The Misadventures of Tallulah Casey 3-Book Collection: Withering Tights, A Midsummer Tights Dream and A Taming of the Tights. Louise Rennison
went on. “You mustn’t feel that you made berks of yourselves.” And she looked directly at me when she said that bit. “We’re like a family here. And funnily enough my mater and pater have an old groundsman in our country place and he’s Oirish too! To be sure, to be sure. So we’ve lots in common. To be sure.”
Vaisey said, “Are you on the proper course?”
Lavinia laughed, “Yes, it can be hell, but I suppose we must love it! Come and see the performance lunchtime, some of us are doing a work in progress. See you later, begorrah, bejesus.”
After they’d gone, Vaisey said, “She seems very nice, doesn’t she? Good-looking too, isn’t she?”
Flossie was chewing her hair, “Hmmmmm.”
I said, “What does hmmmmm mean?”
Flossie said, “She does seem nice, but I wanted to squeeze her head, and my squeezing-head instincts are usually good.”
Jo said, “Hmmmmm.”
I said, “Is this a hmmmmm-in?”
Quickly get a bucket of waterIt’s a girl fest
For the rest of the morning Gudrun took us round for a tour of Dother Hall. We saw the studios for painting, the kiln area, the technical workshop. The backstage dressing rooms. We even went down to the music recording studios. Bob’s office is to one side and Gudrun said, “We can just ‘Bob’ in.”
He didn’t hear us ‘Bob-ing’ though, because he had heavy metal booming out of his speakers and he was pretending to play a guitar.
I said, “I didn’t know that Mrs Rochester was musical.”
And the others sniggered. Which was quite a nice feeling.
After our tour, we were all lying down on the grass when Sidone came across to us. She was wearing an enormous hat and dark glasses.
“Darlings, darlings. Are you having fun? So, so thrilling, isn’t it?”
We mumbled, “Yes.”
She went on. “Now then, all in to the studio theatre for the performance lunchtime. It’s a work in progress by some of the seniors called ‘Untitled…Now!’ Oh, and by the way, girls, would you use the upstairs loos for the rest of the day. There has been an unfortunate blockage situation which Bob is trying to get to the bottom of.”
I didn’t look at the others.
In the studio we were handed slips of paper.
Untitled…Now!
Question: What is a woman?
Is it a Woe…man?
Is it a Wombman?
How can we re-find our egg-sistence?A work in progress by Lavinia Pilkington, DaviniaMcCloud and Anouska PritchardWith thanks to the example of our inspirationalteacher Sidone Beaver
The studio went black and a faint spotlight came up in the centre. Lavinia walked into it. She was carrying an apple. She walked right into the centre of the light and looked at us meaningfully. She pointed to the apple and said, “Orange.”
And smiled sadly.
Then Dav and Noos came on with scarves all over them and started snaking about chanting, “I saw the snake, I saw the snake, and the snake saw me.”
Lav went off backwards and walked back on a minute later, slowly carrying an egg.
The snakes were still giving it their all with the scarves. Lavinia said in a dramatic voice, “We come from eggs, but some of us are eggier than others.”
She looked at the snakes, they looked back, and then they all smiled ironically.
They were still smiling ironically as the light went down very, very slowly.
Sidone started clapping so we joined in. I don’t know why.
Gudrun, who was right at the front, was looking back at us and beaming like she had just seen an elephant reading a poetry book.
Afterwards, Lav and Dav and Noos explained what it was about. Lav said, “I think what we were trying to get to is…you know, our sort of similar eggness. How women should stick together and support each other.”
One of the snakes (Dav) said, “Yes, the bit where I come on and I’m still being the snake…but I am aware of the of the…”
Lavinia said, “Of the egg?”
And Noos nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes, yes, yes exactly.”
Lavinia interrupted. “Yes, good point, Dav, and in fact one that I was just about to make…thanks for that. I wonder if anyone in the audience noticed that I became more egg-shaped during the performance?”
The next day, Sidone announced that our performance project for the summer course is Wuthering Heights. The fifteen of us have to adapt and present an original reworking of it. Sidone said, “Go out and see what the countryside suggests to you.”
Outside in the warm sunshine again, I began to cheer up. The friends had been nice to me about the hiddly diddly thing, in fact, Vaisey said, “It was unique.”
And the others nodded.
Jo said, “It was almost in a way…so weird that you might be…well, known for your weirdness.”
That’s good, isn’t it?
I felt smooth and purry, like a cat in a cream shop. With new friendies and no grown ups to tell me off. I know that the Dobbins are officially grown ups, but their idea of telling you off is to only give you a small bit of cake.
So everything was looking up, apart from having no boys to look at yet. We had the afternoon off for sketching and ideas.
I said, “So, Woolfe Academy is somewhere over there. On the other side of the woods.”
Flossie said, “Maybe we should go in the direction of the sign and see what it suggests to us.”
Milly and Tilly and the rest of the others forged off down by the river, and our little group went in the vague direction of Woolfe Academy.
After two minutes of pretend looking at stuff we were out of sight of Dother Hall and found a comfy tree with soft grass underneath it.
I said, “This soft grass suggests ‘softness’ to me, but also at the same time ‘lying-down-ness’.”
As we lay around the tree, Vaisey had obviously been thinking about Honey and her snogging stories. She said, “How did you get a boy to kiss you the first time? Did you say ‘give us a kiss’?”
Honey lay down on her back and, putting her legs up against the tree, said, “Well, yeth, in a way. I did it with my eyeth. I did eyeth work.”
Eyeth work?
Honey reckons that girls should be the ones who decide stuff.
Flossie said, “Well that’s all very well for you, you smoothy smooth person, but I’m quite big. I think I frighten boys with my bigness.”
I said, “And your violence.”
Flossie said, “Granted.”