by Candy Guard
. . . and sat scoffing the chicken in the garden with the cat flap round his ‘waist’.
–7–
Billy Rumble
has been moved into our maths class! Mr Fairman our head teacher has decided to move kids into relatively well-behaved classes in the hope that it will have a calming effect on them. Of course it’s had the opposite effect and all the relatively well-behaved kids have become disruptive
Billy’s one of those people who is really good at people’s physical faults just when they were feeling relieved no one had noticed. Billy picks up on the slightly crooked nose, the knocked knees, the spotty forehead and the wobbly bottom, thinks up a name and then begins his torture.
Well, on day two I saw him scrutinising me and he noticed/decided that I have big ears and has started calling me ‘Dumbo’. It is a long time since anyone has mentioned my ears – in fact, I think the last person was Grarol when I was , and it took me years to get over it. Insults just stay with you, sometimes for life. My heart sank when he caught my eye and said,
Half the class have heard of the Disney classic so think it’s because I have big ears, the other half just assume I am .
Anyway, they all along nervously with Billy.
I am trying to keep my head (and ears) down and am very TENSE – sometimes he forgets but then out of the blue he will casually glance my way and go,
and everyone roars with laughter. Well, except Myf and Roobs. Roobs because she isn’t there, she’s in the genius maths group, and Myf cos she’s loyal –
. . . but not a lot of help.
I spent the next few nights examining my ears and fantasising about having an operation to have them pinned back.
–8–
Now something REALLY terrible has happened! Worse than Billy being moved into our class. My mum’s friend’s daughter Brittainee from L.A. has moved into my bedroom!!!
She is staying with us for a WHOLE month before the wedding because she wants to ‘do’ Europe and Mum has put her in MY bedroom with ME!
She has been in (my) bed all day because she has ‘jet lag’ (sounds disgusting!). I can’t even go in there in the day because she screams at me to . . .
When I was finally allowed in at 10 p.m. and got into my bed (cushions on floor) she was up making Skype calls to America and saying everything about Europe (by which she meant Boxford, England) . . .
. . . I nearly lost it at that point as I find my bed comfortable and she was in it!
When she finally went to have a shower, I crawled into my own bed. Then she came and sat on me when I screamed she started screaming.
Mum made me take her out to show her Boxford but all she wanted to do was go to McDonald’s where she went about Jay and how everything about Europe sucked except Jay as he was really
(She is obviously mad, or as she would say.)
Brittainee’s mum mom is my mom mum’s friend from school who went to live in America. When I complained about Brittainee, mum got cross and said I had to look after her as she didn’t want her mu mom thinking Brittainee wasn’t having a good time, as she was always saying how the US was SO much better and how . . .
–9–
At the next Faithful Club meeting Roobs elected herself treasurer and said we must scrimp and save.
she said, as our panic-stricken met.
She said there was no point just waiting for the zoo, we should utilise (posh word for ‘use’) our time on another business idea. After a lot of debating (stupid ideas) we decided to open a parlour in the shed using home-made products. Mum says even in a recession people still want to look nice.
We decided to have our the next day because Mum and Julian were taking Brittainee to see the sights (which she said would all suck, except M+M World). We undercut all the local beauty parlours by a LOT for treatments but were selling our home-made beauty products at the counter at .
Grarol, being stingy AND vain, was our first customer. After commenting on Fatty’s weight gain,
in a voice, she then began to whisper,
‘Pensioner’s deal, please – The Faithful Beauty Package.’
The deal included: Eyebrow tidy, Wash ’n’ blow dry, Facial, Manicure.
It was Myf’s job to do the eyebrow tidy.
She took AGES! (Roobs, Fatty and I took the opportunity to go and eat some toast while Grarol was incapacitated.)
She didn’t stand back to assess her handiwork, she just kept tidying.
When she finally did stand back, Grarol’s eyebrows looked very tidy – i.e. she didn’t have any.
It was like when Julian cut the privet hedge.
Just as Myf was Grarol’s eyebrows
back on Fatty leapt towards our handmade products, detecting something possibly edible.
The marker pen slipped and made Grarol look permanently
We managed to keep Grarol away from a mirror until Roobs had shampooed her hair and I had done the manicure and facial.
There was so much from the shampoo (washing-up liquid) that Myf had to hose Grarol down in the garden.
We blew-dry blew-dried bloo-drood blow-dried her hair so it covered her eyebrows and took the lenses out of her glasses.
She paid her £20 fee (which was a bargain for seven hours’ work) and purchased some Cashmere and Silk Rose Vanilla Shine Smooth Elixir shampoo for £7 and scurried off.
We made £27.00 from the beauty parlour
Total: £27.00 in our kitty for
–10–
(*No animals were harmed in the writing of the next two chapters.)
The day of the zoo arrived. Myf and Roobs were so they turned up at my house at 6 a.m., which was fine by me as I was already awake listening to the sound of Brittainee yacking on Skype; her bed time wasn’t for several hours.
Myf set about drawing a huge poster which she attached to the privet hedge out the front . . .
. . . while Roobs and I made sandwiches. Roob’s uncle runs a sandwich shop in the city and he told her that the trick is to put the filling in the centre of the bread
so when you slice it
it looks really but actually isn’t
This strikes me as a bit stingy but Roobs says if we want to get tickets for we have to be ruthless business women.
At 1 o’clock we thought we’d better gather the animals together and line them up along the path. First of all we got Fatty and tied him to a tree. He’s not TOTALLY THICK because he did realise he was probably not going for a walk and started singing very (and soulfully I felt).
(Only I am allowed to insult Fatty, remember.)
Then we found Cat miaowing at the window to come outside. Myf picked her up
(all ) and placed her at the top of the path. But she ran to the door and started miaowing to go in, so we decided to hang her cat-nip-filled mouse from a branch just above her and she started dancing about wildly, trying to swipe it
‘She’s dancing!’ cried Myf.
The sight of Cat dancing just out of the reach of his teeth made Fatty sing even louder
I felt guilty about using Fatty and Cat as exhibits for commercial gain. But Myf and Roobs don’t understand . . .
Myf, ever the thicko, said,
‘They love it!’
And Roobs, ever the hard-nosed business woman, wrote:
on to green and pink from her uncle’s sandwich shop and stuck them on the poster out the front.
Then we got Fishcake out, but his tank was a bit green and slimy.
I tried to clean it with a toothbrush but every time I cleaned a bit, Fishcake hid behind another bit until he was in his castle and wouldn’t come out
‘I know!’ screeched Myf, bordering on .
‘Invisible Fish!!’
And she wrote it on a luminous star and stuck it on the poster outside.
Then we got the guinea pigs, Guinness and Blossom, in their run. Julian’s prize curly kale was tantalisingly out of reach in the vegetable patch and they started squealing like actual pigs . . .
Myf
wrote ‘Real Life Miniature Furry Pigs’ on a star and added it to the poster
Then we put the hamster’s cage on the path. The howling, dancing and squealing made Hamwich very anxious and when Hamwich gets anxious he gets in his wheel and goes round so fast you can’t see his wheel or his legs and he just looks like an orange blur in his cage.
Even Roobs recognised that Myf had gone mad now, and she sobered up.
Last, we put the mice on the path. Pearl and Dean were always either asleep or trying to escape. (They had succeeded many times but could always be lured back eventually with peanut butter sandwiches
Anyway, today they were asleep in their nest.
Myf cried, and opened the cage and poked the nest with the toothbrush, at which point Pearl and Dean out from behind the water bottle where they had been hiding and ran into the garden.
(I could have sworn they had deliberately put two monkey nuts in their nest to look like them sleeping . . .
. . . but their brains are only this big
. . . So maybe not!?)
We could see them peeping round , rocks and old tyres but couldn’t catch them.
‘I know!’ I cried. ‘The peanut butter sandwiches! We can lure them back!’
He’d eaten ALL the peanut butter sandwiches! But Roobs had an idea . . .
Myf was, by now, totally deranged.
. . . and I felt guilty . . . until my bedroom window open and Brittainee appeared.
Then I felt that I was using my pets to make money but they were annoying Brittainee.
–11–
Finally, all the animals were arranged and it was 1.55 p.m. so we sat down and waited for paying customers.
1.59 Myf said, ‘One minute to go.’
2 p.m. No one arrived.
2.11 Ricky burped.
2.29 No one came.
2.37 Roobs went to the loo.
2.41 Roobs came back from the loo.
3 p.m. We ate the tuna sandwiches (Roobs made us pay) and drank the over-diluted Ribena.
By 3.30 the animals were all asleep. Even the mice were back in their nest.
Then at 3.36 there was a scraping noise from the back gate.
It was Bethany Iceland with the cool girls. They barged in refusing to pay the £2 entry.
THEN the worst thing that could possibly happen happened – Billy Rumble came stalking in.
Bethany complained.
Billy looked around, then stared at me for slightly too long. I looked at my feet to avoid his gaze . My ears were throbbing and felt .
The air .
Usually if you try and guess what’s about to happen, it doesn’t happen. But what I’d guessed was about to happen DID happen.
Bethany and the CGs started laughing hysterically
Amid all this of course Roger arrived with his sister Dilly who was squealing with excitement,
My bedroom window trundled open again, and Brittainee squawked,
All the noise woke Fatty up, and the first things he saw were Bethany’s buttocks.
He can’t stand hysterical teenage girls but he loves quivering bottoms – they remind him of the jelly in his dog food – so he decided to bite them.
Bethany made a ginormous fuss. It didn’t even hurt! (As Jay always says to me after he’s thumped me one.)
But I attended to her anyway because I didn’t want her to sue Fatty, and I was pleased that her bum was distracting Billy from my ears.
Dilly was approaching the animals still squealing with excitement and woke all the rest of them from their naps and they resumed their previous antics. She giggled helplessly at Cat dancing, and tried to stroke her fur the way.
Then she moved on to Fishcake.
‘There’s nothing in there!’ she wailed.
‘Invisible fish!’ I called. ‘Didn’t you read the poster?!’
she cried, jumping up and down with excitement.
‘Oh look, Woger! That dog is singing a song!’ And she ran towards Fatty, who was at the lead and whose singing had started to sound like .
It was then that I remembered that it wasn’t just hysterical teenage girls that Fatty hated: he hated hysterical children under 3 feet tall even more. Fatty was about to bite Dilly . . .
My life before me and I had just got to the bit where I was in prison for keeping a dangerous dog and Myf and Roobs were visiting and smuggling in a fruit cake with a file hidden in it
when Fatty into thin , millimetres from biting Dilly’s nose off . . .
Mrs Vaughan had captured him with a large fishing net – poor starved unwanted stray that he was.
(I loved Mrs Vaughan very deeply at that moment.)
–12–
Even though Fatty’s fangs hadn’t made contact with her nose, Dilly was still screaming her head off
Roger was saying,
‘I’d better take her home, she’s suffering from shock.’
Bethany fluttered her eyelashes (to which she’d had time to reapply mascara despite being in ‘agony’).
she said in a voice even more babyish than Dilly’s.
So took Bethany and the cool girls home for hot tea.
‘Oi, Befny, where you going?’ Billy demanded.
‘Shuddup, loser!’ Bethany told him.
Billy was in a right royal mood now,
so he called me ‘Dumbo’ one more time before taking the last of the sandwiches and stomping off.
‘Oi! You didn’t pay!’ Myf shouted.
‘At least didn’t take back his £2,’ Roobs said, writing it in our accounts book.
We had just sighed with relief that it was all over when Jay and his idiot mates, Jock and Brendan from Year 11, turned up . . .
Jay said, ‘I hear the one has disgraced himself again – Roger’s sister is fine. Anyway where IS Fatty? Mum says his pageboy outfit has arrived from eBay.’
Jock and Brendan sniggered.
I felt quite defensive about Mum and Fatty.
‘If my mum wants to have Fatty as her pageboy, she is entitled,’ I told them. Brendan and Jock went PINK
(They seem to find me more alarming now I am more mature.)
Then, oh JOY, Karen and Cheryl (Kaz and Chez – my cross-country ‘running’ partners) were up the side alley.
‘Oh-oh, this’ll be good,’ Jay said to Jock and Brendan. ‘Let’s stick around.’
Jock and Brendan said ‘Hurr, hurr’.
They paid the entrance fee and Kaz said,
There was no point trying to explain, so I tried to distract them.
‘We have lots of other exotic animals – ’ I started to tell them, but suddenly Chez was screaming.
‘What is it now, Chez?’ Kaz said irritably.
‘Rats!’ Chez said.
‘They’re not rats, they’re guinea pigs,’ I told them.
Then they stood in front of each animal and screamed.
Then Jay re-appeared with his locust tank
Kaz and Chez ran fast enough to win a cross-country race without cheating, dropping small change as they went.
Jock and Brendan looked like they were going to wet themselves laughing,
and Myf and Roobs were joining in.
‘It’s not FUNNY,’ I told them.
‘How much have we got?’ Myf asked, later.
‘Useless!’ Myf cried. ‘We’re going to have to think of more ways to earn money.’
Then, when I went to take the poster down from the privet hedge, I saw Billy had vandalised it . . .
. . . and abandoned a sandwich that he hadn’t paid for. I was just putting the sandwich in my mouth when Myf cried,
‘ Jelly! Look who it is!’
‘Oh what NOW?!’, I snapped, cat food tuna falling down my front.
‘It’s Sandy Blatch! The one you fancied cos he looked like Buster Bauble from she yelled.
‘Oh gawd,’ I muttered and pushed myself into the privet hedge behind the poster.
Meanwhile, Sandy was trooping past and was going . . . up my path! He
was carrying a keyboard and was followed by two other boys and Benji Butler with an electric guitar. Fortunately, they all had their headphones on.