Me Life Story

by Scarlett Moffatt

  Auntie Kirsty: ‘Toffo, pass me the salt from the side of the couch, lizard neck.’

  It has always been this way in the Moffatt household. I learnt from a very young age that no one is realer than your family. They compliment you behind your back, but criticise you to your face. That is real love! In all honesty we are just like the Royle family when we are all gathered together. Now I don’t mean Her Majesty, Prince Philip and the other lovely lot. I mean the TV show where they would all sit around the telly and natter – Jim Royle, Denise Royle and Antony (the lazy streak of piss). My mam reminds me of Barbara; she’s the glue that holds the family together, and bless her she always seemed to be running around like a blue-arsed fly when I was a kid.

  However, our work ethic is completely different to TV’s Royle family. It’s crazy, as a kid I actually remember being annoyed about my mam and dad always being at work. Other kids in my class got picked up by their parents. Some of my friends whose parents had split up got to see their dads for a whole weekend. But my dad got up when only owls should be awake: 5:30 a.m. his alarm would go off, and still does go off at that time to this day, as he needed to go off on his shift as a welder. My dad would leave home when it was dark and come back home when it was dark, six days a week. I felt like I’d only see him for an hour a day.

  My mam and me would wake up at about seven in the morning. I would sit up in my cosy bed while my mam, without fail, would be singing tunefully, ‘Good morning, good morning, here’s your mam to wake you up. Good morning, good morning to you!’ I would rearrange all of my Beanie Babies that I’d got free as a toy from my McDonald’s Happy Meals (1996 Maccy D toys were the best) before skipping down the stairs. Me mam would get ready for work; she worked in retail at a shop called Etam. My school uniform would be laid out nicely pressed for me and I would wave my mam off as she jumped on the 1B bus and go to my friend Kyle’s house where his mam would take me to school.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I’d shout at Mam and Dad later, as I’d storm up the stairs at home, wishing they would lose their jobs so they could spend all their hours with me. It’s only now as an adult that I realise I was the one who wasn’t being fair. I didn’t give my mam and dad the credit they deserved for how hard they grafted. That’s why every day I just try and make them proud; it’s my way of saying thank you.

  If I ever was ‘naughty’ as a kid, like when I’d storm upstairs, I had a system that would always get me back in their good books. I’ve actually passed this knowledge down to my little sister Ava (there’s a fifteen-year age gap between us but don’t worry, I’ll be chatting lots about this little tinker later). What I’d do is I would write my parents a heartfelt letter complete with illustrations of love hearts, and I’d sometimes – if I had done something really bad – lick the paper so it looked like my tears had fallen on it.

  The letter would normally read:

  To the greatest mam and dad in the world,

  I am so so so sorry for what I have done.

  I think it would be best for all of the Moffatt

  family (Mam, Dad and the dog Glen) if you

  took me back to the shop you bought me at and

  swapped me for a better kid. I am packing my

  bag right now.

  Love you and miss you already

  Scarlett xXxXx

  I would then quickly run down the stairs, shove the letter underneath the living-room door, give three loud knocks and run back upstairs. I normally had to only wait by my bag on the landing – packed with the essentials of my Noddy toy, a spare pair of pants, some Roald Dahl books and a coat – for about three to four minutes. Then I would hear the footsteps of my loving parents coming up to comfort me. They had bought into the letter. Hooray! I wouldn’t be swapped for another kid; they forgave me. So then I’d go downstairs, sit on the couch and my dad would ask me what I wanted to watch on the TV.

  I’m sure if you asked my family they wouldn’t say I was a ‘bad kid’. I always said my pleases and thank-yous. I never liked upsetting anyone or seeing anyone upset. In fact, on a few occasions I remember my mam telling me not to be so sensitive as I would see an old person sat eating by themselves and instantly burst into tears. I don’t like the thought of anyone being alone, so I’d daydream about adopting the old person and them coming to live in our spare bedroom. I’d bring them a bowl of Werther’s Originals every morning, and let them watch old documentaries about the war. They would never ever have to be alone again.

  However, despite not being a ‘bad kid’ I did have a couple of slip-ups where I would have to be sent to my least favourite seat. The naughty seat. I remember being about six and being told I was only allowed one KitKat from the tin. So I snuck to the kitchen and shoved a whole multipack down my pyjama leggings. I walked to the couch bold as brass with misshapen legs, crackling when I walked from all the tin-foil wrapping, and sitting there watching Changing Rooms on the TV, just waiting for my mam to tell me it was bedtime so I could feast upon all forty KitKat fingers. However, the gas fire was on three bars and all the chocolate soon melted to the point where it started to come through my pyjamas and looked like I had violent diarrhoea. No one won that day: I lost my favourite pair of PJs and my dad had no KitKat for his bait box for work the next morning.

  Like I said, I wasn’t a bad kid, in fact I was a bit of a hermit so I didn’t ever get into trouble outside of home. I mostly just read. I’d sit in my rocking chair (I know I sound about eighty) and read endless pages of Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss, C. S. Lewis, Jacqueline Wilson and Terry Deary. The characters were my friends – although I did have a Friday ritual with an actual human being friend. Every Friday, without fail, I would go to my best friend Rosie’s house.

  Me and Rosie lounging around with our fab fringes.

  Rosie was beautiful inside and out. Confidence oozed from her, she had the most beautiful auburn hair that went right down to her elbows (everybody complimented her on it), porcelain skin and little rosy red cheeks to match her name. We would get given 50p after school to go to Steve and Suki’s shop which would buy us a 20p mix-up bag, a gobstopper, a packet of Space Raiders crisps, a Taz chocolate bar and a juice drink that had been frozen (bloody inflation eh, you couldn’t buy a packet of crisps these days for 50p). Then we would make the walk up Busty Bank and her dad would make us pancakes for tea. Didn’t matter what the weather was – every week it would be pancakes.

  Rosie’s dad had rhubarb in his garden, so he’d give us a cup of sugar and a stick of rhubarb and we’d sit and watch Bernard’s Watch and we’d eat our rhubarb, dipping it in the sugar. Then he’d come on through with the pancakes (I had mine with golden syrup on – to be honest it was always more golden syrup than pancake) and we’d watch The Queen’s Nose.

  The only drawback was that Rosie’s was the first place I’d ever watched a programme with clowns in it, and ever since I was a bairn, I’ve hated clowns. Where does that come from? My mam said that when I was four, Darlington, a town that I live near, opened its first McDonald’s. We went along to it as soon as it opened as I was so excited for a Happy Meal. I mean, a meal that literally makes you happy. Well, imagine my disappointment when we rock up to find Ronald McDonald was there. I hated him on sight. I was petrified and closed my eyes for so long, I fell asleep.

  So I don’t know whose bright idea it was, but one time when I went round Rosie’s – it must have been around Christmas 1999 as the tree was up – we decided to watch It, the Stephen King horror story about a demonic clown (getting into the festive spirit). We were literally nine years old. Oh my God, I didn’t sleep for a week.

  I didn’t dare tell my mam, because I knew that she would go mad. But I kept saying, ‘Can I just sleep in your bedroom tonight?’

  She’d be like, ‘No, you’ve got to sleep in your own bed.’ I’d just be lying there thinking every shadow or noise was ‘It’. Absolutely terrifying.

  Here is another random fact: did you know that Johnny Depp is terrified of clowns? Not being funny but h
e is best mates with Tim Burton and played a man who had scissors for hands. So if even Captain Jack Sparrow doesn’t like clowns, I don’t feel like I’m being such a wimp after all.

  Me and Rosie never discussed It or clowns ever again. We focused on the joy of Christmas and pretended the clown night never happened. Anyway we had bigger things to worry about; it was the Timothy Hackworth Primary School Nativity Play. Me and Rosie and the rest of the class all sat down cross-legged on the cold, hard assembly floor (how we all didn’t have piles from sitting there for hours on end I do not know), with our fingers on lips to stop us chatting (which was stupid as you could still talk), all nervously awaiting the most important news of the year: who was going to play who in the school nativity play (big news when you are nine). I was crossing my fingers and toes tight and muttering to myself, ‘Please not a narrator, please not a narrator’. Followed by, ‘Please not a barnyard animal, not the barnyard animal.’ Hallelujah! I hadn’t been given my role yet and there was only the role I’d been waiting to play my whole life left … Mary.

  ‘Sorry, Scarlett, I forgot about you there, you will play … Angel number two,’ announced Mrs Henderson cheerfully.

  ‘Holy Santa Claus shit! Is this real life? I don’t even have a part with a name, I’m not even Angel number one.’

  Scarlett’s monobrow strikes yet again; after all, we can’t have an ugly child play the Virgin Mary. That’s what I imagined all the teachers had discussed in the staff room, anyway. For the third year in a row the teacher’s pet, Stacey Vaughn, was given the part of Mary and I was gutted. If only I had perfectly straight hair like Stacey Vaughn instead of looking like Winnie the Witch crossed with Crystal Tipps. If only I had nice delicate eyebrows that looked like little worms rather than one huge bushy slug across my forehead. If only I could have been given the part of Mary.

  I was not going back home and telling my mam and dad to get ready to get the old bed sheet, pipe cleaners and tinsel out yet again to make another angel costume. Nope, not happening. So what I did was I slightly manipulated the truth. ‘Sit down, family, I have very exciting news. I am going to be the mam of baby Jesus. That’s right, I got the part of Mary!’ They were buzzing. My mam called my nanny up to tell her the great news.

  So a few weeks pass and I’ve helped my mam make the Mary outfit by dyeing an old bed sheet blue and I’ve learnt my Mary lines with the help of my dad. The big night arrives. The curtains open and there I am. Angel number two – you can spot me as I’m the only angel in Bethlehem with cerulean blue undertones to my garment. Stacey came out and gave a performance that Dame Judi Dench would be proud of. As the curtain closed and everyone’s family was allowed into the class for orange dilute and biscuits, I didn’t even dare look at me mam and dad.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered, thinking I was going to get in trouble, but my mam and dad just looked at me. ‘We are proud of you whatever you do, you don’t ever have to pretend to be something you’re not.’ Then the words no child ever wants to hear: ‘We are more disappointed than angry.’

  No, not the ‘d’ word, anything but that. This was honestly the biggest lie I have ever told to date – I mean we laugh about this story now, but to be honest it did teach me a valuable lesson. Just be yourself; you should never have to lie to impress people. In the words of Dr Seuss, as read by Mam and Dad during my childhood bedtimes:

  ‘Those who mind don’t matter and those

  who matter don’t mind.’

  Chapter Two

  HOW IS EVAPORATED MILK THERE IF IT ’S ALREADY EVAPORATED?

  During World War II, British soldiers got a ration of three sheets of toilet paper a day. Americans got twenty-two (they must have bigger arses).

  The average worker bee produces about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime (remember that when you’re smothering it all over your toast).

  The original Encyclopaedia Britannica written in 1768 described our solar system as having only six planets. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (now known as a dwarf planet) were yet to be discovered.

  I loved primary school. I genuinely looked forward to sitting on my little, cheap blue plastic classroom chair, constantly knocking my knees on the tray underneath my desk, ready to learn. As I mentioned earlier, I loved learning and being able to fill my brain with facts. My passion for facts is just part of my character. My dad knows loads of facts about history. He always says if you don’t know your history, you can’t know your future. So we’ve always been into history and we’d watch documentaries together. Wherever they were in the programme, we’d actually have to have an encyclopaedia open to find out about that place.

  We went old-school because we couldn’t use Wikipedia. We only had dial-up internet, and that would take ages, especially if my mam was on the phone to my nanny. Then we couldn’t get on the internet at all, so we’d be looking through the encyclopaedia. My dad would take me to the library too. We actually liked going to the library. Can you believe that?

  This could be where my love of Professor Stephen Hawking stems from. He is my crush. I just love Hawking. He is the cleverest man on the planet – and he adores random facts! I know, of all the men I could have had a crush on – Brad Pitt, say, or George Clooney – but nope, I am all about the Hawking.

  I am a huge question asker, much to the annoyance of everyone I know really. My Google search history legitimately looks like an eight-year-old child has pinched an iPhone. Examples of my recent searches:

  How do worms eat if they haven’t got a face?

  How do I know if I’m real and not just a dream of somebody else?

  Are eyebrows facial hair?

  Who wrote the Bible?

  How is evaporated milk there if it’s already evaporated?

  It was 1996 when I first started Timothy Hackworth Primary School, I was five and enjoyed watching Brum or Chuckle Vision on a morning with my Lucky Charms (before they banned the cereal for having more sugar than a bucket of blue Smarties), Coco Pops or a dunk (a dunk is basically a cup of tea with a whole packet of biscuits; bourbons or chocolate digestives were my favourite. Never really seen the point in malted milks or plain digestive biccies).

  Although I kept myself to myself and didn’t really have a close set of friends, I enjoyed Timothy Hackworth Primary. I flitted from group to group at playtime and never really sat with the same person at dinner. Even though Rosie was my best friend we didn’t actually hang around together much in the playground. I also never had someone I could instantly run to when the teacher would say, ‘OK class, everybody get into pairs.’ Sometimes I would water all the plants in the junior building for the teachers during break and I would have a little chat in my head to the plants. It’s statements like that, when I look back, that make me now see why I didn’t have a squad.

  I’d love to just sit in and read a book. Why would I want to be outside when it’s spitting with rain, playing bulldog, stick-in-the-mud, kiss, cuddle and torture or making daisy chains? I would much rather be reading about what trouble Tracy Beaker was getting herself into at the Dumping Ground. Jacqueline Wilson was who I wanted to be when I was older; I would read her books – The Illustrated Mum, The Suitcase Kid – over and over again. ‘Goosebumps’ books were my favourites on rainy days, like How I Got My Shrunken Head or Say Cheese and Die. Books and the characters in them were always my friends. I’d be transported into another world and for that half an hour I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could be beautiful, popular, confident, even a famous movie star.

  Imagine my delight when at the age of six our school is introduced to this brand new event: World Book Day. Reading out the newsletter to my mam and dad over my shepherd’s pie at teatime, I explained that the whole school, even the teacher, was going to dress as any character from a book that we wanted. This wasn’t a mufti day where you would pay 50p and wear your own clothes; oh no, this was going to be so much better.

  ‘Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz?’ my mam suggested. Then my dad piped up, ‘Or she could
go as a Disney princess?’ I just couldn’t decide. The date of World Book Day arrived and in true Moffatt form we were lastminute.com. I had no outfit and I was stressing out. Me mam had an idea. She came from the kitchen with a pair of black tights, some newspaper, my black school headband, a roll of black bin bags and some yellow gaffer tape. ‘You’ll go as a bee,’ she announced.

  I was fuming. I know the expression ‘she could wear a bin bag and look good’, but come on mother, this was social suicide. Surely I couldn’t pull this off? Sweating I was, all padded out with newspaper tucked into a bin bag, held together by strips of yellow gaffer tape. Off to school I trotted with my character’s book in my hand: R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps’ Why I’m Afraid of Bees. I even came second and won a certificate for best dressed. See, old-school costumes are the best, none of this store-bought princess dress with matching head-dress malarkey.

  Despite loving to learn, my favourite part of the day was still dinnertime. I bloody loved school dinners. Those handy little blue trays with a compartment for your drink, cutlery, main and dessert. Turkey Twizzlers, the cheapest baked beans they could find in tins the size of wheelie bins and potato smiley faces were my favourite. Followed by that chocolate cake that’s covered in sugar with the texture of a brick, with lashings of green minty custard. Jamie Oliver, eat your heart out. Kids these days don’t know what they’re missing now they have this Pasta King and salad bar shit going on. Just give them some of those 9p sausages and chunky chips, builds the immune system up. Never did any of us nineties kids any harm.

  Remember school trips? I never went on any of the extravagant ones, but I did love a school trip. I remember being in Year 6 when it was the year of the millennium, 2000. The majority of the class were going to Paris. When it was announced, all the other girls, even at eleven years old, were talking about trying to sneak a glass of wine when the teachers weren’t looking and how they couldn’t wait to try authentic Paris pizza. I quickly pointed out that Paris wasn’t known for its pizza, it originated in Italy, and mentioned how I couldn’t wait to try their local delicacy of snails. After that conversation it seemed like everyone had already worked out the sleeping arrangements at the hostel (without me). So I decided it would be best if I didn’t go.