red sky in the morning is a shepherd ’ s warning .” “ Ah …” I said . He still grinned . “ Signs , Scotty , signs . You gotta know how to read ’ em .” At that moment I thought my dad must have been the smartest person in the universe .
After that , the reading and interpreting of signs became a bit of a hobby for me , although I was not nearly as good at it as my older brothers and sister . Compared to them I was a bit of a slow poke in the art form . They could tell , for example , just by the sound of my dad ’ s footsteps coming in from work whether he was in a good mood or a bad one . One minute we would all be sitting in the lounge room making a noisy mess and the next I would be on my own in the midst of toys and games with paper slowly wafting down to the floor . Suddenly there was Dad at the door bellowing like an ogre , “ Are you responsible for this pigsty ? Clean it up !” Signs , you gotta know how to read ’ em . I got much better at reading signs as I got older , but with the passing of time I discovered that the whole ‘ red sky ’ thing had almost no
6 THE CURIOUS SIGN OF THE MANGER
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