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“What are you doin’ Mum?” asked Moppy.

“I’m washing the walls. What does it look like?” I replied.

“You look tired Mum. Do you want me to help?” She eyed the water in the bucket with a twinkle in her eye.

“No thanks, pumpkin. I want the water on the wall not all over the room.”

“I didn’t do it, you know.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Write all those funny shapes on the wall.”

“Yeah, I know. Nobody wrote them.”

“Nobody wrote them? Then how did they get there?” she asked curiously.

“Well this stuff is called mould and it grows in damp places.”

“Why does it grow on the wall?”

“Because it’s damp. Hey, haven’t you got anything else to do?”

“Na.” She just sat watching me, and bouncing her teddy bear on her knee.
“I think it looks nice on the wall mum. It makes a nice pattern.”

I stood back and took a wider view. I hadn’t noticed before but it did have a kind of a pattern.

“It may look nice Mops, but it’s bad for us.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s kind of like tiny mushrooms and they send off tiny, tiny seeds that we can’t see and those little tiny seeds sometimes get into our bodies and make us sick.”

“Sick, like what.”

“Coughs and things like that. So that’s why I clean it all the time and keep the windows open in the daytime. Anyway, it only grows in the wintertime. It disappears in the summer, Alhumdulillah.” My arms were aching from washing the walls.

“How come it’s only that wall mum?”

‘Because that’s the outside wall and it gets a bit damp.”

“I’m going to tell my friend.”

“Tell her what?”

“That we have mushrooms growing in our house.”

“Better not.”

“Why?”

“Cause they’re not really mushroom, they’re just like mushrooms.”

“Hey Mum, if I breathe in the little tiny seeds I’d have mushrooms growing inside my chest, wouldn’t I?”

“They’re not really mushrooms Moppy.”

“But I’d have something growing in there.”

“Well, no, because I’m washing them off, aren’t I?”

“Teddy’s got a mushroom in his nose Mum?”

“Teddy’s got a what?”

“He slept in here last night, right next to that wall and now he’s got one, I can see it.”

Her constant talking was making me feel tired and I wanted to finish the walls off. The fact that mould was growing on the walls worried me and I didn’t like to hear her talk about it.

“Why don’t you take him to the bathroom and wash it for him.”


Off she went. After a few minutes I heard the washing machine.

“What are you doing Moppy?”

“Mum! I looked and Teddy’s got mushrooms growing everywhere. I just put him in the washing machine so next time you wash, you can wash those nasty old mushrooms right out of him.”

“But then I’d have mushrooms in my washing machine,” I said, standing looking at her and wiping my forehead. “Then what would I do?”

“Couldn’t we grow them and let them be big and sell them mum?”

I shook my head. This conversation seemed to be leading nowhere.

“Why don’t you get Teddy out of the washing machine and put him on the balcony and watch him for a few days and see if any mushrooms grow?” I suggested, hoping she’d go and leave me to finish my work.


When I finished, I saw Teddy lying sedately on a pillow on the balcony with a watchful, loving Moppy guarding him closely to see if any mushrooms were going to grow out of his nose