---------
Street Rat
It all began last year on my 7th Birthday. My Mum was acting all weird, moping around the house. I was worried as well I should be she's the only person I had, as my dad ran out on us when I was two. Then it was just me, and my Mum and my baby Brother Danny. Oh my name's Rachel by the way. Anyway, I asked her what was wrong. She just shouted at me and told me to shut my gob, get to my room and stay out of her life. So I went to my room. I sat on my bed crying for hours and eventually fell asleep.
I woke up the next morning to find the house empty, except for me and Danny. This had never happened, so I had some breakfast and fed Danny, then sat on the chair in the hall and stared at the door, just waiting for Mum to come home. She didn't. Not that day, or the next, so I decided to go out and find her. I put Danny in his buggy and went out the door pushing him along. I didn't bring coats and I just stayed in my school dress after all it was the middle of Summer. I wandered the streets until it started to get dark, not paying any attention to where I was going. Just searching.
When the sun began to go down, I turned around to head back home, then froze. It hit me, was lost. Not lost as in I just forgot the way, lost as in I had never been here before. I decided to just walk straight on and maybe I would meet someone who could help me so I did. Then it got really dark and Danny started crying so I stopped next to an alley, went about a metre or two in and sat down I adjusted Danny's buggy so he could lie down and put his special blanket over him. I also found out that cardboard boxes were very good at warming you up a bit when you get cold.
I carried on like this for a couple of days. We would wake up in the morning, search for home during the day, then sleep in an alley at night. If we ever got hungry I would get some food out of the "Snack Bag" that Mum always kept on Danny's buggy. It was a big bag filled with stuff like biscuits and fairy cakes. It also had baby food and a dozen bottles of water. Anyway, as you could well imagine, I finally got fed up with it and decided to give up looking for my house and instead look for somewhere to stay. Anywhere I just didn't want to wander the streets anymore, and the food was running out so I needed to find more. That's how I ended up sleeping behind the subway entrance. It was warm and it had shelter. It was just across the street to a food shop and as you can guess food shops store a lot of food. On the first day I just wandered around the 3 aisles staring at the food, just staring at the food. That was when I met Daviq Farnaca, He's the owner of the shop and he's really nice. I explained to him what had happened, and somehow, he just seemed to understand it all. He bought me a big load of food, a whole bag. I thanked him so much even I got fed up of it. I took the food back to Danny and we had a feast! I had five sandwiches and 2 fairy cakes and Danny had 2 sandwiches, half a tin of baby food and a cookie. It was the best we've both eaten since we started living as street rats.
---------
Some of the script ideas the team came up with:
21 September 2005
Some questions for the team:
21 September 2005
Story development:
28 September 2005
Story development:
5 October 2005
An addition to the script sees the film opening with Rachel leaving school and walking home. After she goes into her house, and shuts the front door we go into the title sequence "Street Rat"