Thank God they’re all actually going out. At last. What is all this happy family nonsense? All this “we should do things as a family”?
As I pointed out to Dad, “We are four people who, through great misfortune, happen to be stuck in the same house. Why make it worse by hanging around in garden centres or going for a walk together?”
Anyway, ratwoman does not go out. She just hangs around in her bedroom for the next forty years to avoid being laughed at by strangers.
I will never ever have a boyfriend. It’s not fair, there are some really stupid people and they get boyfriends. Zoe Ball gets really nice boyfriends and she has got sticky-out ears.
1:00 p.m.
I still haven’t tackled Dad about his apron.
1:15 p.m.
God I’m bored. I can see Mr and Mrs Next Door in their greenhouse. What do people do in them? If I end up with someone like Mr Next Door I will definitely kill myself. He has the largest bottom I have ever seen. It amazes me he can get in the greenhouse. One day his bottom will be so large he will have to live in the greenhouse and have bits of chop passed to him, and so on. O quel dommage! Sacré bleu!! Le gros monsieur dans la maison de glass!!!
1:20 p.m.
I may start a neighbourhood newspaper.
1:22 p.m.
Oh dear. I have just seen Angus hunkering down in the long grass. He’s stalking their poodle. I’ll have to intervene to avert a massacre. Oh, it’s OK, Mrs Next Door has thrown a brick at him.
11:00 p.m.
What a long, boring day. I hate Sundays, they are deliberately invented by people who have no life and no friends. On the plus side, I’ve got six o’clock shadow on the eyebrow front.
Operation sausage
Tuesday September 1st
10:00 a.m.
Six days to school and counting. I wish my mum could be emancipated, a feminist, a working mother etc. And manage to do my ironing.
I thought I’d wear my pencil line skirt the first day back, with hold-up stockings and my ankle boots. I’m still not really resolved in the make-up department because if I do run into Hawkeye she’ll make me take it off if she spots it. Then I’ll get that shiny red face look which is so popular with PE teachers. On the other hand, I cannot possibly risk walking to school without make-up on. No matter how much I stick to sidestreets, sooner or later I will be bound to bump into the Foxwood lads. The biggest worry of all is the bloody beret. I must consult with the gang to see what our plan is.
5:00 p.m..
We’re having an emergency Beret and Other Forms of Torture meeting tomorrow, at my place again. I have got eyebrows now but still look a bit on the startled earwig side.
7:00 p.m.
After tea, when Dad was doing the washing-up, I said casually, “Why don’t you wear your special apron, Dad?”
He went ballistic and said I shouldn’t be prying through his drawers. I said, “I think I’ve got a right to know if my dad is a transvestite.”
Mum laughed, which made him even madder. “You encourage her, Connie. You show no respect, so how can she?”
Mum said, “Calm down, Bob, of course I respect you, it’s just that it is quite funny to think of you as a transvestite.” Then she started laughing again. Dad went off to the pub, thank goodness.
Mum said, “It’s his Masonic apron. You know, that huddly duddly, pulling up one sock, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine sort of thing.”
I smiled and nodded but I haven’t the remotest idea what she is talking about.
11:30 p.m.
Why couldn’t I be adopted? I wonder if it’s too late. Am I too old to ring Esther Rantzen’s helpline? I might get Esther. Good grief.
Wednesday September 2nd
Five days to purgatory
10:00 a.m.
Oh. No, it’s here already. As a special “treat” my cousin James is coming to stay with us overnight.
I mean, I used to like him and we were quite close as kids and everything, but he’s so goofy now. His voice is all peculiar and he’s got a funny smell. Not hamsterish like Libby but sort of doggy-cheesy. I don’t think all boys smell like that, perhaps it’s because he’s my cousin.
2:00 p.m.
James is actually not such bad fun; he seems much younger than me and still wants to do mad dancing to old records like we used to. We worked out some dance routines to old soul records of Mum’s. “Reach out I’ll be There” by the Four Tops was quite dramatic. It was two pointy points, one hand on heart, one hand on head, a shimmy and a full turn around. Sadly there’s not much room in my bedroom and James trod on Angus who, as usual, went berserk.
Actually, it would be more unusual to say “Angus went calm”. Anyway, he ran up the curtains and finally got on top of the door and crouched there, hissing (Angus, that is, not James). We tried to get him down and also we tried to get to the bathroom but he wouldn’t let us. If we tried to get through the door he’d strike out with his huge paw. I think he is part cat, part cobra. In the end Mum got him down with some sardines.
7:00 p.m.
After “tea” James and I were listening to records and talking about what we were going to do after we ditch The Olds (as we call our parents). I’m going to be a comedy actress or someone like those “it” girls who don’t actually do anything except be “it”. The newspapers follow them all day and the headlines say, Oh, look, there is Tara Pompeii Too-Booby going out to buy some biscuits!! Or Tamsin Snaggle-Tooth Polyplops goes skiing in fur bikini. And they just make money from that. That is me, that is.
James wants to do something electronic (whatever that means; I didn’t encourage him to explain because I felt a coma coming on). He wants to travel first, though. I said, “Oh, do you, where?” Thinking... Himalayas, yak butter, opium dens, and he said, “Well, the Scilly Isles in particular.”
11:00 p.m.
Something a bit weird happened. We went to bed – James slept in a sleeping bag on some cushions on the floor, and we were chatting about Pulp, and so on, and then I felt this pressure on my leg. He had reached out and held my leg. I didn’t know what to do so I kept really still, so that he might think he’d just got hold of a piece of the bed or something. I stayed still for ages but then I think I must have dropped off.
Thursday September 3rd
9:00 a.m.
At last the eyebrows are starting to look normal.
2:00 p.m.
James went home. The “leg” incident was not mentioned. Boys are truly weird.
5:00 p.m.
Libby has the flu. She was all pale and miserable. I let her sleep in my bed and she was snuffling, poor thing. Poor little thing, I really love my little sister.
8:30 p.m.
Took Libbs some hot milk and thought she might like me to read The Magic Faraway Tree. She said, “Yes, now, more please,” and sat herself up in my bed. Then, as I opened the book, she took my duvet cover and blew her nose on it. It’s absolutely covered in green snot. Who would have thought such a tiny girl could produce a bucket of snot?
10:00 p.m.
I had to sleep in the sleeping bag. What a life.
Friday September 4th
11:00 a.m.
Emergency Beret and Other Forms of Torture meeting to be held this afternoon. I’ve decided that my eyebrows have recovered enough to venture out