Closed Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate

[Asa Physwick]

Letting two ten-year-old boys loose on the streets of York was not necessarily a wise idea. Although 'letting' was not the right word. 'Letting' implied they'd asked for permission, or at least told Ernestine where they were going, which they had not. "Look, look," said Asa, dragging Tully across the flagstones to a rather famous street sign. Somebody was having their photo taken in front of it. "See? Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate! Told you it was a real place."

 

[Ptolemy Physwick]

When Asa had told him he wanted to show him something, Ptolemy had questioned him to great lengths before his brother had finally told him what they were going to see. "Whip-Ma-Whop!" he repeated, trying to step a little closer to see if it was real and not something someone had just painted on themselves. "We need to live here just so we can say come to Whip-Ma-Whop!" Tully turned to grin at Asa, "Did you bring your camera?"​

 

[Asa Physwick]

"Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma!" Asa grinned - until Tully asked him about his camera. Then he turned a bit sheepish. "No, I sat on it. Ernie won't fix it, she said, because I didn't clean the kitchen when she asked. It's not fair, that. She could just use - you know." He managed to catch himself just before he said magic in busy street in York, and instead flourished a hand. "Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. I've got some pocket money, though. Wanna go to the sweet shop?"

 

[Ptolemy Physwick]

Tully frowned as his brother explained the situation and the way in which their so-called mother wouldn't even help despite her skills. She was using magic as blackmail, basically. "It won't be long until you can fix it yourself," Tully commented. One day Ernestine wouldn't be able to control what they did, although given they were currently out and about perhaps that day was coming sooner rather than later. "Well duh," he said when Asa asked him whether he wanted to go to the sweet shop. If his brother thought he had come out only because he wanted to do some sightseeing, well he didn't know him very well at all did he.​

 

[Asa Physwick]

"Yeah, in a year." Did Tully have any idea how long that was? How many pictures he could take in that time? But it was all right; he'd convince Ernestine to fix it for him before then. Maybe he'd even clean the kitchen, if he got really bored. "Last one there's the stupidest," he said, taking off before he'd even uttered the final syllable.

 

[Ptolemy Physwick]

Would it have been mean of Tully to trip Asa on purpose as he made a bid? Yes, yes it would. However, it was also mean of Asa to try and leave before he'd even finished talking, so the boy stuck out his foot in front of his brother before he'd even had a chance to finish his sentence. "Don't you know what patience is?" Tully grinned, overtaking him and belting off down the street.​

 

[Asa Physwick]

The pavement greeted Asa with a terrible crunch. It wasn't as bad as it sounded; he'd landed on someone's half-empty discarded pack of cheese and onion crisps. Still, Tully didn't know that, and the sound effect was fantastic. "Aaaaaaoooooooow!" he cried, curling up where he'd fallen. It wasn't hard to make himself look genuinely pained. He was genuinely pained. Emotionally.

 

[Ptolemy Physwick]

Tully heard the screams behind him but didn't turn around. He didn't trust him enough to think it wasn't a trick, and he wasn't about to let Asa call him out on being the stupidest. He would have been stupidest for believing the dramatic performance was genuine. "I'm not falling for it," Tully called out, turning to walk backward in case Asa decided to try to catch up to him. "Unlike you," he mumbled under his breath. They didn't know these streets very well, and Tully wasn't about to run off so far ahead he lost sight of his brother, but he wasn't going to come crawling back to him either.​

 

[Asa Physwick]

"I'm serious!" Asa whined, screwing his face up for good measure. Tully had to come back at some point - unless all he wanted to do was look at the sweets in the sweet shop. He'd probably spent all of his own pocket money the day he'd been given it. "It's my clavicle! I've broken my subclavian groove!" Ernestine would have been impressed.

 

[Ptolemy Physwick]

Despite his name and despite spending the last four years living in Ernestine's house, Tully was not as scientifically inclined as one may have come to initially believe. Whatever groove Asa was waffling about, Tully didn't have a clue what it meant. As far as his adoptive mother was concerned, Tully was probably the biggest disappointment of them all. "Good! Now break your leg too so that I can beat you to the shop," Tully groaned, holding his head back to the skies for a few seconds. "Don't make me drag you."​