by Hayley Long
Contents
CONtemPLatING the COsmIC COmPLeXItIes Of CharLOtte BeYONCé BIGGs
a wOBBLY MOmeNt ON the waY tO sChOOL
three Is a traGIC NumBer
ChINChILLas
hOw MItChING Off sChOOL MaDe MY Mum GO eDGY aND hOw Gareth stINGeCOmBe MaDe everYthING Ok aGaIN
the Jean GeNIe
what I saw whILe I was UPsiDE DOwN
fLatteNING the humPs
GOOse MCkenzIe thiNks she’s ChoCOLate
seQuINs aND surPrIses
wiNNIe
OsCar wiLDe sPOke to Me
aND theN I sPOke tO GOOse
aND theN Jlml heNDrIX askeD me the CrltlCaL QuestlON
a shOrt DIsCusslON Of the DlfflCuLtles whICh CaN arise frOm BeING NOt Quite the MIDDLe ChILD Of twO aND a haLf ChlLDreN
But aCtuaLLY there are NO eXCuses
hair MutlLatlON 1
shark MutlLatlON 3
sometimes I’m a Bit Naive
QuestlONs I’D Like aNswereD
BeING fraNk with BLake
hOw Gareth stINGeCOmBe OffereD Me his sausaGe
several shOCkING reveLatIONs
hOw I GLImPseD the LIGht whILe I was IN the Dark
aND hOw Gareth stINGeCOmBe Gave me a QuICk POke whILe his PareNts were LINe DaNCING
aBOut the author
INtervlew with the authOr
Endnotes
CONtemPLatING the COsmIC COmPLeXItIes Of CharLOtte BeYONCé BIGGs
I am an astronaut surfing a wave on the Sea of Tranquillity. I have driven too fast down the motorway to Misery, sailed too far on the sinking ship to Stress and almost lost my head on the bullet train to Oblivion. But now I am gliding gracefully in a positive direction. It won’t be a high-speed journey and I must try to be patient and allow myself to float with the cosmic flow. The coastline is getting closer and Chill-out Beach is just in the next bay.
This is the kind of colossal weirdness that Blake comes out with. Blake is from New Zealand and wears flip-flops even when it’s raining. Sometimes, the stuff he says is so incredibly cheesy that I have to laugh even if I’m feeling miserable. I can’t stop myself. It’s sort of like a rainbow suddenly appearing smack bang in the middle of a thunderstorm. Except that it’s in my head. When the rainbow appears, we both sit back and have a good chuckle because Blake says that laughter is a helpful reaction which leads to a positive feeling. But then, when we’ve finished having our chuckle, he says, ‘Seriously though, Lottie, do you get my point?’ and almost always I nod my head and say, ‘Yeah I do, Blake,’ because underneath all that space-age rubbish, Blake says stuff which makes total perfect sense. He is very helpful and nice and I like him. Also, he looks a lot like Johnny Depp but without the pirate make-up.
Blake is helping me to sort my head out. Usually, my head is a pretty neat place filled up with pop music and poetry and moments of total and utter Laugh Out Loud magic that I share with my BEST EVER friend, Goose. Moments like the other day when me and Goose went shopping in town and pretended for the ENTIRE TIME that we were called Janice and Jonice and that we were on a two-week vacation from Kentucky, USA. How I didn’t collapse with laughter-induced breathing difficulties when Goose strolled into Gladbagz and asked to see their latest selection of fanny packs,1 I will never know. Or like last week when we tested whether it’s possible to eat a whole custard slice in one bite. (It’s not.)
But last term, my head got all messed up.
None of that matters now though. Blake says I must focus on the present and not get hung up about the past. He’s right. If I think too much about what happened – like how I fell down a mental manhole and how I got arrested and how I thought my house would fall down if I got out of bed – I get upset and want to scream. This isn’t a helpful reaction and it doesn’t lead to a nice feeling. So I’m going to bin all those crappy thoughts and focus instead on the cool stuff in my life.
Stuff like:
1. How me and
have officially been an item for six entire weeks and how I still fancy his
colossal manly thighs and how he Still doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that I have a nose the same shape as a potato. Incidentally, Gareth Stingecombe is the best rugby player in my school. He’s got green eyes and fluffy hair and a big smile and a cute wonky tooth. He floats my boat and tickles my fancy. (Not literally.)
2. How my NUMBER ONE friend in the whole world is Goose McKenzie, who just happens to be the coolest and cleverest girl in my school. Although interestingly, she only got an A grade for her GCSE English coursework folder – whereas I got an A.
3. How my mum has said that if I continue going to my counselling sessions and also make a good start to Year 11, she’ll buy me a baby rabbit.
So I’d better start stocking up on hay and carrots right now because Blake says that as long as I keep following the path of positivity, Year 11 should be a box of budgies.2
When I get my baby rabbit, I’m going to call it Hendrix – whether it’s a boy rabbit or a girl rabbit. This is in honour of my most favourite dead person who has ever existed. The Late Great Jimi Hendrix. He was a Rock God Extraordinaire and the man with the best hair that has ever been witnessed by any living being on the face of this planet. If I had hair like Jimi’s, I would look approximately like this and everybody at school would be sick with jealousy.
Sadly, I’ve got the common sort of hair which is very straight and very boring and definitely not an Afro. I have to go to a lot of trouble to make it look interesting. At the end of last term, when I went all weird and got totally cheesed off with my life, I stopped washing it and started to look a bit of a state. Doctor Edwards at the hospital told me I should keep an eye on my hair and use it as an indicator of potential future depressive episodes. She said that glossy, healthy hair is a sign of a happy, healthy person. This means that I’m currently as chirpy as a chipmunk because my hair, at this precise moment in time, is nothing short of SENSATIONAL. This morning, I stayed in the bath for absolutely ages and gave myself a double application of Melody Total Black-Out hair colorant so that I can start Year 11 without the shame of having any of my beige roots showing.
I am EXTREMELY impressed with the results. Something about Melody Total Black-Out has made my hair look very sleek and stylish. I actually think I quite closely resemble an Ancient Egyptian – which is an ultra-sophisticated look and a radical departure from my norm because I’m very much a modern-day kind of person and from Cardiff.3 My new style direction has given me a pale and interesting appearance – a bit like this.
When my mum saw my new hair she said, ‘Oh Lottie, you’re not turning into one of those sulky gothic people, are you?’
She means goths. There are quite a lot of them in Whitchurch village where I live. When they’re not in their sixth-form lessons, they sit on the bench on the traffic island in the middle of the road and look depressed.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not. Don’t be daft!’
My mum raised her eyebrows and said, ‘It’s my house. I can be daft in it whenever I like.’
‘Whoops!’ I said, and then, ‘Sorry.’ Sometimes my mouth just runs away from me and I forget who I’m talking to.
‘So what’s with the jet black hair then?’
‘I’m rocking a new style for Year 11 because I don’t want to turn up on the first day with minging beige roots. I think I look like an Ancient Egyptian.’
My mum seemed a bit surprised and then she said, ‘Sorry, Cleopatra, I didn’t realize. But now you’ve pointed it out, I can completely see that it’s a very Egyptian look you’re rocking.’ And then she told me to go and scrub all of the black stains out of the bath.
My mum likes to think she�
��s funny. Sometimes she is but mostly she’s just toe-curlingly embarrassing. A premium example of this is when Gareth Stingecombe came round my house for the very first time. He brought the DVD of Dumb and Dumber with him and a massive box of rum-flavoured chocolates so that we could have a laugh and get drunk. My mum was actually very thoughtful and respected our privacy and went out for a meal with her friend. But before she went, she cornered me in the kitchen and whispered, ‘I’ll be home by eleven at the latest. Make sure Gareth is gone by then, and can you also make sure that he keeps it well and truly tucked inside his trousers.’
My mum is a police sergeant. You’d think that she would know better than to make criminally tasteless remarks of this nature.
As it happens, she needn’t have worried. Neither Gareth nor I have done it yet and we aren’t in any hurry to either. I’ve discussed our relationship with him and I’ve decided that we should both save ourselves until we’re at least twenty-one. This will allow us the time to really get to know each other on an intellectual and spiritual level and also, by then, we’ll be so desperate to do it that it’s bound to be a more passionate and thrilling experience. Until then, I’m perfectly content with a bit of fully-clothed contact and some extended pashy snogging.
I’m going to do a swift topic shift now because this subject is making me feel a bit funny.
Blake reckons that I should try not to worry too much about what happened last term. He says that the world is a mixed-up, confusing place and I just got a bit lost for a while and it gave me an attack of the collywobbles. I’ve been seeing Blake every other Friday afternoon for a few weeks now and I don’t mind admitting that I was very nervous to begin with. After all, he’s a counsellor in an adolescent mental health unit and I’m an adolescent with a reasonably significant mental disorder. It’s not a fantastic social situation to be in.
My mum came in with me the first time because I’d probably have run away otherwise. We were both quite surprised when we saw Blake because he was definitely not what we were expecting. He was young and smiley and had longish hair and was wearing flip-flops even though the rest of his clothes were quite smart. To be honest, I’d prepared myself for someone who looked a bit more like this:
And he was a man. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. Especially one who looked like Johnny Depp.
Having my mum there with me made it a total waste of time. I was too embarrassed to say anything much in front of her, so instead I just sat and looked at the floor and answered everything Blake said in a mumble-grumble voice. And then, finally, his alarm clock went off. Blake always has an alarm clock in his room so that we both know exactly how much time is left in the session.
The next time I went, I made Mum wait in the reception area. Blake asked me to write a list of all the stuff I’m good at. At first, I couldn’t come up with a single thing and then Blake said, ‘There’s no need to be cool about it. Everyone is good at something. I’m really good at swimming and making smoothies. Be loud and proud and write down two or three things that you can do better than most other people.’ And I sat there in silence for a bit and then, because I was aware that the alarm clock would go off soon and I was running out of time, I wrote:
Blake looked at my list and said, ‘Cool! You know what, Lottie, a healing mind is an occupied mind. There’s something I want you to do. You’re obviously good at writing. I mean – Crikey Dick!4 - you got an A. So I want you to keep a journal—’
‘I don’t do diaries,’ I said really quickly. This is true. I just don’t see the point of them.
‘Woah there!’ said Blake, even quicker. ‘Not a diary. A diary is a bit too blah, blah, blah. I’m talking more of a journal—’
‘What’s the difference?’ I said.
‘A journal,’ said Blake, and he did this big dramatic pause and waggled his eyebrows like he was about to tell me the entire secret history of the cosmos, ‘is a daily record of events!’
‘That sounds like a diary,’ I said. ‘I don’t do diaries. Or journals.’
Blake rubbed his chin. ‘When I say journal, I don’t actually mean that. Forget the word journal. I want you to do something a little more specific. I want you to keep a notepad of your emotions. An emotion notepad. You can use it to write down all the good things and bad things and interesting things that happen to you, and that way, it’ll be easier to keep a track of your ups and downs. It’ll help you contemplate life. And besides, it will sharpen that artistic talent you’ve got.’ He put his head on one side and gave me a hopeful look. He was blatantly very excited by the prospect of an Emotion Notepad. For one moment, I almost thought he was going to start clapping. ‘Reckon you can do that?’
I thought about it. ‘Still sounds like a diary,’ I said.
‘It’s not a diary,’ said Blake, really quickly. ‘It’s an—’
‘Emotion Notepad. Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ I turned the idea over in my mind for a moment. It didn’t seem too awful. ‘I’m not writing in an actual scatty notepad, though,’ I added firmly. ‘I’ll do it on my computer, if you don’t mind. And I’ll do it in my own way.’ Then, almost immediately, I rolled my eyes and pulled a slightly peeved face because I suddenly felt like I’d been conned into writing something which sounded suspiciously like a diary. Blake just smiled back at me all innocently and before I could even stop myself, I realized I was smiling back at him. It’s extremely difficult to argue with somebody who looks like Johnny Depp.
So now I’m sitting in my bedroom, keeping my healing mind active by typing about all this stuff and, to be honest, I’m so incredibly busy that I don’t actually mind too much that it’s Wednesday the 5th September tomorrow and that just happens to be the first day of Year 11!
I can handle it. I’m surfing a wave on the Sea of Tranquillity. And besides that, Gareth Stingecombe will be there by the tuck shop to meet me.
a wOBBLY MOmeNt ON the waY tO sChOOL
Even though I’ve had my lucky knickers5 on all day, I have to say that so far Year 11 has been a total let-down. I have upset my mum and stropped out on Goose. On the upside, I’ve also discovered chinchillas, possibly got myself a new job, and written a poem which expresses the depth of my passion for Gareth Stingecombe. I wrote my poem very early this morning before I was even dressed. I don’t want to sound big-headed or anything but I think it’s quite good. Actually, I think it’s bordering on brilliant. It’s a lot more spiritual and sophisticated than anything I’ve previously written and I think it’s easily as good as the poems we are forced to analyse at school. In fact, it’s probably better. Here it is.
Sonnet to Gareth Stingecombe: Oh Why Do I Wake?
Oh why do I wake with thoughts of your thighs?
Is it because I’m thrilled and excited
By their manly strength and colossal size?
Oh why do I wake feeling delighted?
Is it because of a far distant dream
Where you run towards me, hot and breathless,
Dressed in the shirt of the Welsh rugby team?
These dreams engulf me and I am helpless.
But Gareth, my sweet, I needn’t worry,
You are more than a spectre of my mind
Who floats by night and flits in a hurry.
You’re definitely real and sexy and kind.
And even when afar, you’re in my thoughts,
Naked, apart from your tight rugby shorts.
It took me ages to write and it’s lucky that I woke up so early or I never would have got it finished before breakfast. I always try to get up early these days. Blake says that instead of lazing around in bed, I should ‘rattle my dags’ and find something to keep me occupied. When I asked him exactly what he meant by this, he said, ‘Do the ton . . . jump the judder bar . . . speed things up a bit in the morning and get your day off to a flying start.’
I swear to God, I know he’s from New Zealand, which is where hobbits come from, but sometimes it feels like Blake is talking a totally foreign language. My English
teacher, Mr Wood, would have an attack of the collywobbles if he heard him.
To the untrained eye, my sonnet may appear to be an effortless outpouring of art and emotion but, believe me, it wasn’t. Sonnets are actually extremely complicated and difficult things to write and I don’t think I’ll bother writing another. I just don’t have the time. Even so, I’ve now got much more respect for William Shakespeare.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of showing my poem to Goose. In general, me and Goose are very open with each other and I feel as if I can talk to her about pretty much anything. At the end of last term, when I first started breaking out in hot flushes and a pash rash every time Gareth looked in my direction, it was Goose I turned to for guidance and advice. Just like it was Goose who turned to me when she thought she was growing an eleventh toe. And it was me who convinced her that she wasn’t. But even so, there are some things I know I should keep to myself. My Justin Timberlake lucky knickers are one, and my sonnet to Gareth should have been another.
I was already slightly fed up this morning because Goose arrived at my house over ten minutes late. When I opened the door, she said, ‘Sorry, Lottie. The handle fell off the bathroom door while I was cleaning my teeth and my dad had to bash the door down with a chair so that I could get out.’
Goose is always late for things and she always has a dodgy, made-up excuse to explain why. Normally, I don’t mind, but on this occasion I was feeling a bit edgy because I really didn’t want to be late for school and me and Gareth’s romantic rendezvous round the back of the tuck shop.
Then Goose said, ‘What’s with the black hair? Have you turned into a goth?’
This made me feel edgier still. I grabbed my bag and my dinner ticket and said, ‘Of course not. This look is blatantly inspired by the fashion choices of the ultra-chic Ancient Egyptians from Cairo.’
Goose looked a bit confused for a moment and then she said, ‘Oh yeah. Now you say it, I can see it. Sort of.’
I shouted goodbye to Mum and walked with Goose towards our school. We’d barely reached the end of my road before Goose said, ‘I’m thinking of forming a new band. Something a bit like the Foo Fighters – except with no male members and with a more disco sound. Do you want to join?’