So that’s how our class competition came up. It was the cute, the completely dishy, Ryan Scott’s idea. He’s definitely the best-looking boy in our school and luckily he happens to be in my class! (My mum says I’m too young to go out with boys, but when I look at Ryan Scott I know she’s dead wrong.)
Anyway, our teacher, Mrs Weaver, thought Ryan was the bee’s knees too right then, because she thought his idea was just as brilliant as Frankie’s. “Yes, Ryan,” she gushed. “I think if we have a class competition to raise the most money, we’ll have the curtains in no time!”
“In Cuddington Playtime you mean, Miss!” joked Kenny and everyone, including Mrs Weaver, laughed. (Mrs Weaver might be strict sometimes, but you can always have a joke with her if you get her in the right mood.)
“YAY!” the whole class cheered.
A competition! Did I tell you Cuddington School was the best?
“I know what we could do!” Lyndz was mega excited at the thought of helping out her dad. “We could give pony rides!”
Lyndz is horse mad, and she’s always trying to get as many rides in as she can.
But practical Rosie knocked that one on the head. “I’m scared of horses,” she reminded Lyndz. “And anyway, what about the little kids?”
“They’d most likely wet the saddle,” giggled Kenny, and we all burst out laughing, remembering the kid in Assembly.
So pony rides were O-U-T out.
We were trying to come up with fundraiser ideas for our team. Mrs Weaver had split the class into groups and told us to give each team a name. Ours was the Sleepover Gang (natch!) and the goody-goody M&M’s were, can’t you guess…the Little Angels. (Puke!) They were so jealous that Frankie had come up with the fundraiser idea, they were determined to show the world what little darlings they were (NOT!) and win.
“What about a sponsored bike ride?” suggested Rosie. But everyone said that was no good because Ryan Scott’s team, Hot Wheels, was bound to do that.
“We could have a jumble sale,” said Frankie. (Personally I think she had used up all her good ideas in one shot with the fundraiser scheme.) “You know, collect rubbish and sell it.”
“Yeah, I could put my house in it,” muttered Rosie to herself. Rosie’s house was a bit of a tip since her dad, the builder, had left and sometimes it got her down.
“Or put the M&M’s rubbish team up for sale…”
“Yeah.”
“So what about a jumble sale, then?” persisted Frankie, and I could tell she had something up her sleeve. When the Wizz gets that “look” anything can happen!
“Bor-ing!” Kenny yawned. “A sponsored football match would be much more coo-el.”
“Yeah, and who’d be on the team?” I wanted to know. “Not me, that’s for sure.”
Kenny pretended to do a header right in my face. “Goal!” she cheered and Mrs Weaver looked over to quieten us down.
“Well, what about an animal show, then?” (Lyndz could never let go of her favourite subject.) “I could borrow a horse from the stables and parade it on stage.”
“Whoever heard of a horse on stage?” laughed Frankie, and she reared like a stallion, bashing into the book display and making it topple over.
“You’ve heard of a stage coach, haven’t you?” Lyndz grinned.
“D’you want to go on the stage?” chuckled Rosie. “There’s one leaving in two minutes!”
That started us off on one of our horsey joke fests. The jokes were well daft. Read them and you’ll see what I mean:
Q. Heard the one about the pantomime horse who tripped over his own tail?
A. He didn’t know which end was up!
Q. How d’you hire a horse?
A. You put two bricks under him!
Book Titles:
Twenty Years in the Saddle by Major
Bumsore
Desert Cactus Cowboy by Evan Sorer
Rodeo Rider by I. Hangon
We were killing ourselves so much by then it made Kenny do her horse whinny imitation and soon we were mucking about, in true sleepover style, snorting and neighing away. Any moment now, Lyndz would start hiccuping.
“Er, Sleepover Gang, if you can’t do this sensibly…” began Mrs Weaver and the M&Ms smirked gleefully at the prospect of us getting into trouble.
“Sorry, Miss,” said Frankie innocently. “We were only trying out ideas.”
“Well, try them out quietly,” warned Mrs Weaver. She was busy drawing up a huge graph (probably planning on a major Maths project) and she looked like she meant business.
“Yes, Mrs Weaver.”
We seriously got back down to it, then. This was a better skive than slogging away in our Maths workbooks, and we didn’t want to ruin the chance for a laugh. So for a while the Sleepover Gang acted more angelic than the goody-goody M&Ms themselves.
Mind you, all the time the rest of the gang were talking and thinking I was fizzing away inside, like a firework ready to explode. See, I had this brilliant idea. The coolest, most wonderful brainwave I’d ever had in my entire life. Oh, you’re wondering why I didn’t come right out with it, are you? Well, it’s weird. When something matters to me, you know like, really matters, I can sometimes go all shy about it, even round my best friends. D’you ever get like that?
Suddenly, though, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Let’s have a Makeover!” I blurted out, and I could tell my cheeks had gone bright red with excitement. “You know, make up people and charge for it.”
“Coo-el!” said Lyndz.
“We could even give fashion advice and dress people up…” I was getting really excited.
Rosie interrupted me. “Where would we get the class gear for that?”
“We could borrow glamorous gear from my gran’s dress shop. And make stuff out of our own clothes…” I began, but football-mad Kenny couldn’t let that one go.
“Glamorous gear. How girlie-girlie!” Kenny (who lives in her Leicester City football strip) wrinkled her nose in disgust.
I could feel myself going red, and bit my lip.
“Using your own clothes is all right for you,” Frankie laughed, giving my long blonde hair a playful tug. “A Fashion Victim like you has got the best gear in the whole school.”
I blushed even harder. Can I help it if I love clothes and make-up? It’s a Proudlove family tradition.
“We could use my mum’s dressing-up clothes,” offered Lyndz, whose mum has the best dressing-up box ever.
I flashed Lyndz a grateful smile. (She’s the soft-hearted one in our gang and you can always rely on her to rescue you.)
“Anyway, we don’t need flash gear,” I explained, feeling a bit more confident. “We can use old stuff and make it totally fab.”