know they’re there, cos it’s meant to be some big lame secret and stuff, but I watched him hiding them in his carpet trapdoor once when I was hiding in his wardrobe and he came into the room. I just kept quiet and he shut his bedroom door and pulled this magazine from out of the back of his cargoes and put it under the carpet. I kept really quiet and snuck out when he went to the bathroom to read one of his other magazines. Most of them are really boring, but I do like FHM and GQ cos they have really interesting stories and things and don’t just have pictures of women sticking their lips out like they’re gonna cry or something.
Anyway, today was really cool cos I nicked the Christmas FHM and GQ magazines and hid them in my bedroom under my PS2 games so that I can read about clothes and gadgets and stuff.
My Dad said that he’ll take me to buy some cool clothes in the January Sales cos I’ve got taller and I’m a lot thinner than Toto so I can’t wear his old stuff - like I’d want to, right? He said that cos I’m ‘taking a serious interest in developing myself via the exciting medium of the World Wide Web he’d like to reward my interest by buying me some of the modern clothing I seem to like.’ Toto asked if that meant I was going to get some cool designer clothes and Dad said ‘certainly - as long as they’re not too dear and will last a while.’
Toto got really pissed off cos all he ever got when he got interested in the internet was this really lame cordless mouse that didn’t even work unless you were behind the computer and everything. It doesn’t really seem that fair cos Toto knows loads more than me about computers and web stuff and that – but that’s Dads isn’t it? Mum would have made sure that they spent exactly the same amount of money on both of us so that we don’t get jealous or anything, but Dad just says things then looks stupid when it doesn’t go quite right.
