by Rae Earl
Meanwhile, Mum keeps playing ‘Swing the Mood’ by Jive sodding talentless Bunny, and ‘The Glenn Miller Medley’ on the B-side. It is HELL.
And if she asks Adnan one more time (in really annoying pigeon English/French) if ‘Addy would like le poisson and pomme de terre’, I will go loopy. Sick of living in love land. I am going to the pub tonight to get slaughtered, and then I am coming home to let all the budgies free.
Wednesday – no, now it’s Thursday 31.8.89
12.20 a.m.
MUM IN STONK. I HAVE BEEN VERY DRUNKS.
4.13 p.m.
Plastered last night. Just about managed to get home but was sick in a yew tree.
Turns out that me and a certain person have a lot more in common than I thought.
But it’s bad. And to see it – to catch them doing the thing that I do – oh, it’s like looking at a really good-looking mirror image.
This person hates everything inside like I do. I find this impossible to get my head round. I mean . . . they are everything that I would be happy with. But that thing I do . . . ? They do too. I am covered in bruises. And so are they.
I hit myself. Because I hate what I am. But why this person does it, I will never know.
No one is what you expect behind closed doors. And some brilliant people are eaten up by some terrible things.
In an awful way I feel better. Because I thought it was just me.
Shocked, though. Shocked. And want to make it better but I can’t. I can’t sort this head out, let alone anyone else’s.
No budgies to let free, by the way.
Going out again. Can’t stay here with Jive Bunny, pigeon English and talk of bulk-loads of Trill.
Friday 1.9.89
10.25 p.m.
LAST NIGHT I WAS MAJORLY bricking myself for about five minutes as Haddock and girlfriend ignored me. I thought, ‘Oh shit no – they know about what I feel.’ As I found out, it was just another row they were having. This information came from Dobber (who I deliberately went out of the pub to find in order to ease mind-paranoia situation). Came back to find Haddock and girlfriend making up. Ignored them. But then as I left, Haddock caught up with me, and our conversation went as follows:
HAD: Hello. How have you been?
ME: Fine! (Oh yes, really, sure. Still, never mind, standard answer.) Have you been crying, Haddock?
HAD: No.
(He had been. I am telling you – his eyes were red.)
ME: I wish you two would stop bloody arguing.
HAD: Can’t help it. It’s in my blood.
ME: Well, I wish you’d stop it.
(Bloody massive pause. I always get these with him and he looks at me straight in the eye – very unsettling.)
ME: Sorry if my card offended you. (I’d sent him a card about having his jacket and my intention to nick it off him for ever because it suited me better than him.)
HAD: Oh no – it didn’t offend me. I just sat there looking at it watching a Bing Crosby film and getting depressed and thinking I might get pneumonia this winter because my jacket has been nicked by a little Rae Earl.
ME: Piss off. (Affectionate shin kick.) Wear a thermal vest.
Saturday 2.9.89
8.24 a.m.
HAVE JUST WOKEN UP. BIRO is all over my duvet, but will carry on from last night:
HAD: So you’re walking home on your own?
ME: OF COURSE! (Was I supposed to hint at him walking me home?)
HAD: I’m off to meet my mum.
ME: Oh, he’s 18 and he’s still a mummy’s boy!
(H and R play-fight breaks out.)
HAD: Anyway – bye, Rae.
ME: Bye, Haddock.
HAD: (A few incomprehensible comments.)
ME: What??
HAD: (More incomprehensible comments.)
Oh, me and Haddock are just too bloody alike. I do share his nasty hang-ups, but here’s the key difference – I MEAN, JUST LOOK AT HIM. It cannot be denied that he is just bloody horny. Yet he can’t see it. I mean, a lot of people think he’s a right cold bastard. I mean, I did at first, but underneath it is the most strong, sentimental, gentle, very funny bloke on the planet – and I can’t believe he hides it.
You know, I get to see a side of him that hardly anybody else in this world does.
I really want to talk to him but it’s virtually impossible, as a) always with girlfriend, b) his piss-take personal barrier to deep chat of any sort is very effective, and c) I know whatever he tells me will make me like him more. He could tell me he likes train-spotting and I wouldn’t give a shit.
I don’t know. I just reckon I could really help him. Oh, Rae, stop being a patronising bitch. He’s not hopeless or pitiful. It’s you who is the one that is not getting it, not him! Excuse me – I’m in love, and it sends you funny.
Give it five years and pray he’s single!!!
7.30 p.m.
Thank God for Mort. Just rang her. Can tell her anything and everything and I know she won’t tell a soul, but will say something just naturally that makes me feel better. She agrees Mum’s aviary is a step too far. Her mum has a budgie called Juliet that lives in a white cage in her dining room. Her partner, Romeo, died after Mort’s terrier-cross, Poppy, gave him a heart attack. It shows that we are all left alone in the end – even budgies.
Sunday 3.9.89
9.15 p.m.
JIVE BUNNY IS STILL BLOODY in the top five. Mum celebrated by putting on the Glenn Miller B-side full blast. She reckons it is the best song of the last decade. Take no notice – this is the woman who thought nobody would use instruments after the Flying Pickets did the acoustic version of Yazoo’s ‘Only You’. That was shit too.
Well, it’s all over – the summer of ’89. It’s gone, and what a summer!
I’ve got to know Fig really well, and Dobber has become a top friend. I know it’s hard work next year, but this summer has been brilliant.
And only Fig is leaving, Battered Sausage is retaking, and HADDOCK IS HAVING A YEAR OFF.
YES!!! There is time. There is time to make a change in me. To become the swan that shocks. To reinvent Rae Earl. To stick two fingers up to all the piss-takers, the doubters, the bitches and the patronisers.
Watching a programme on the Nazis. It’s so bloody awful. How can one human do that to another? BASTARDS. This is the problem I have with the A-level history we do: who gives a stuff about what happened three centuries ago when this happened less than 50 years ago? THIS is what we should be learning, not some crap about Anne Boleyn and her six fingers! It’s not even that rare – it happens every day in the Fens!
Tomorrow I have to go to the school shop to get a new uniform. Mum is insisting on coming, even though I am 18 in three and a half months’ time and can choose my own clothes, thank you very much. It will be a chance for her to say, ‘Ohhh . . . you have put on a bit since last year, Rachel,’ and I have. I’ll be up a skirt size. They’ll have to go to the special drawer and say stuff like, ‘We might have one in stock,’ etc.
Monday 4.9.89
11 p.m.
TELL ME THIS: I HAVE been wearing a red tie of some description since September 1977. So why does Mum STILL make me try it on to see if it fits? IT’S A TIE!! I have got a few chins, but not that many.
I had gone up a skirt size. But I am telling you now – this year I am going the other way. And you know why I am doing it, and FOR WHO I am doing it. Just listening to the 12-inch of ‘Breakout’ by Swing Out Sister. That’s how I feel right now. Like in the video for the song where the lanky girl with the dodgy bob comes out on the catwalk in an electric-blue dress and shocks everyone – THAT WILL BE ME!!
Well, back to our fine establishment tomorrow. Can’t say I’m upset. This holiday has had its fair share of ups and downs, but the fact remains that being at home has been a complete downer. Felt angry and aggressive all today. Irrational thoughts all over the place. Cure would be a bloke – take two times a day.
Tuesday 5.9.89
6.14 p
.m.
BACK AT SCHOOL. USUAL ‘ON pain of death’ speech by Miss Byron. Uniform check, etc., etc. Seemed really weird sitting on the stage where the upper sixth have always sat, and then going to the top common room. Good to be back, though. But crapping myself that this is the very last year at school. The thought of A-level results and university just makes me want to vom everywhere. Think I might apply to do American studies; don’t think it qualifies you to do anything, but you get a year in America free – so it’s worth doing it for that.
Wednesday 6.9.89
8.54 p.m.
HYSTERICALLY FUNNY TODAY AT SCHOOL because someone bought a copy of Lace into the common room. I didn’t read it, but apparently on page 200 and something, a male character uses a goldfish and sticks it up a woman’s thing as a love aid. URGH!! I don’t remember that being in the mini-series!! Everybody was passing it round and reading it, and according to Jasmine apparently Jackie Collins is even worse. In one of her books women do it in front of men for their pleasure because blokes get turned on by lesbians. But only by pretty lesbians, not butch ones. The more I hear about men, the less I understand them.
Five girls lost their virginity over the summer holidays, and one lost her blowjob virginity in a kitchen in St Barts. Bethany was going on about Dieter, who is meant to be visiting her in a few weeks. Thank God the bell went before they got round to asking me what I did all summer.
Thursday 7.9.89
Late
WAS FORCED TODAY TO GO into Woolies and buy ‘Ride on Time’ by Black Box. It is possibly the finest example of Italian house music you will ever hear. Typically skinny giraffe of a lead girl singer, but never mind. Came home, stuck it on, and bopped till Mum got home. Unfortunately did a spin and made the record jump, and now there is a bloody great scratch in it. Never mind. Now it just sounds like a remix.
Friday 8.9.89
9.02 p.m.
THE TROUBLE WITH STAYING ON for sixth form at school is you are still treated like a kid. Today was chips day like any other Friday, unfortunately it was also the day that Miss Byron decided to go on some sort of nutritional crusade. I am 17 years old, but today I was told I couldn’t just have a plate of chips – I had to have peas too.
HELLO????!!!
What’s worse, Miss Tennyson then stood by the conveyor belt where you put your empty trays and checked you had had ‘at least a mouthful’. I can get married and I will soon be able to vote and fight in wars – YET I HAVE TO PROVE I AM EATING VEGETABLES!! On top of that, a lecture to those of us who skived off games (including obviously me) saying that exercise was an important part of life. Yes, love, but so is sex – and I’m not getting any of that either!
Saturday 9.9.89 (actually it’s Sunday morning but it’s all about Saturday night)
AND WHAT A NIGHT. I can get through this A-level year if every Saturday is like this.
First of all, me and Dobber went down the pub and met all the lads there. Then a load of us (INCLUDING HADDOCK and his girlfriend) went up Oliver’s nightclub. It was brilliant!! I was just dancing all night, and THEN ‘Pump Up the Jam’ by Technotronic came on. Haddock started bopping like nothing you have ever seen. It says everything about a man who is hard as nails on the rugby field but is almost of a professional standard when it comes to dancing.
When the Motown bit came on, I was just having a drink with Mort – when Haddock DRAGGED me to dance with him to ‘Jimmy Mack’ by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. It was brilliant – but I couldn’t look him in the eye. If I hadn’t have been pissed I wouldn’t have been able to do it at all. When I sat back down, Battered Sausage said, ‘Big Razza, I’ll give you this – and I’ve said it before – you’re a big bird, but you can move.’ Haddock just winked at me and said, ‘I’ve got a new name for you – Funky Chick.’ He called me it all night. I was acting cool, but inside I could have cried with total joy.
We then all lined up for the dance to ‘Can You Feel It?’ by the Jacksons, and all went mad for the Northern Soul bit – especially for ‘Nine Times Out of Ten’ by Muriel Day. Battered Sausage tried to do proper Northern Soul dancing by doing a one-handed somersault flip thing. Unfortunately he kicked a bloke in the ribs, and got thrown out by a bouncer. It was nearly closing time anyway. At the end, Haddock said, ‘Funky Chick, see you for another shimmy next week.’
Knackered – but had to write it all down because I feel like Cinderella . . . It was bloody magic tonight.
By the way, Haddock’s girlfriend doesn’t get narked when he dances with me because she knows we are just mates. Nothing will happen. She can SEE with her own eyes nothing will happen.
Wish I could freeze time tonight. Except for the tinnitus in my ears, and playing Jive Bunny once, everything was perfect tonight.
And I think I woke up Adnan when I came in. HA!!!
Sunday 10.9.89
7.12 p.m.
SUNDAYS IN LINCOLNSHIRE FEEL LIKE the whole world is ending. Nothing is open, except for the corner shop for the papers. Once you have trailed through the News of the World and watched the EastEnders omnibus, you are reduced to sitting on the sofa trying to find inspiration from Songs of Praise, wondering when it will all end.
And all the time there is shedloads of work to do: bloody American politics essay on the role of the vice president (which I still don’t understand), and history and English. Today is the day when not having a boyfriend seems even more painful, and thoughts turn to houses where he is – where they talk about schoolwork and stuff on her bed and . . . Torture.
It’s even getting too cold to sit in fields. End up having a fry-up, then roast, then tea, and hoping. Don’t even know what I hope.
Morrissey understands all this shit. I reckon he was in Stamford when he wrote ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday’.
He wills Armageddon to come in that song. Even though nuclear war shits me up like nothing else on this earth, nobody would miss Lincolnshire if it blew up. Except people who like turnips and swede.
At least ‘Ride on Time’ by Black Box is number one. This could be the start of a new dance revolution.
Monday 11.9.89
6.16 p.m.
C AME HOME FROM SCHOOL TO find Mum and Adnan in the back garden about to release the budgies into the aviary. I hate caged birds. I hate to see them restricted and fluttering their wings and banging their heads on the ceiling wire as they try desperately to get out. Mum and Adnan watched as they all fluttered in and sat on their perches squawking. Mum said, ‘Don’t they look happy?’ I said, ‘No – they look like prisoners all having a panic. And what if they don’t like each other? They all have to pile in and pretend they have to get on.’ Mum said, ‘Lots of us have to do that, Rachel.’ Yes, dear. I know what you mean – you don’t need to tell me that.
If I had the nerve I would let them all go, but I don’t yet. Mum would go loony, and the odd bit of money she does give me – well, even that would run to nothing. I would pay for what I know is right by being even poorer than I am.
Listening to ‘Mandela Day’ by Simple Minds. Can’t believe he is still in prison after more than 25 years just for saying black people are worth the same as white people. There are people in prison for all sorts of shit reasons. It’s not fair to cage things up. Whoever – or whatever – they are.
Bloody hell – ‘Belfast Child’ is a great record too. Simple Minds are bloody brilliant, but they are at their best when they are moaning about something.
Tuesday 12.9.89
9.10 p.m.
IHAVE CALLED THE BUDGIES AFTER living or dead prisoners of conscience, because they are all prisoners being held against their will.
Mandela (the blue fat one) – bad eye, but the budgie with the most personality.
Biko (or Beako – get it?) – green one that has a madly coloured bit above his beak. Hope it isn’t a disease or something.
Solzhenitsyn (Alex for short) – yes, I know Solzhenitsyn isn’t in prison any more, but he was still fucked over by Russia.
The othe
r six all look the same so it’s impossible to name them. I went out to see them tonight. They are already terrorised by Dave the local tomcat, who is trying to turn them into a snack. These birds are being mentally tortured. White the cat keeps well away from the aviary too. I think even she has been brainwashed by Mum into not going anywhere near it.
It can’t be right to have wings and not be able to use them.
BIRD IN A CAGE
Tethered up by wire
While felines prowl and lurk
Imprisoned by the human
Upon the wooden perch
Flutter for the amusement
Add a dash of sing
A bird inside a prison
This is a special wing.
But me and you are similar
We are prisoners, you see,
Of convention, of expectation
But you have nicer feathers
Than me.
Quite pleased with that!
Wednesday 13.9.89
7.32 p.m.
HEARING MUM SHOUT, ‘ADDY, GET me cuttlefish siv vous plias,’ has pushed me over the edge. I am releasing the budgies – because some principles are worth more than money. They should at least have one crack at freedom. They should at least get one chance to be a real bird. I’ll do it tomorrow before I go to school, and then leg it before Mum realises what I have done. I know it’s a risk, but it has to be worth more than a bit of money to buy a pint of snakey B. I’ll sit down the pub with a pint of tap water if I get to see Haddock.
Thursday 14.9.89
10.15 a.m. (in study room 4 at school!!)
THE BUDGIES ARE FREE!! I did it at around eight this morning. I just left the aviary door open. They didn’t seem that keen at first, but then Solzhenitsyn made a run for it and they all followed. Then I made a run for it. Mum said, ‘You’re in a hurry this morning.’ She will go mad when she realises what I have done – but it will be worth it.