Author(s): E. Hamley

Senior Fiction | Aotearoa New Zealand

After 50 years MI5 are finally returning Mal Dixon's homework assignment; to keep a record of the Apollo 11 mission to land a man on the Moon. I remember signing the Official Secrets Act and Agent Woodstock saying, had we been allowed to tell anyone about what had happened that week, my grandparents and I would have made the Guinness Book of Records, me as the youngest person to sign the Official Secrets Act, Grandad as the only person to successfully impersonate a Prime Minister and get away with it, and Nan as the only cook to seriously upset the KGB, CIA and MI5. If I recall correctly, Agents Woodstock and Pigpen then laughed and said that lucky for them, no-one had noticed the odd events of the past week as the whole world had been glued to their TV sets watching the Moon landing and so they'd got away with it.

But it wasn't just the events in Westminster that found their way into my Moon Diary, there was also what my sister, Brenda and her mates, the 'Apple Scruffs', got up to in Paul McCartney's house. Unfortunately for Mal, who now works for RocketLab in New Zealand, although he was really good at keeping MI5's secret, MI5 have not been so good at keeping his. After Mal confesses to Brenda that he'd included parts of her diary into his homework assignment, Brenda, along with Mal's grandchildren, Golda and Rae, travel to Auckland to await the return of Mal's Moon Diary. Rae can hardly believe his luck, as a conspiracy theorist, he's not convinced the Moon landing even happened. There is one thing Rae is sure of though; that the CEO of RocketLab is really Syndrome from the movie The Incredibles.

Mal Dixon's Moon Diary is original, educational and funny.