by Hilary McKay
Nor did he say (as he would have done in the very bad old days before my friend Kiran partially tamed him) ‘Life is tough. Get used to it.’
He said, ‘Big school will use the results to decide which classes to put you all in.’
WHAT?
‘So those of you who do well will go into top sets,’ continued Mr Spencer, ‘and those of you who do less well. … won’t.’
That was the first time I realised that in September, when we go to Big School, we will be split up forever.
There will be no more Class 6.
I have known these people since I was five. I have spent more time with them than I have with my brother and sisters. We know each other’s habits and jackets and fears and school bags. We have quarrelled and been kind and helped each other out. Where would I be without my best friends Kiran and Molly who are ten times clever than me?
Yes, where will I be?
Not with them.
My SATS results will make sure of that.
What can I do?
Join all the after school exam classes?
Yes.
Cheat?
If I can think of a way.
Panic?
Yes. I am doing that already.
Panicking.
28th April 2008
As a change from SATS panicking (don’t imagine it has stopped though) I will write about Daddy’s new shop which he calls Studio Two.
Hmm.
It is one of those very long narrow buildings in the market square. There is a studio at the top where he is supposed to live/paint/cook the books, an art gallery underneath that, an antique shop on the ground floor and coffee in the basement. Victims/Customers are encouraged to roam freely between floors, lingering and admiring, and hopefully parting with vast quantities of cash. The staff are supplied by Mummy, who has access to unlimited numbers of starving students and charming but reformed young offenders. Often Saffron and Sarah work there as well, serving astonishingly priced teas and coffees, joining the SSs and YOs in their lunchtime feasts of out-of-date bagels, and keeping an eye on Daddy.
‘We often have to quell the DFCs,’ says Saffron, grinning.
DFCs are Drooling Female Customers, because Daddy is still (alas) charming.
Sarah has a particularly good way of quelling DFCs. Whenever she is asked any version of the usual question (‘Can you tell me about that absolutely gorgeous man with the smile/paint palette/vast crowd of admirers?’ she says very firmly and sweetly:
‘He’s gay.’
12th May 2008
SATS WEEK
The only good thing about SATS week is that the revision classes have stopped.
I have been going to them all by myself because Molly and Kiran very kindly refused to take part, saying they were already so far ahead of me that I would never catch them up it they carried on learning.
It is Science today. All weekend Saffron and Sarah have been trying to explain eclipses and forces and how the sun manages to burn without any oxygen and why gravity only pulls things down to ground level and no further, and why, if you did manage to dig an impossible hole all the way through to the other side of the world, you could not afterwards jump down it and pop up a minute or two later among the kangaroos.
How I wish I had been born in the sensible olden days, when science had not been invented and the world was run by ancient gods and primitive powers and magic.
‘It must have been lovely,’ agreed Mummy, when I mentioned this, and she gave me a largish blue stone with a hole in it threaded on to a silk thong to wear round my neck in the exams.
‘It came from a sacred mountain on the borders of Pakistan,’ she said. ‘And it has been dipped into every holy well that you pass on a bike between North Wales and the Hindu Kush. I know because I dipped it. It will avert the evil eye …’
(Just what I need)
‘… and free your soul from error and fear.’
Oh good.
23rd June 2008
News from the Casson Family.
Indigo and Saffron are no fun at all. All they talk about is exams. Sarah is just as bad, only instead of exams she talks about cars. She is getting her own car for her 18th birthday, she says. She has the Sat Nav for it already, and she is always checking out exotic locations.
‘Hammerfest, North Norway,’ she announces. ‘Only 44.09 hours non-stop, not avoiding toll roads. Their coat of arms is a polar bear and there are reindeer in the streets. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t go there. Who’s coming with me?’
So we all agree to come and start googling ‘Permafrost’ and the next day she has discovered some place that she read about when she was ten years old actually exists in real life. And is only 22.34 hours away, including crossing the Channel and the Alps.
‘Admit that’s quick,’ says Sarah. ‘Rose, stop sulking. We can always do Norway on the way home.’
Caddy and Michael and Buttercup are still living in the Zoo Flat. They are perfectly happy but rather squashed. Daddy’s antique shop is very, very popular. This is mostly because of the large wicker basket outside the door into which he dumps what he supposes is junk. So far he has accidentally sold for nearly nothing a small Saxon cross, a first edition of Peter Rabbit and a very nasty Victorian pendant made of human hair.
And diamonds.
Mummy is very supportive though, and says, ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,’ (although she is far from an omelette expert).
School.
Amazing. I told Mr Spencer how unhappy I was about SATS and Big School and not being with Kiran and Molly because of being so unclever. And Mr Spencer said, ‘Hmmm, hmmm, stop worrying, Rose. I’ll see what I can do’ !!!!!!
Kiran is doing a sponsored silence. Five days now. Very peaceful.
Molly has decided on her future career. She is going to be a Green Peacer and save the planet. (Thank goodness for that.) She already knows the Japanese for ‘Please leave that whale alone.’
So.
End of the news.
15th July 2008
Oh, the end of term is very, very near now. We have had Last Sports Day and Last Healthy Dinner Day and Last Swimming and Last Summer Fair. We are getting old. The whole school is getting old. Even those squidgy little infants in Class 1 are looking too big for the sandpit, and at lunchtime they can get the lids off their yoghurt pots no trouble at all. Before they know it they will be in Class 2 where there is no Wendy house. They will have to survive the Class 2 playground where the footballs are not made of sponge and no painted jungle animals brighten the walls. There will be a new lot of little squidgy ones in their place but I will not be there to see them.
I will be at Big School.
I am scared of going to Big School.
Change the subject.
‘What shall we buy Mr Spencer for a leaving present?’ asks Molly. ‘We have collected £19.60 so it can be really good. I thought a David Attenborough DVD (£11.99), a goldfish from the garden centre to go into that empty goldfish tank (£1.20), some weed for the goldfish (49p), goldfish food (£1.65) and a genuine artificial silk tie. They have got some on the market that play Nellie the Elephant. She packed her bags and said goodbye to the circus, so I think it would be appropriate. They are £2.50 or two for £4 but he wouldn’t want two. That leaves £1.77 for Pic’n’Mix or 57p if we buy two goldfish which might be kinder. Why are you crying, Rose?’
I am crying because of Nellie the Elephant.
It is a very sad song.
12th August 2008
Kiran and I had Buttercup (that is my eleven month old nephew, and no, of course he is not really called Buttercup) all to ourselves today. Babysitting. Buttercup needs a lot of babysitting at the moment because he has suddenly learned to crawl very fast, and also to pull himself up and grab things that were out of his reach until last week. This makes him very happy, and when he is happy he makes loud noises like an engine revving up, and flaps his hands and stomps his feet.
He
made his engine revving noise when Kiran arrived.
‘What’ll we do with him?’ asked Kiran.
I repeated Caddy’s parting instruction (‘Watch every move’) and continued entertaining him by balancing a piece of paper on my head and groaning when it fell to the ground. This had him completely rocking, but it was not enough for Kiran.
‘Let’s teach him to read,’ she said. ‘Imagine how surprised Caddy and Michael will be when he picks up a book, and just, like, reads!’
They certainly would be surprised at that, because Buttercup can’t even talk yet.
‘Can’t talk?’ asked Kiran. ‘What, not at all?’
‘No.’
‘Not a word?’
‘Hadn’t you noticed?’
‘I noticed he didn’t talk,’ said Kiran. ‘I didn’t know he couldn’t. I thought he just hadn’t anything he wanted to say. I could talk when I was six months old.’
‘What could you say?’
‘Anything, I think,’ said Kiran. ‘My parents have a video of me when I was much younger than Buttercup asking very nicely, ‘Would someone please open the door?’’
Oh dear.
So, anyway, that is how we spent the morning, teaching Buttercup to talk.
It was the most exhausting morning of my life.
We tried with bribery, and we tried with begging. We bounced out at him from unexpected places, shouting useful words. We tried in total darkness, like you do with parrots, and we tried with a spotlight trained on the objects we were naming. We sang, chanted, whispered and role-played.
Also from time to time we lay on the floor and groaned with despair.
Buttercup loved it. He flapped and zoomed and stomped and revved and made starfish handprints on everything he touched. And he chewed the phone, and swung on Kiran’s plaits, emptied a vase of flowers and tried to eat them, bit my hand, pulled the backs off several books, flung orange juice into an orange juice fountain, ransacked the kitchen bin, emptied Mummy’s handbag and wore it like a hat. All this, while we did not take our eyes off him.
And he learnt to say one word;
‘KIKEE!’
‘Crikey?’ asked Kiran. ‘Crikey? Wherever do you think he heard that?’
1st September 2008
Exam results are out. It would be showing off to write how well Saffy and Sarah and Indigo did, so I will say nothing.
I will write about David instead.
David is Indigo’s friend from school. He keeps a drum kit in our shed, and most of the time he lives in our attic because he does not get on very well with his mum.
Anyway.
All this summer David has been working at the burger stand in the market place. They sell mile-long hot dogs, and turkey rolls with stuffing, and roast pork sandwiches and things like that. You can smell the burger stand right across the market place, and if you are even very slightly hungry you become suddenly starving and can think of nothing else. Since David has been there they have started using a hot plate to make pancakes. Those are my favourites, pancakes rolled up with cinnamon-fried apple slices inside.
David invented them all by himself in our kitchen.
After David had invented his fried apple pancakes but before he got his exam results the burger stand owner offered him a permanent job.
Nobody could have been more pleased than David was the night he rushed home smelling of turkey and fried apples to tell us this news. And now he is leaving school forever, and he is going to be a burger stand man, and he is saving up for a burger stand of his own.
I am writing this to explain that even if someone gets one ‘C’ and five ‘G’s and two ‘U’s for Ungraded it is still possible to be very happy.
Like David.
9th October 2008
Big school.
Well, for a start, nobody calls it Big School. Only me. In my head. In the mornings when I wake up and think ‘WAAAAHH! Big School! How much longer can I keep this up? I won’t get out until I am seventeen and by then I will be past caring.’ Before we started BS they gave us a list of rules. This list was very inaccurate indeed. Here are the rules that are not true:
The No Make Up Rule Isn’t True.
Au contraire (French for not remotely like it). Here in Year 7 there is not a female-owned pencil case that does not contain at least three shades of lip gloss. Mascara matt-black lowered lashes are everywhere you look. To arrive at school unblackened would be equivalent to arriving carrying a large placard saying, ‘My Mum Won’.
And don’t forget to pluck your eyebrows, otherwise you will have a monobrow.
Oh dear. I am finding it very difficult to switch so completely from only sometimes washing my face to all this early morning effort. Why don’t they make a rule saying Full Make Up Compulsory, Monobrows Banned?
Then we could all relax.
The Homework Amnesty Rule Isn’t True
‘No homework,’ they promised, ‘for the first four weeks. To get you used to our Routine.’
But by Day 3 they were saying, ‘This is not homework. But we would like it if you did it. It would show that you mean to make a success of your time here with us.’
So I didn’t do it.
And had to go to a Little Talk.
About not doing non-homework.
Is that fair?
No.
The Uniform Rule is Not True.
Oh, how annoyed Daddy is about that! He bought me the whole lot (×2) plus black lace up shoes. Our uniform is purple. I looked like a deep purple beetle.
But only for one day.
Hurray!
I have discovered that any old rags will do as long as you tie a blazer round your waist.
Another thing that I have discovered is that at Big School nobody knows who you are. Except the other people in your form.
I am the Class Tattoo Artist. I have tattooed most of the girls and all the boys with special marker pens from the art shop that do not wash off. I do it in the dinner queue which stretches halfway round the canteen. Even Year 9s and 10s come for my tattoos. And they say, ‘Are you Saffy and Indigo Casson’s sister? Cool.’
So that’s okay.
Recently I have stopped getting lost all the time.
And made friends with the nice person in the office who gives back the confiscated mobile phones.
And joined the Drama Club.
And actually, it’s not bad here at Big School.
ONLY DON’T CALL IT THAT.
3rd November 2008
For nearly a year my brother Indigo has been saving up, and I have just found out what for: Iceland.
Not the shop, the country. Every other year school does a field trip there for the ‘A’ level Geography students. I don’t know why I am so surprised that Indigo is going. Ever since I can remember he has had a thing about the ends of the world. The North and South poles, I mean. The arctic and the Antarctic. Indigo is the family expert on pack ice, Northern Lights, glaciers, and permafrost. Iceland will be his Furthest North. It is very nearly arctic up there, and one of the things they do on the field trip, says Indigo, is take a boat trip out to the North and cross the Arctic Circle.
So no wonder he wants to go.
‘It is just a start,’ says Indigo. ‘One day I will go to the Pole.’
But.
I have heard the arctic is melting. Defrosting, like a too-warm fridge.
Because of global warming.
I am doing my best to hold it back. Turning off lights and having very short showers which my friend Molly (who is an eco-warrior) says will help a lot. (Are the ice caps really melting because of hot shower water running down the plug holes and into the rivers and out to sea? ‘Something like that,’ says Molly.)
I really do not want the North Pole to melt, especially not before Indigo gets there.
‘Well, then, stay cool,’ orders Molly, and adds, ‘Cool is the new cool.’
‘The world needs more Mollys,’ says Indigo.
22nd December 2008
> Christmas cards are arriving with every post. A lot of them have printed letters inside, from people we have not seen for ages. The letters are descriptions of everything that the family has done for the past year, holidays, exam results, newly discovered talents, all squashed onto one page with little tiny blurry photos in the corners.
Every time a new one arrives Mummy exclaims (before she stuffs it behind the kitchen clock), ‘Oh, how thoughtful! Oh, how organised! Why don’t we do something like that?’
So we are.
At least I am.
The Christmas Casson Family Junk Mail
So another year has gone by! How fast it was [that is how they all begin]. Where shall we start with the Latest News?
With Daddy of course, otherwise known as Bill Casson, famous artist. Poor old Daddy is going very bald on top and his antique business is turning into a coffee shop owing to the Credit Crunch. However, he stills calls it The Gallery and prances around in a pale cream jacket, charming old ladies into parting with their cash.
He is not as appreciated as he should be.
(He says).
Mummy.
Well. Mummy has started painting nudes.
That’s enough about Mummy.
The Casson Family Exciting Holiday.
For various reasons we did not do this. Thank goodness. Because what could be worse than being cooped up with no one to talk to but relations and none of your own things for TWO WHOLE WEEKS.
Newly Discovered Family Talents.
None yet.
Saffron.
Saffy went to Italy with Sarah in the spring. She came back with her hair dyed bright pink. Sarah came back with a shoulder tattoo (sea horse) and more piercings (eyebrow).
Indigo and David-who-lives-in-the-attic spent a lot of the summer camping at various muddy music festivals. They had lots of swampy adventures doing this, but the worst was when sounds from a nearby tent led David to believe the girl inside was having a baby. So he rushed to help as quickly as possible, chopping his way into the tent with his Swiss army knife. Oh dear. And she wasn’t having a baby after all. A snail had got into her tent.