‘It’s OK, I’m wearing really big knickers!’. Louise Rennison
Honestly, I think it’s about time she started kindergarten and mixed with normal children.
It takes twenty-four hours to fly to New Zealand.
6:00 p.m.
Uncle Eddie roared up on his pre-war motorbike. He’s come round to collect Angus. How can I live without the huge furry fool? How can he live without me? No one else knows his special little ways. Who else will know that he likes you to trail his sausages around on a string so that he can pounce on them from behind the curtains? Who else will know about mouse racing? Not Uncle Eddie, that’s for sure. He truly does come from Planet Bonkers. He came in wearing his motorbike leathers, took off his helmet and said, “How’re you diddling?”
What is the matter with him? Why Mum thinks anyone as bald and barmy as him could look after an animal I don’t know. Anyway, it’s irrelevant what anyone thinks as he will never in a zillion years catch Angus and get him in a basket.
6:30 p.m.
I don’t think I could be more sad. We are going to be away for months. I will miss all my friends; I’ll lose the SG. My hockey career will be in ruins. Everyone knows the Maoris don’t play hockey. They play…er…anyway, we haven’t done New Zealand in geoggers yet, so I don’t know what they do. Who cares?
6:35 p.m.
Time ticking away. It’s like waiting to be buried, I should think. Or being in RE.
Phoned Jas. I wanted to know if Tom had heard anything from his gorgeous older brother, the Sex God, but I didn’t want to let Jas know that I wasn’t interested in her life. So I asked her a few questions about her “boyfriend” first.
“Hi, Jas, how are you and Tom getting along?”
She went all girlish and giggly. “Well, do you know, we were just laughing so much because Tom said that he was in the shop the other day and—”
“Jas, did he mention anything, you know, interesting?”
“Oh yeah, loads.”
There was a pause– she drives me INSANE!
I said, “Like what?”
“Well, he was thinking of suggesting that they start selling more dairy products in their shop, because—”
“No, no, Jas I said interesting– not really, really boring. Has he, for instance, mentioned his gorgey older brother?”
Jas was a bit huffy but she said, “Hang on a minute.” Then I heard her shouting, “Tom! Have you spoken to Robbie?”
In the distance I heard Tom shouting, “No, he’s gone away on a footie trip.”
I said to Jas, “I know that.”
Jas shouted again, “She knows that.”
Tom shouted, “Who knows that?”
“Georgia.”
Then I heard Jas’s mum shouting from somewhere, “Why does Georgia want to know about Robbie? Isn’t she off to New Zealand?”
Jas shouted, “Yes, she is. But she’s desperate to see him before she goes.”
I said to Jas urgently, “Jas, Jas, I wanted to find out when he’s back, I didn’t want to discuss it with your street.”
Jas went all huffy. “I’m only trying to help.”
“Well don’t.”
“Well I won’t, then.”
“Good.”
There was a silence. “Jas?”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not helping.”
I’m going to have to kill her.
“Ask Tom when Robbie is due back.”
“Huh. I don’t see why I should, but I will.”
She shouted out again, “Tom, when is Robbie back?”
Jas’s mum yelled, “I thought he was going out with Lindsay?”
Tom yelled back, “He was, but then Georgia and him got together instead.”
Jas’s mum said, “Well, Lindsay will be very upset.”
This was UNBELIEVABLE.
Tom yelled back again, “Tell Georgia he’s not back again until late Monday.”
Next Monday! Next Monday. By that time I would be being bored half to death by Maoris. I tried to be brave so that I wouldn’t upset Jas. “I know I can joke about it and everything, but I have fancied Robbie for so long. And it’s not just because he is in The Stiff Dylans. You know that. It’s a whole year since I started stalking him. It was so groovy when he kissed me, I thought I would go completely jelloid and start dribbling. Luckily I didn’t. And I think he will forget about that chunk of my hair snapping off, don’t you?”
There was this clanking noise and then Jas said, with her mouth full, “Hello? Hello? What were you saying? I just went and got myself a sandwich while Tom was shouting at you.”
Qu’est ce que le point?
7:30 p.m.
I can’t believe Jas. She is dead to me. Like in the Bible, when somebody goes off and becomes a prostitute or something. She is now the girl who has no name.
9:00 p.m.
Phone rang. I leaped downstairs.
It was Rosie, Ellen, Jools and She Who Has No Name (Jas) calling me from the phone box at the end of our road. Rosie said in a fake Chinese accent, “Bringey selfey to phone boxey.”
I put on some mascara and lippy so that no one would know about my broken heart. Not that it made the slightest difference to Mutti and Uncle Eddie– they were too busy trying to trap Angus.
He’s lurking on top of my wardrobe. I know he’s got a few snacks with him because he dropped a piece of mackerel on my head when I passed. He’ll be happy up there for hours. Serve them right if they can’t find him. Catnappers!
I don’t want to be rude to the afflicted but Uncle Eddie is bald in a way which is the baldest I have ever seen. He looks like a boiled egg in leather trousers. Once he came round and after he and Mum had had their usual vat of wine he fell asleep in the back garden face down. So I drew another face on the back of his head. Very, very funny indeed, especially as I did it in indelible pen. He got his own back, though, by turning up to a school dance on his pre-war motorbike and asking all my mates where I was because he was my new boyfriend.
Still, that is life for you…one minute you are snogging a Sex God and have got up to number six on the snogging scale without crashing teeth. The next minute you are made to go to the other side of the world and hang out with Kiwi-a-gogos. Whose idea of a great time is to sit in mud pools and eat toasted maggots. (This is very, very true as I have been reading a brochure about Kiwi-a-gogo land and it says it in there.) Oh pig’s bum!! Or as our tiny French friends say, Le gran bum de le porker!!!
9:30 p.m.
When I got to the phone box the gang were all in there. They squeezed open the door and Jools said, “Bonsoir, ma petite nincompoop.”
Once I was in we were all squashed up like sardines at a fish party. Rosie managed to get a hand free and give me one of those photobooth photographs.
“We brought