by Candy Guard
For Robin
Contents
1 Wedding Jells
2 Stupid Ideas
3 Street Prance
4 Toast Addicts
5 Cat Napper
6 Low Fatty Diet
7 Is that a Rumble I Can Hear?
8 Rule Brittainee
9 The Price of Beauty
10 False Advertising
11 Exotic Animals
12 Count Fatcula
13 So.M.G.!
14 Unobtainabubble
15 Junk and Disorderly
16 Jelly Mould
17 Blooming Bridesmaids
18 Bums in the Pool
19 Old Onions
20 Old Girls
21 Battle of Epping Forest
22 The Bells Are Going to Chime!
23 Rucksack of Hope
24 A Todal Dork
25 Queen Myf
26 Honeymoon for One
27 The Eyes Have It
28 A Twinge of Excitement
–1–
Remember how I told you my mum and quite likes her boyfriend, Julian? Well she’s thought of the BEST excuse for a party EVER!
She and Julian are getting married! It’s a leap year, so SHE asked HIM.
He tried to get out of it.
Mum was flummoxed for a moment.
Then she s-l-o-w-l-y started to take offence.
It wasn’t the most of proposals or acceptances but Mum was satisfied and immediately started doing the table plan . . .
. . . forgetting to include Julian.
It was Mum’s fourth marriage so it obviously wasn’t going to be a big posh affair with a meringue dress, a cake and speeches. Just something small and informal . . .
AS IF !!!?*?!?
She wanted six bridesmaids to suit her shades-of-summer colour scheme.
They were going to be:
And in desperation:
Fatty the dog and Ricky from next door were going to be pageboys, and Fatty was also the ring bearer.
(Yes, you can get cat and dog wedding outfits. If you don’t believe me, look on eBay.)
My annoying older brother Jay
is going to be best man, and his friends – Jock, Brendan and (my ex-crush)
– ushers.
(Obviously, I was only cheered up for a nanosecond regarding Roger’s involvement – he would be bound to see me looking my worst – again.)
Myf and Roobs were with excitement, Julian with naked FEAR and Jay with repressed about being best man.
I already couldn’t take any more! And I’d only known for 2 minutes and 6 seconds.
–2–
I met Myf and Roobs in the shed in my back garden. We have been members of the Faithful Club since primary school but now we are at Big School it has become more of a to avoid any accusations of .
Ricky Chin from next door is our only boy member, and had obviously already forgotten about the meeting. Instead he was in the garden torturing Fatty (who considers himself to be Ricky’s BFF) with a digestive biscuit. A fine pair of pageboys they’ll make.
Myf and Roobs were about being bridesmaids because they had never been bridesmaids before
Whereas I hadthree times.
I let them get it out of their systems before we got down to the serious business of the day . . .
How to raise enough money to get tickets to see
are our band. Even Ricky () likes them and they are going on this year!!
The members are:
Keyboards and lead singer – Buster Bauble (who Myf and I not-so-secretly fancy)
Lead guitar – Archie Triumph
Bass – Dizzy Deakins
Drums – Jaz Jenkins
Jaz Jenkins is the ugly one who Roobs fancies, because she did a mathematical equation to work out which one she has the greatest chance of marrying using information gatherered on their website
JAZ JENKINS
Twitter followers: 3
Height: 4’9”
Weight: 7 stone
Age: 17
Interests: Maths, computers, Manga
We play their album
We continuously.
Right, OK, ideas to make money.
Last meeting we said:
1. Go on Dragon’s Den – stupid idea
2. Buy a shop – totally stupid
3. Rent out shed – bit stupid
4. Have fete – slightly less stupid, but still stupid
5. Beauty parlour, cleaning service, put on musical in West End . . .
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.
Roobs said,
And Myf said,
Eventually I gave them crisps and they settled down, but then we just stared at the poster for the tour in a .
Fatty was outside, having smelt the hydrogenated fat . . .
. . . and Ricky and Fatty came in and stared at the crisps. Fatty was doing his lazy begging.
‘I know!’ Ricky said. ‘You could enter Fatty for dog shows!’
‘Don’t be ,’ I said. ‘Look at him.’
Myf said, ‘Yeah! We can enter him for the Fattest, Ugliest, Most-Badliest Behaved Dog section!’
Myf and Roobs .
‘Do you mind? Only I am allowed to insult Fatty. And anyway he isn’t fat.’
‘So why’s he called ‘Fa – ’ Myf began, but then she remembered that they were MY crisps and didn’t finish her sentence.
Roobs said,
(This is the person who writes every penny you owe her on a chart at the back of her homework book.)
‘Yes, Jelly,’ said Myf. ‘You’ve got Fatty Cat Guinness Blossom Hamwich
Pearl and Dean Fishcake . . . and what was the one with the long ears?’
Just then my brother Jay and his mates came in. ‘Seen the football, girls?’
I said, going .
winked at me,
Myf and Roobs went into like they always do when my brother Jay is around.
‘He, he, he, hello Jay,’ Myf tittered. ‘We’re going to have a zoo with all Jelly’s pets to raise money for the concert!’
‘What a stupid idea,’ Jay sneered.
‘I know,’ I said, unusually agreeing with Jay.
‘Well I think it’s a great idea, very enterprising,’ said.
‘It was my idea, !’ Myf squealed.
‘Let me know when it is, and I’ll bring my little sister Dilly.’
‘Stupid if you ask me,’ Jay said. ‘But if you’re thinking of using the locusts I want a cut. Come on, Rog.’
As they walked away I leapt up and threw the window open –
I could hardly change my mind about the zoo now, without looking like (more of) a , so I asked my mum if it was OK.
(Mum wasn’t very sentimental about animals.)
We voted on the zoo and all said ‘aye’ and agreed to have it in
–3–
Mum has made me head bridesmaid to try and con me into thinking I am an extra bridesmaid but I know it means I have to organise everything like the hen night, the bridesmaids and the , have my shoulder on and generally be bossed about. This of course should be the job of the bride’s mother, but for reasons that will soon become clear, Mum hasn’t told her yet.
Mum got us all together and showed us a wedding on YouTube where the bridesmaids enter the church doing a street dance followed by the bride miming to a famous R’n’B song and everyone is impressed.
Mum’s eyes went watery and she started to get thatlook. Jay muttered to me,
But then Myf, ever the optimist, said,
I had to admit that I did quite learning street dance, and we had decided that we should do an after-school thing. It was better than Myf’s other suggestion of doing taxidermy (she’d seemed a bit too interested in whet
her Floppy had been buried or cremated) or Roob’s suggestion of doing morris dancing with Mr Bucket.
(Judging by her maraca-playing incident at orchestra, she’d be a danger to society with those sticks.)
So the next day we got the bus to the street-dance class. Melanie the teacher just stood at the front with her back to us and expected us to follow her moves. Myf threw herself into it . . .
but Roobs and I just couldn’t do it – we seemed unable to both feet up off the ground at the same time without falling over.
Melanie said we’d all done well, even though she hadn’t watched us, and Roobs and I decided to believe her.
The next class was a – we all had to run and throw ourselves into a cartwheel halfway across the room and then keep .
When it came to my turn I ran very fast and just kept running and hoped no one noticed I didn’t do a cartwheel. Roobs ran daintily into the middle, crouched down with her hands on the floor, jumped her feet an inch off the ground and then continued daintily running.
‘Hmm,’ said Melanie. ‘Very graceful, Rubina, but that wasn’t a cartwheel – try and practise every day. Very good running, Jelly – TRY to add a cartwheel next time.’
–4–
The next time there was a class we waited at the bus stop for 25 minutes. Roobs kept saying the bus route was obviously non-operational, because there was supposed to be one every 15 minutes.
Like with all after-school activities Roobs and I started hoping for an excuse not to have to go. We started praying the bus wouldn’t come. We’d gone right off the idea.
3 seconds passed
1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi
Roobs and I said, and off.
Myf, on the other hand, though untalented at most things, is very good at being and and continued to wait.
Once you’ve decided not to do something you don’t want to do, there’s .
Roobs and I felt like naughty school girls (probably because we were naughty school girls) as we made our way back to mine, where we became toast addicts
instead of street dancers.
There was a WHOLE of sliced white bread on the sideboard and we started which just one slice, but it was SO delicious . . .
(It reminded me of Mum and Julian egging each other on to watch more and more episodes of their DVD box sets.)
We continued like this until . . .
–5–
We were having a meeting in the shed. Myf was late because she was at street dance. Roobs and I meant to go, but Roobs said she’d forgotten her kit, and I pretended I couldn’t see it out of her bag, and she pretended she couldn’t see me pretending etc. etc.
‘Oh no,’ I said in a faux-disappointed voice. I can’t go if you’re not going. It’s not fair on you. Shall we go back to mine and eat toast?
. . . Roobs said in an equally unconvincing disappointed voice.
Then we hurried away before Myf could see us, barely able to suppress our squeals of excitement. I even saw some escape from the corner of Roobs’ mouth.
On slice of toast number seven which we had snuck to the shed, we heard Myf’s voice before we saw her.
‘Oi, you two! Look what I can do!!’ Then she into the shed.
‘You two really should have kept on coming! It’s great!’ Myf enthused.
We watched Myf flipping all over the .
Roobs said, ‘I wish we’d kept going now.’
‘We’d be able to do that if we had,’ I agreed.
Roobs sighed, ‘Too late now . . . are you having another bit of toast?’
Roobs had done the flyers for the zoo on her Dad’s computer. Myf had drawn a terrible picture of an elephant and a terrible picture of a giraffe to attract the crowds. Our job for today was to deliver them round the neighbourhood.
We delivered them round the block but weren’t sure whether to put one through Mrs Vaughan’s door.
Mrs Vaughan lived round the corner in Heather Close and had a reputation for pets and pretending she thought they were stray. She had kidnapped Cat several times and Fatty once, even though she knew they were our pets and Fatty was on a lead.
Then she would phone the RSPCA and say she’d found a stray.
Myf said, ‘Well, at least she’s an animal . We can’t be choosy about our customers.’
‘But what if she kidnaps the zoo?’ Roobs said worriedly.
That’s when I spotted Cat at Mrs Vaughan’s window mouthing ‘miaow’.
‘That’s our cat!’ I said and rang on the door bell. It took Mrs Vaughan ages to get to the door. She is a , Mum says, which means her house is full of uselessand she never throws anything away.
When she finally opened the door, Cat came running out but then started miaowing to go back in, which is how I knew she was our cat. Since we got Fatty, Cat found it hard to settle (Fatty was always either eating her food or chasing her up the and when she was inside she wanted to go out . . .
Meanwhile, Myf had handed Mrs V a leaflet.
‘I hope there won’t be any endangered species at this zoo? And that all the conditions are legal?’ Mrs Vaughan called after us, pointing to the picture of the elephant on the leaflet.
‘See!’ Myf cried, proudly pointing at her drawing. ‘ recognises it as an elephant!’
Cat went back into Mrs Vaughan’s without a backward glance, which was actually quite hurtful.
‘Ok, Cat!’ I called to her, trying for a casual tone. ‘You can stay for a while, but we want you back by dusk!’
(Straight away, she started miaowing at the window to come out again. Mrs Vaughan would be bound to get fed up with her before she rang the RSCPA.)
We had one more leaflet to deliver, to house.
He was his usual self when he opened the door.
‘See you soon,’ he said and closed the door.
I reminded him.
–6–
Mum’s mum, my gran, has got wind of the wedding and has started coming over to ‘help’. Which basically means making herself comfy, criticising everyone and wondering what sort of hat she should wear.
My gran isn’t a nice, cuddly, friendly gran, she is a , selfish gran who tried to make us call her Carol (her name). But we actually call her Grarol because when we were little we would go to call her Gran, ‘Gra – ’ and she would dart us an evil (especially if there were good-looking men her own age around) . . .
. . . and we would change it mid-word to Grarol. She didn’t like being called Grarol but it was a good compromise and better than Gran, she thought.
Grarol says things that are so mean, that you don’t realise she’s been mean until later, and even then you’re not sure if she’s been deliberately mean or just tactless.
Like when Jay got a place at the Boxford Football Academy:
As soon as she saw me eating a slice of toast, she said,
‘Jelly! Have you any idea how many calories are in a piece of buttered toast?!’
I told her I had no idea and couldn’t care less and went back to debating with Roobs whether or not to have another bit, or TWO other bits.
While we waited for our THREE bits of toast each, I could hear her saying to Mum,
‘A dress like that at your age, darling? Well if it’s what you want . . . terribly unflattering on someone flat-chested, mind.’
Then she turned her attention to Fatty who was doing lazy begging under the toaster.
‘Oh my! The size of that dog! It’s cruel to let him get like that!’ Grarol exclaimed.
‘He was born like that,’ Mum said, defensively.
‘He’s got big bones,’ I added.
‘And a slow metabolism,’ Jay interjected. It was a rare moment of family
Mum was just about to protest when Grarol said,
‘I’m just thinking of you, darling. Don’t you want everyone to look their best on the BIG day?’ and she put her hand on Mum’s shoulder.
by this rare show of affection Mum stuttered, ‘Well, er, I suppose so . . .’
We all had:
Of course, Fatty ate his in one gulp. He didn’t know how to savour food – he’d once eaten a box of Belgian chocolates by just swallowing it .
I dropped the chicken and Fatty grabbed it and through the cat flap . . .