‘It’s OK, I’m wearing really big knickers!’. Louise Rennison
only they had their noses stuck back at the tip with Sellotape so that it made them look like pigs with hair.
On the back it said, GRUNTINGS from your mates. STY in touch. This is a PIGTURE to remember us by.
It made me a bit tearful, but I put on a brave face. “Cheers, thanks a lot. Goodnight.”
We had to get out of the telephone box because Mark (the boy from up the road with the enormous gob who I went out with for a fortnight but dumped me because this other girl Ella let him “do things to her”) came to use the phone. He just looked at us as we all struggled out. He really has got the biggest mouth I have ever seen. I was lucky to escape from snogging him with my face still in one piece.
BG (Big Gob) said, “All right?” in a way which meant, “All right, you lesbians?”
What do I care, though? My life is over anyway.
We all walked back to my house arm in arm. I wouldn’t link up with Jas though because she has annoyed me. Uncle Eddie must have eventually got Angus into the cat basket because the gardening gloves he was wearing were lying in the driveway with the thumbs torn off.
We all hugged and cried. It was awful. I’d nearly got to the door when Jas sort of threw herself at me. She couldn’t speak because she was crying so much and she said, “Georgia, nothing will be the same without you…I…I love you. I’m sorry I ate my sandwich.”
Wednesday July 21st
Dawn– well, 10:00 a.m.
Phoned my dearest friend Jas who loves me. Huh.
Now that she thinks she has got a “proper” boyfriend she acts like she is one hundred and eighty.
“Look, Gee-gee, I can’t talk really because I am on the dash to meet Tom. Dig you later, though. Ciao for now.”
…Ciao for now? I wonder if she has finally snapped? Nobody really cares about me. No one wants you when you are in trouble; no one is interested when you are not the life and soul of the party. I may have to try to make it up with God again at this rate.
2:30 p.m.
I don’t care what happens. I am not going to New Zealand. Not. Definitely. They will have to carry me on to the plane. Or give me knock-out drugs.
That is it. I am not going.
3:00 p.m.
I am not speaking to Mum but as she has gone out shopping (again) she probably hasn’t noticed.
3:19 p.m.
Sitting by the phone and using telepathy to make it ring. I’ve read about it a lot– it’s where you use your willpower to make something happen. In my head I was saying, “Ring, phone!” and “The phone will ring and it will be Robbie…by the time I count to ten.”
3:21 p.m.
“OK, the phone will ring and it will be Robbie by the time I count to a hundred…”
3:30 p.m.
“…in French. By the time I count to one hundred in French the phone will ring and it will be SG.” (God, or whoever it is that deals with willpower, will respect that I am making a bloody huge effort by counting in a foreign language.)
Everything really is sheer desperadoes and in tins. In two days’ time I will be on the other side of the world and the Sex God will be on this side of the world. And, what is more, I will be a day ahead of him. And upside down.
3:39 p.m.
I’ve got an appalling headache now.
While we are on the subject of French, why in the name of Louise the Fourteenth did Madame Slack (honestly– that is her name) make us learn a song called “Mon Merle a Perdu une Plume’?
My blackbird has lost a feather. That will be a great boon and help if I ever get to go to Paris. I won’t be able to get a sandwich for love nor money but I will be able to chat to le French about my blackbird’s feathers. Not that I have got a blackbird and, if I did have one, believe me it wouldn’t be just the one feather it would lose with Angus around. Not that he is around.
I really miss him already. He is the best cat anyone ever had. I can still imagine his furry head snuggled up in my bed. Bits of feather round his mouth. The way he used to bring me little presents. A vole, or a bit of poodle ear or something.
3:41 p.m.
How do you say my blackbird has had its legs chewed off by my cat? Mon merle a perdu les jambes…
Phone rang
3:45 p.m.
Thank goodness, because I thought I was going to have to count up to a hundred in German and nobody wants that. (And besides, I can’t.)
“It’s me, Jas.”
“Oh…What do YOU want?”
“I’ve just called to see how you are.”
I said, “Dead actually, I died a few hours ago. Goodbye.”
That will teach her. I’m not going to answer the phone if she rings back, either.
5:00 p.m.
She didn’t ring back. Typical.
My room.
In bed
10:30 p.m.
Mum and Libby came back in. When they popped their heads round my door I pretended to be asleep. Libby crept over quietly– well, her idea of creeping quietly, which is the loudest thing I have ever heard.
Mum whispered, “Give your big sister a kiss, Libbs, because she’s upset.”
Then I felt this wet thing sucking on the end of my nose. I shot up in bed. I said, “Does anyone else’s sister kiss like that? Why is she so obsessed with my nose?”
11:15 p.m.
After the nose-sucking incident I am as awake as two awake things. Just gazing out of my bedroom window into the dark night. When you gaze at the stars it makes you feel really small. We have been discussing infinity in Physics: you know, how there is no end to the universe, and so on. Herr Kamyer said there might even be a parallel universe to the one we live on somewhere out there. There might be another Georgia Nicolson sitting in her bedroom, thinking, What on earth is the point?
11:17 p.m.
Another Georgia Nicolson who is being forced to leave a Sex God and all her mates (and this does not include Jas). To go to the other side of the world. Double merde.
11:29 p.m.
I’ve just had a horrible thought. If there is a parallel me, there will be a parallel Wet Lindsay. And a parallel Nauseating P. Green. And two pairs of Mr Next Door’s shorts. Good grief.
Thursday July 22nd
Day before the last day of my life
Hunger protest
2:00 p.m.
Even though it is quite obvious even to the VERY dim that I am not eating. Mum hasn’t noticed. She said, “Do you want some oven chips and beans?”
And I said, “I will