The Man with the Bent Head 

6july. mrs harcastle told me all about a famus man called mr peeps today. Mr peeps lived in londn a long time ago and was famus because he worked veri hard and kept a dairy. He was very clever and liked ships and hid his cheese in the garden when there was a big fire. It didnt melt like the cheese on my tost when mum makes it so he dug it up and ate it after. It must have bean a bit dirty tho. I told mrs hardcastle i wanted to be like mr peeps and keep a dairy and be smart. She just lafed at me and said I should wish for something else. Im going to keep a dairy anyway. 

7july. Mum wasnt at the bus stop today to take me home. I hate it when I have to walk alone. The kids all sit in the sqware and call me names when I walk by. Mum said I should ignore them and not look at them. Today they called me moon face and shouted I walked like a duck and then started to qwak like ducks. When I started to qwak they all stopped and stared at me then yelled I was stupid and shold go home to mummy if I culd remember where I lived. i know were I live. 

8july. Mum said yesaday she was sorri she didnt make it home in time but she has a new job. If she can get some money she will buy me a kiten. she said she will be home late a lot from now and I will have to be a big boy and walk to the flats by myself from the bus stop. I wasn't happy but I know she needs money to buy things so I went to my room and cryed where she could not see me. 

9july. Comng home today I saw the man with the bent head. I don't see him very oftin he usually stays at home. sumtimes I just see him as he goes in and out his door with his long coat and hat pulled down hard on his head so peple don't laurf at the shape of his head . mum says he is odd and I should stay away from him. I said I was odd and did other peple stay away from me because of that. she said it was not the same thing. He was old and odd. I went to bed confused. I think one day I will be old and odd so peple will not talk to me then. 

10july. Mrs harcastle smaked me with a ruler today because I forgot sum of the things she tought me yesterday. I dont like it when she does that but she says it's the only way I will lern. She made a strange face at me and said I wanted to be like mr peeps did'nt I and then smaked me agian. I dont know why she finds it funy . I said wish I han'dt told her about mr peeps. She went all red then and asked if I was keeping my dairy like I said and what did I put in it. I told her I'd stopped and she seemed happy then. I don't like lieing but I don't think ill tell her about the dairy again. 

11july day off today and mum bort me a cat because she will not be here sumtimes when I get in. I was so excited. I called him tigger becus he looks like a tiger and he is going to be my best frend. He can sleep on my bed or in a carborad box with a hole I cut in the side with mum so he can clime in and out.  

12july we went for a walk today and mum shouted at the kids in the square to leeve me alone or she wood call the plice. They ran off and shoted rude things at her from the bridge. We walked past the man with the bent heads flat and two of the windows were broken and he was standing outside staring at them. mum says its the kids that smash his windows and hed be best to move. I don't think he has any mony so like us he cant move. 

13july I shold be at scool today but mum took me to hospidal. Mum and Doctor Tenor talked for a long time. He said he'd like to give me articifcal hips to help with my walking. Mum said she'd rather wait. No one asked me . Wen we walked home I saw the man with the bent head had had wood put in his windows. It must be dark and cold inside his flat I woldnt want to live there. At home I playd with tigger all afternoon. 

14 july, today a bad thing happned on the way home. It was raining and the kids were waiting in the lobby. They chased me into the lift then I could hear them laughing as the door closed. I looked around and the man with the bent head was standing there. The kids had probably chased him in ther as well. The man took off his big hat and wiped his blank face with his arm. His head had just a little bit of white hare and his head was shaped like a big blob of melted butter. The man stood like he did not see me. Maybe with the lights buzzing on and off he could'nt. Maybe his head means his eyes don't work propoerly. I stood very still and brerthed slowly like a sleeping snake and tried not to think of anything in case he could hear my thoughts. I'm very good at that -not thinking. The lift jolted and I lost my balance and stepped foward, his head turned and his black marble eyes popped out of his head when he saw me -not reelly fell out but sort of bulged like he did not know I was there until then. He tilted his head to one side and looked at me like he was reading a book. Then he reeched out put his hand on my head. I felt odd and sat down, when the lift opened mum was there and she saw the man standing over me she screemed and pushed him away. 

15july I had to go to the plice staton today with mum and tell them what happened in the lift. They showed me the cells downstairs as a treet all exept the last one as the man with the bent head was in that one. They were very small and scary I said I would not like to stay there. The pliceman said that was the point. The pliceman asked me lots of question about what happened. I told him he only touched my head and it made me feel dissy was that wrong. The pliceman said it was and hed stay in custardy until it was sorted out. I don't not know what custardy is it doesn't sound too bad as long as he can go home today. The man gave me a lollypop at the end so what I said must have been ok.  

18july I came home today and someone has posted a parsell to me. I don't know who. it was on the inside of the door when I came in. The postman had bought it and it had my name on it. The only letters I get with my name on them come from the hospidal and I don't like them as it means I have to go for tests and I dont like those. It was a book. It is the mr peeps story I was reaaly excited. I played with tigger and started to reed it. It was very hard with lots of big words. 

19july Mum told me today that the man with the bent head had died. He was a the plice staton and had a fit. The plice say they don't need to see me any more they hav what they want. It is very sad when people die, I don't think the man was bad I think he was lik me . peple think I'm bad becase of the way I look. I read the rest of the book which is called 'Mr Pepys the unequalled self' last night. It was so brilliant I couldnt put it down. I had to look up lots of words in the dictionary so it took ages. When I finished it was light so it must have taken me all nite. I told mum about it in the morning and she said I could'nt have done ,not all of it. she opened it and asked me some questions, I could remember it all. She said id done reaaly well and she'd take me to the libray to get more if I wanted. 

21july The kids in the playground call my new names now, horrible names I don't understand, about me and the man with the bent head. they copy my walk and thro lit ciggy butts at me when mum can't pick me up from the bus stop and walk back with me. 

22 July. We came back to the flat today with some books from the library . the lady at the lbrary looked at the books I'd choosen and said I should put them back , they were to old for me I should go to the childrens section ,there were some picture books there. My mum told her to mind her own busness I could have any book I wanted it was a public library wasn't it?

28 July. I have been reading the books from the library all week. I've chosen ones like the one like Mr Pepys all about famus people. I had one on Isaac Newton, one on a solder called Julius Ceaser, one about the sailor Admiral Nelson. Thy were all so brave and smart. I've been telling Mrs Hardcastle about them and she has been asking me questions about the books. She must be interested in them too I think. Now when she talks to me she speeks differently, not so slowly like she used to. Often when she thinks im not watching I can see her looking at me out of the side of her narrow eyes. 

3rd August. I've been to the library again with Mum. There are so many books there it's fantastic. I wanted to take loads but Mum said we could only take what we could carry. I stay up most nights reading. This time I have books on Brunel, Fourier, Einstein and lots of mathematicians and physicists. The maths is really interesting. Tigger gets bored and goes and sleeps in his box. 

5th August. Today a man came and said Mrs Hardcastle had called him and he wanted to see me. He asked me to do some tests which were very easy, not like the difficult ones Mrs Hardcastle used to give me. He checked them and when I got home he'd rung mum and told her Mrs Hardcastle must be a very good teacher because the results were surprisingly good. He said I could go to the big school where all the other children go. 

20th August. I didn't like the big school. Some of the kids form the estate are there and they all stared at me in my new uniform and said it belonged to a kid in the flat below us who had left the school last year. When I told them it was because my mum could not afford a new one, all they did was shout 'quack', 'quack,' at me. 

23rd August. It's hard to keep up to date with my diary as I've been reading so much and that makes me tired. I have read a book on Fermat's Last Theorem and found it intriguing. I wrote a letter about it to the man who wrote it to say what I thought of the proofs it contained. Mr Taynard asked me to leave the physics class today because I kept asking questions he would not answer. He said I was disruptive and should not be attending his classes. He was going to talk to the headmaster about me The others all cheered when I walked out. I tried not to cry. 

25th August. I have to work by myself at school now so I do not disturb the other children in the classes. It's OK as I'm used to being alone. A man came to our house and spoke to Mum this evening. He was small with slicked back hair and a jacket with leather patches on his sleeves. He was the one I wrote to about the theorem. When he saw me I could tell he was shocked. He showed me some equations that were very interesting. The last one had an error that I showed him and he became very excited and put his books away and hurried off. 

29th August. Mum asked me today if I was happy. I said I was. I had her, my books and Tigger. So I was very happy, I felt we could all be happy together forever. I don't know why but she started to cry when I said that. Then the man with the slicked hair knocked on our door. He spoke in whispers to Mum and then to me. His name, he said, was Professor Greenwood. When I said I knew that, I'd read his books he laughed, a big hearty laugh. Then he said he supposed then I knew Oxford University. I told him when it was founded and named all the Chancellors it had ever had and its famous alumni. He said he was sure I was right and did I want to come and study there. I said I'd only go if Mum and Tigger could go. He asked who Tigger was, my sister? When I told him he looked bemused and said yes it would be fine. When he left he said I would need to be careful with what I said at Oxford as some people who thought they were smart might be offended.

20th September. Today should have been the best day of my life but it was a horrible day. We moved out today, some of the neighbours came and wished Mum well and said she was so lucky. Mum said she hadn't felt that sometimes over the last fourteen years but she did now and was so proud of me. We loaded up the van, but we did not have much stuff, mostly the books I'd bought at jumble sales. When we tried to find Tigger we could not. We'd never let him out of the flat, it was too dangerous. Mum went back to the flat to look for him and I searched outside round the back of the flats. I found Tigger stuck to the ground, dead, with a big stick pushed through him. All the kids were sitting on a wall nearby, staring at me. One of them shouted, ''See you soon Qwackers,'' at me. I picked up Tigger and took him back to Mum. I don't think I'll ever see them again. 

22nd September. Oxford is amazing, the flat we have is so lovely with high ceilings and old paintings on the wall, overlooking over a colonnaded square with perfect green grass in it. Mum cried with happiness. Professor Greenwood looked very pleased and patted her on the shoulder and said she deserved it. We both deserved it. He showed us around the grounds and the students, who are much older than me, looked at me but no one shouted 'Quack, Quack,' so I was relieved. 

31st October. I have been busy all week in maths classes and in private tutorials with Prof. Greenwood who I'm allowed to call Jeff. He says he's very pleased with my progress. On Friday when I got to his room it was full of other professors all carrying copies of various thesis's wanting to talk to me about them. Jeff saw the look in my face and asked most of them to leave. Two that stayed were Prof Pebbles, a lovely doe eyed lady who teaches physics and a young man with sparkling spectacles and long hair who teaches Astronomy, Prof. Acer. Prof. Acer was showing me images of galaxies he'd taken with his telescope when something odd took me, a dizziness like when the man with the bent head had touched my forehead in the lift. I pointed to the picture on the page and said, 'There is a planet there - it's not on your picture.' Proff. Acer laughed and said there wasn't a planet, why I would think that? I said I must have seen it in a book. He said that part of the galaxy had not been mapped to this level of detail so I couldn't have. When I started to argue Jeff put up his hand and said he was sure Prof. Acer would check. 

2nd November. I cannot get the thought of the missing planet out of my mind. I know it is there despite what I've been told. I don't think Prof. Acer is checking so I have asked one of his undergraduates to supply me with the data of the movement of the planets around it. I spent all night working through them and then ran my postulations through the planetary mapping software on the University's main server.  

3rd November. Prof. Acer came back with my results. I don't know how he got them. He told me there was a planet where I said it would be and asked me who told me about it. He looked very sullen. Later that day he announced that he'd found it and called it Aceron X. I thought the discoverer had the right to name the planet and asked Jeff. Jeff said Prof. Acer had been asked to explain his calculations to the board and that would be a rather entertaining spectacle given that he, Jeff, was on the board. 

15th November. I cannot stop thinking out Aceron X. Other Universities are acclaiming its discovery and saying it's the closest possible inhabited planet to Earth. I have seen Prof. Acer on TV talking about it. I have been missing my maths classes with Jeff and spending all my time in the physics department and with Mr Andrews in the Engineering CAD facility working on my project. People keep asking him what we are doing but I have sworn him to secrecy. 

10th April. It's been six months now. Working all the time on my project. Mum says I needs to slow down and she has seen Jeff about me. They came to my study today and saw me and asked me to tell them what was going on. I said I was almost ready to tell them.  

15th April. Something has been happening in my head, I wonder if it's a side condition of my illness and even though I can ill afford the time, I have been checking my condition in the medical journals. I find I can now absorb unnaturally large amounts of data, just by flicking through books. When Mr Andrews says he will have to go off to check a calculation and run it though the computer I already have the answer in my head. It is unnatural, but it is speeding up our development program no end. I don't really have time to get into it further. 

14th July. Today Mr Andrews and I made an announcement to the University staff. It was a momentous occasion. The Chancellor was there and the all the Heads of all the Colleges. I told them I was intending to build a spaceship to travel to Aceron X. I showed them on a projector, the ship, The Albatross and explained the revolutionary nature of the designs that would allow faster than light travel. There was a long silence and then someone at the back started to laugh and called out, he had other things to do rather than listen to a little odd kid who read too many fantasy books. I asked him to stay and listen to the Director of the NASA Space Development Programme who was joining us to explain the build schedules and crew selection criteria. They all sat and listened to Doug Mace who outlined the funding and the grants that we'd already secured from the US Government and European Space Agency. He told them they were witnessing the beginning of a new era in space travel. 

15th July. When I walk around the University grounds, people rush up and shake my hand which I find embarrassing. When I refused to shake a man's hand today he looked so offended, I said that my hand hurt so much from shaking that I couldn't write with it any longer. He laughed and said he'd let the others know. One or two other lecturers, when they see me walking across the grounds turn and walk in another direction. Jeff says it's professional jealousy and I should just ignore it.  

2nd August. Prof. Acer has been suspended from the University teaching staff. Jeff tells me that I can name the planet as I'd like. It's mine to do so. I said I wanted to call it 'Tigger'. He laughed until the tears came down his face. When I asked him why it was so funny he said he had to be the one who told Prof. Acer.  

17th January. An odd thing happened today. When I was Facecasting with the NASA and European Design engineers on a problem they'd encountered with a particular aspect of the ships design they all stopped taking notes and looked blankly at me. When I asked what the problems was Mr Andrews said I was speaking in another language and no one understood what I was saying. I apologised and said it was a Latin dialect that I'd been reading the night before. That was not true but they seemed to accept it. Later I took a recording of the Facecast to the Linguistic dept. They were unable to identify the language or even any root language. As far as they were concerned it might as well be Elfish. 

12th June. The Albatross project is continuing on plan. The ships assembly in near orbit has been completed and testing of engines and superstructure have begun. We are having daily conferences with the Americans to ensure we remain on schedule. I do find myself dropping in and out of Elfish when we talk but I know the Engineers see me as a bit odd, so I can get away with it. However I need to watch that.  

15th August. Before I Mum and I and Jeff took the plane to the US I checked a few things about the man with the bent head. My research showed that the man with the bent head's name is Mr Menhir- a name given him by the police officers who found him found five years ago at Stonehenge. He was wandering amongst the stones and did not know who he was and police appeared unable to identify him. Initially he was thought to have been in an in a car accident but his injuries were put down to a birth defect ,a bit like mine in some respects. He was passed around the system until he ended up on our estate. He almost appears to have come out of nowhere. 

18th August. I have two full time Doctors to look after my health at Cape Canaveral as I am considered so critical to the project. I met the six crew members, all eminent in their respective fields. They have been drawn from around the world. I had specified that while I understand that physical condition is important for such a trip, no one should be excluded from the process on grounds of physical or mental disabilities. We do not know what they will encounter when they arrive in Tigger, and the measures we value here may not be what the potential inhabitants there understand. 

21st August. I told Mum today that I had put my name down, at the beginning of the project, to join the crew. There are two places left. We went for my medical check-up. They told me that in all probability I won't live past twenty years of age with my degenerative disease. I knew that, a long time ago, so it comes as no surprise. But it is long enough to get me there. Doug Mace says the decision is mine but the crew would all welcome me as I had so much to knowledge to bring to the trip. In fact he'd already arranged everything and one of my doctors will make up the final member of the crew. I hugged my mum as her tears streamed down her face. 

25th August .It has arrived at last, our time. We have boarded the transit ship at the Cape that will take us up to The Albatross. I'm told over two billion people will be watching our lift off today. I'm sad there is no one from the University with us but they did not make it through the selection process. I try not to think of Mum all alone in the big flat at the University but she gets on well with Jeff so I'm pleased with that. She deserves someone nice to be with.  

It's odd, now I'm sitting here ready to go I can close my eyes and see our destination. See the low yellow skies, touch the marble of the white cities thrown up from the glistening red earth, feel the dull ache of the warmth of the orange sun. I have no doubt what I'm seeing is the planet we are traveling to. How the man with the bent head fits in I cannot tell but he is integral to all that has happened. Perhaps we will find the answer when we arrive. 

I need to stop writing, the countdown has started and I can feel the vibration of the rockets coming through the seats.  

There is so much to do, so much to see, so much lost time to make up. I still have time to do that, to make people proud of me, and like Mr Pepys to be remembered for all my hard work. I will, like him, become, 'the unequalled self.'

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I always look for original idea's but in this case this is a modern, slightly mystical take on the brilliant Flowers for Algernon (with, I think, as I reread it, a touch of 'Phenomena' about it) written in 1966 by Daniel Keyes who sadly died this year. It's a story I've always really loved. If you get a chance to read the book ....it really is well worth it!