Lottie Biggs is Not Mad

by Hayley Long

  Of a pair of American Tans!

  Goose’s rapidly growing audience began to laugh. Goose pouted back at them, cleared her throat and raised her right arm high in the air, plectrum proudly aloft. Then, swinging her arm down dramatically, she tossed back her hair and began to strum very very fast.

  Cos they’ve got tights in every size,

  Fishnet and woolly and striped.

  Yeah, tights for skinny and fat girls

  And for businessmen in disguise.

  So get your tights in every size

  If your old ones are laddered and lined

  And wearing them makes you feel minging

  And leaves you with tears in your eyes.

  Tights in every size . . .

  Tights in every size . . .

  The ending to Goose’s song was lost in a spontaneous round of applause. I stood by and watched as the shoppers of Whitchurch Village went mad for her. Goose grinned and gave a small curtsy. A fat woman in a blue anorak said, ‘Well, love, seeing as how you’ve given us all a bit of a laugh, I’ll have two pairs of lightweight tan tights in extra large. Thank you very much.’

  Another woman came forward holding a five-pound note and said, ‘Go on, love – I’ll have a couple of pairs as well.’

  I faded into fuzzy nothingness as Goose sold almost every single box of tights in her basket. Then, when the crowd of shoppers had dispersed, she turned to me and said, ‘Right, that’s my lot. At least Dionne and Gina can’t say I didn’t make an effort.’ And she went inside the shop and Bill and James disappeared up Merthyr Road with her guitar and I was left standing on the pavement with my almost-full basket of tights. And then it started to rain.

  Around me, people hurried past with their hoods up or dashed into shop doorways. Everyone was in a hurry to get indoors. Except me. I didn’t go inside. I couldn’t. I couldn’t face Goose. I couldn’t face the fact that she always seemed to be better than me at EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. So I just stayed where I was on the pavement. It was now raining pretty heavily and my semi-permanent hair colour, Melody Classic Ash, was running off my head a bit and causing brown-tinged raindrops to roll down my face and make watery-brown stains on the shoulders of my white blouse.

  Goose popped her head around the shop door and shouted, ‘Lottie, are you coming inside?’

  I said, ‘Umm . . . in a bit. I’m testing my hair dye to see if it’s waterproof.’

  Goose shrugged and disappeared back into the shop, but before she went she gave me a funny look. A minute or so later Gina’s ponytail and half her face appeared in the doorway and she said, ‘Lottie, love, you coming inside? It’s raining, innit.’

  She must think I’m stupid or something. I said, ‘Yes, I do know that, thank you, Gina.’

  ‘Well, the boxes of tights are getting wet, innit.’

  I had forgotten all about the tights. I said, ‘Can you lend me an umbrella?’

  Gina looked a bit uncertain about this, but after a second she disappeared inside briefly and then resurfaced with a huge green umbrella shaped like a frog with eyes sticking out of the top of it. I looked at it doubtfully. She said, ‘Come in when you’re ready, love. But remember, no competition is worth catching pneumonia over.’

  I stood in the rain, holding the gigantic frog umbrella. Across the road, Keith Bright was waving at me and had a rare smile on his furry face. I narrowed my eyes and gave him my very best Stare of Death

  but he didn’t seem particularly bothered by it.

  And suddenly I was so annoyed about, well, everything that before I could stop myself, I shouted,

  I have no idea why I said it or who I was saying it to. I just felt really wound up. One of the few remaining shoppers who hadn’t disappeared out of the rain paused on the pavement and tilted her umbrella to look at me. She had grey hair and looked about fifty. She said, ‘I don’t think so, love.’ She raised her wrist to look at her watch. ‘I last had sex about eight hours ago. And you?’

  ‘Urgghh! Shut up!’ I said and went really red. The woman laughed and carried on walking.

  Cars drove slowly by and sent up spray from the puddles. It struck me how busy the world was.

  The last time I went up to Wrexham to see Caradoc and my dad, and Sally his new wife, Caradoc had been playing with a toy kaleidoscope which shifted thousands of tiny red and green grains into millions of star-shaped patterns, each one a little different from the last. Looking round me, I realized that Merthyr Road was the same. No picture taken of it in one moment could be exactly the same as the next.

  And in the midst of all this, the one thing that was not moving was my body. I was standing, stockstill, outside Sole Mates, with the rain running off the edges of my giant frog umbrella.

  But don’t be fooled. My body might have been motionless, but my brain was doing this:

  Whizzing around and around like a tornado – and trying to figure out how I could sell more tights than Goose.

  And that was when I saw Elvis Presley. He was half walking, half dancing towards me through the rain. In his hand, he was holding a plastic toy microphone – the sort that makes your voice echo a little bit and which is quite good fun for about five minutes when you’re five years old – and into it he was singing, ‘You were always on my mind’ in this deep booming, dead authentic Welsh Elvis voice, and the few people still on the streets were laughing and patting him on the back as he passed and telling him how good he was and how he should be on Stars in Their Eyes. And then my head stopped doing this . . .

  I ran up to meet him, still holding the frog umbrella and the basket of tights, and asked him if he could help me. And it just goes to show that you should ALWAYS BE POLITE TO PEOPLE, no matter how unusual or odd or scatty their personal circumstances may seem because you never know when the boot might be on the other foot and they might be needed to lend you a helping hand. And me and Elvis stood side by side outside Sole Mates sharing the frog umbrella and I joined him in his song, except we changed the words a bit so they went like this:

  Maybe I didn’t wear you

  Quite as proudly as I could

  Maybe I put some holes in you

  A bit more often than I should

  Smelly tights

  That I should have thrown away

  But I never had the time.

  You were always on my thighs

  You were always on my thighs.

  We sang our song as loud as we could, and together, as the sun came back out, we sold every single one of those boxes of cheap tights.

  . . . aND theN feeLiNG tOtaLLY rOBBeD

  I like English. I really do. The other day Goose asked me how I was getting on with my personal writing project and I told her that so far I’ve spent eleven hours on it and written approximately fourteen thousand words. You should have seen her face when I said that. She looked like this.9

  I could tell that she was pretty freaked out. She went really pale and blotchy and said, ‘Blimey, Lottie. I’ve only spent twenty minutes on mine so far and I think I’ve written about eighty words. Are you sure Mr Wood expects us to write that much?’

  I said, ‘Well, it is an important piece of work, Goose. You don’t want to let Mad Alien distract you from your GCSEs, you know. GCSEs provide the key to many future career doorways.’

  Goose looked even more freaked out when I said this and asked me if I’d spent as long over my maths coursework, and I was forced to admit that no, I hadn’t.

  Mind you, even though I like English, I don’t like all aspects of it. Take poetry, for instance. I don’t understand the point of poetry at all. I reckon that if you have something to say, it’s best to just say it in as clear a way as possible so that everyone can understand what you mean. I told this to Mr Wood, who is making us read some really random poetry at the moment by a poet called Stevie Smith who, bizarrely, is actually a woman. When I’d finished getting it all off my chest, Mr Wood sighed for a moment and then said, ‘One day, Charlotte, you will read a piece of poet
ry and it will speak directly to your heart as if the poet had you specifically in mind when they were writing. And you will be so moved with emotion that you will cherish that poem always and carry it with you forever in your memory and then, Charlotte, you will understand the point of poetry. Trust me.’

  Mr Wood does speak a colossal amount of crap sometimes, he honestly does.10

  Mind you, nothing that Mr Wood has ever said can compare with the almighty crap that came out of Dionne and Gina’s mouths after I won the tights-selling competition last Saturday. It was a moment of unrivalled disappointment and even though I might never find a poem that I will want to carry around forever in my head, I know that I’ll live to be colossally ancient before I forget how well and truly stitched up I was over the tights.

  On Saturday, just before the shop closed, me, Goose and Emily were called into Dionne’s office. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I was feeling so fantastically confident that I’d been skipping around as perky as a party popper all afternoon. This is quite unusual for me on a rainy Saturday in Sole Mates. Although recently, I admit, I’ve had a tremendous amount of energy in me, I really have. I hardly even need to sleep much, which is really handy because I’ve been up most nights working on this piece of coursework. Like I am now. In fact, at this precise moment, it is 3.07 a.m.

  Anyway, Dionne sat in her chair and, in between mouthfuls of custard slice, told us the sales figures for the tights. Next to her, Gina stood with her arms folded and her head on one side (because of the weight of her ponytail) and listened (because she is nosy).

  ‘OK, in third place with a sum total of six boxes of tights sold is Emily.’

  So Emily came last. Big shocker!

  ‘And in second place with twenty-six boxes sold is . . . Goose.’

  I looked across triumphantly at Goose and shrugged my shoulders in a way which meant

  1. Never mind, at least you tried.

  and

  2. I’ve won!!! Ha Ha.

  To my annoyance, Goose didn’t seem bothered at all. She just laughed and said, ‘Even I can’t compete with Elvis Presley. How many tights did Lottie sell and what does she win?’

  And I added, ‘Yes, what do I win?’

  Dionne said, ‘You sold an amazing forty-one boxes. Close your eyes.’ So I did, and she put something small and flat into my hands and when I opened my eyes again I was looking at this.

  I stared at the cover for a second, and then I flipped it over and looked at the other side. On the back was printed the entire track listing but I only got as far as reading the details for the first song.

  1 ‘Angels’ (Robbie Williams) performed by the Phil Fernandez All Stars.

  Next to me, Goose started to laugh. I frowned and put the CD down on Dionne’s desk and said, ‘Is this a joke?’

  Dionne cast a sideways glance at Gina and gave her a wink. ‘I promised you a prize and there it is.’

  I took a really deep breath and then I said, ‘Do you mean to say that I’ve run about all day trying to sell your stupid cheap tights just for one of these awful CDs? Is that seriously what you’re trying to tell me?’

  Up until this point Gina had been keeping fairly quiet for once, but now she pulled the type of face that I’d pull if someone shoved a liver-and-cow-tongue sandwich under my nose. Then she piped up with, ‘’Ow ungrateful! In my day, Missy Biggs, we’d be pleased to get any type of present, innit. You lot today don’t know you’re born.’

  Before I could stop myself I said, ‘Yes, but I think you’ll find that we’ve learned to stand up straight and walk on two legs since then.’ And I threw the CD down on the floor and stamped on it. The CD case cracked and the disc went skidding across the carpet.

  Dionne looked at me long and hard. It wasn’t exactly a Stare of Death but it was fairly close. After a moment or so she said, ‘I suggest you go home now, Lottie, and have a think about the way you’ve just spoken to me and Gina and come back next week when you’ve calmed down and are ready to apologize.’ And then I felt Goose take hold of my arm and heard her say, ‘She didn’t mean it. I think she’s just a bit stressed out at the moment.’ And I kind of sniffed and nodded and half apologized (but not quite) and followed Goose and Emily out into the stockroom.

  When Emily had gone and me and Goose were alone, I took my bag from off the hook and unzipped the top. It is important to point out that I don’t use my genuine authentic Donna Karan shoulder bag for work, I use my Nike backpack instead because I need something big enough to hold my sandwiches. At school this is not an issue because I get a dinner ticket. Anyway, after unzipping my backpack, I pulled a shoebox from off the shelf, emptied its contents straight into my bag and then put the box back exactly where I’d found it. Goose said, ‘What are you doing?’

  I said, ‘I’m rescuing some LAYLA ballet pumps in size four. I think that’s the least I deserve for singing with Elvis in the rain today in aid of Sole Mates retail profits.’

  Goose looked a bit shocked and said, ‘Do you like LAYLA then? I think they’re putrid.’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t care. Dionne promised a prize so she needs to pay up. She can’t just fob me off with some stupid CD from head office. That’s not fair.’

  And then I laughed and emptied the contents of another shoebox into my bag and this time I didn’t even bother to look to see what I was rescuing. I just took it anyway.

  trYiNG NOt tO CrY whiLe DrawiNG aN amOeBa

  Something that Goose said to me yesterday has been playing on my mind a bit. It was during double science and we were sat on those high stools in the chemistry lab trying not to die of severe boredom while Mr Thomas drew random blobs on the whiteboard that looked like this:

  All the science geeks in our class were busy copying down the random blobs but I was too busy playing hangman with Goose to bother. Usually we have quite a giggle doing this, but Goose’s Hangman was fairly obvious, to tell the truth. I only needed a few more letters to win the game but I was deliberately guessing wrong ones just to avoid uttering out loud anything so dreadfully horrific.

  I’d just guessed a Z when Mr Thomas stopped what he was doing and said, ‘Lottie, are you paying attention?’

  I said, ‘No, but I was listening though.’

  Mr Thomas gave me a dirty look and then he said, ‘So let me just get this clear. You are listening to what I’m saying but you’re not paying any attention to it. Is that right?’

  My head went blank. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure whether I should answer yes or no. After a few edgy seconds I said, ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Mr Thomas gave a deep sigh and looked at the ceiling. Then he said, ‘Have you learnt anything this lesson?’

  And I said, ‘Ye-es.’

  Mr Thomas seemed blatantly unconvinced. In a very irritated voice, he said, ‘Do you know what this is then?’ And he tapped the blob he had drawn on the whiteboard and gave me a particularly nasty look. I hate being put on the spot. I really do. I’ve never performed very well under pressure. As you might have noticed already, pressure makes me say flippant things. My brain goes into panic overload and then the resulting stress builds up the pressure inside my head, which forces my mouth to open and something unhelpful to pop out of it. I looked at the blob on the board and said, ‘Is it a fried egg?’

  Mr Thomas shook his head very slowly and deliberately. ‘No, Lottie,’ he said. ‘It isn’t. It’s an amoeba. An amoeba is a single-celled creature which constantly changes shape and can only be seen with the aid of a microscope. And quite frankly, this amoeba that I’ve just drawn here has more chance of doing well in a GCSE science exam than you have, if you don’t start listening to what I’m saying and do some work for once.’ And then he started raving on some more about how I don’t listen enough and about how it won’t be long until I have exams and stuff, and to be honest he was actually quite angry with me and his rant went on for almost four minutes, and I really didn’t want to hear it because I happen to believe that I could probably
pass any science exam I ever want to because, after all, it can’t be that hard writing about the sex life of a plant, can it? So I just sat there patiently and gave him the most sincere I’m hearing you face that I have.

  By the time he’d finished moaning on at me and gone back to drawing blobs, I was feeling a bit cheesed off. Goose gave me a sympathetic look and whispered, ‘Sorry, Lotts. I wanted to tell you it was an amoeba, but Thommo was giving me the evil eyeball so I couldn’t.’

  I said, ‘Well, thanks for nothing!’

  Goose went a bit quiet then and for a few minutes both of us just sat there on our high stools, ignoring each other and drawing amoebas in our exercise books.

  After what felt like ages Goose said, ‘Is something wrong, Lottie?’

  I said, ‘No. Apart from having my ear severely chewed off for four hours by Mr Thomas, everything is perfectly fine, thank you very much.’

  Goose bit her lip, sighed and said, ‘It’s just that you’ve been acting really weird recently.’

  I shifted on my stool and looked up at Goose’s face. She looked genuinely concerned and actually rather upset. This made me feel a bit bad. After all, it’s not totally her fault that Neil Adam fancied her instead of me. I shifted some more on my stool and said, ‘It’s OK, Goose, honest. I’ve just been in a bit of a dodgy mood recently, that’s all.’

  Goose raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you think you’re having an existential moment?’ She smiled a bit and added, ‘You’ll be writing poetry and dreaming about going to live in Iceland and stuff next.’

  I thought about this for a second and then I said, ‘Not really Goose. I can’t say that I’ve ever thought about going to Iceland. For a start, I don’t really like frozen food all that much. I’m just in a bad mood.’