by Jean Ure
All the drawings that I do, I’m putting with the tape so that Cat’s mum knows where to leave a space when she does the typing. Then I will stick them on!
I still can’t really understand why Cat wants me to record all this stuff. All about me and my boring life. When I asked her she said, “Well, look at it this way. It’s not everyone can say they’ve written a book. Think what an achievement it would be!”
I said, “But nothing’s ever happened to me.” Meaning, I’ve never been kidnapped,
or lost at sea
or rescued anyone from drowning
or been in a plane that’s been hijacked.
I have never been on a plane full stop. A BIG full stop.
I’ve never been abroad, I’ve never been on a boat, I’ve only been to the seaside once and that was two years ago when Nan gave us the money to go to Clacton and stay in a bed-and-breakfast. Even then it rained all the time. And Mum put some clothes to dry on the heater and the clothes caught fire while we were out and set light to the curtains and Dad got in a hump and spent all our money playing the fruit machines down the pub which meant we had to come home three days early and the bed-and-breakfast lady kept sending threatening letters about her curtains!
Nan and Crandy had to pay her in the end, to buy some new ones. Nan was ever so horrid about it. She said that Mum was like a child and that Dad was irresponsible and we didn’t deserve to have holidays. So we’ve never had one since and now I don’t suppose we’ll ever have one again. See if I care!
That Tracey Bigg, she goes off all over the place. Places like Florida and Gran Canaria (wherever that is). She’s always boasting about it. I haven’t got anything to boast about. I just don’t see what Cat wants me to say into this tape machine she’s given me.
I said this to Cat and she chirruped, “Oh, Mandy, you’ve got all sorts of things!” Cat’s always chirruping and chirping. She’s ever such a cheerful person. So am I, I suppose, really. On the whole. Maybe that’s why we’re friends. She told me that things didn’t have to be big and dramatic to be put into books.
“Just ordinary everyday happenings. That’s what interests people.”
Does she mean that other people are going to read about me???
I could be famous! I could be rich! They could make a film about me!
Yes, and if they do I know one person that’s not going to be in it, and that’s Tracey Bigg. If anyone gets to play her it’ll be some ugly, cross-eyed, po-faced tub.
Serve her right! I can’t stand that girl.
This is her.
Tracey Bigg. She’s always picking on me, just because she’s Bigg and I’m Small. Which we really are. Unfortunately.
She’s horrible! I hate her. She says these really mean and spiteful things just to try and hurt people. Like at the beginning of term when Miss Foster said we’d all got to read as many books as we could and get people to sponsor us, and the money we raised was going to go to charity, and Tracey Bigg sniggered and said, “What happens if we can’t read, Miss?” and everyone knew she was talking about me.
Me and Oliver Pratt. Not that I cared, I don’t care what anyone says, but Oliver went red as radishes and I felt really sorry for him. I mean, for all Tracey Bigg knows we’ve got that thing where you muddle your letters, * which is a sort of illness and nothing to do with being lazy or stupid. It’s like being handicapped and people mocking at you.
Tracey Bigg is the sort of person that would mock at anyone that was handicapped. She’d kick a blind man’s stick away from him just for fun, she would.
Tracey Bigg is garbage.
Miss Foster said that anyone that found reading difficult could choose books with pictures, but it didn’t make any difference, I couldn’t have found anyone to sponsor me anyway. I knew I couldn’t ask Mum and Dad ’cos they were already worried about money, where is the next penny going to come from? and how are we going to pay all the bills? And I couldn’t ask the neighbours ’cos Mum doesn’t like me to do that. She says if I ask them, their kids will ask her, and then she’ll feel embarrassed when she has to say no. And I could just imagine what would happen if I tried asking old Misery Guts!
When it was time to give the forms back I had to pretend I’d lost mine. Miss Foster got really ratty with me. She said, “Mandy Small, what is the matter with you? You are the most careless, thoughtless child I have ever met!” And Tracey Bigg was there and she didn’t half sneer. ’Cos she’d read more books than anyone, hadn’t she? And made a load more money.
When we went into the playground at break she kept going on with this rhyme she’d made up.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who’s the dumbest girl of all?
Mandee! Mandy Small!”
She taught it to Aimee Wilcox and Leanne Trimble that are her best friends and they went round chanting it all through break and doing this stupid dance that made everyone laugh.
I just took no notice. I mean, my skin is really tough. It’s like I’m wearing body armour. You could shoot arrows at it and they’d just bounce off. You could shoot bullets. You could hurl dead elephants.
Tracey Bigg can’t hurt me. But all the same, it does get on my nerves. You get to feeling like you’re on the point of exploding. Like a bottle of fizzy pop that’s been all shaken up and the cork is just about to b … low!
That’s what happened back at half term. My cork just blew, and I bopped her one. Actually, I bashed her. Right on the conk.
She bled gallons! She bled everywhere. All down her chin, drip-drip-drip. All down the front of her dress, drip-drop, drip-drop, splodge. What a mess! But it was her own fault. She asked for it. See, what happened, Miss Foster gave us these forms to take home. More forms. She’s always giving us forms. Usually I just chuck mine away. I mean, I can’t keep bothering Mum all the time. She’d only get fussed.
This lot was forms for going to summer camp. Down in Devon, on a farm.
“I don’t expect most of you have ever been on a farm, have you?”
Tracey Bigg had. Of course. She’s been everywhere. She’s been to America. She’s been to Australia. She’s been to Switzerland and gone sking in the mountains. She would!
I haven’t ever been anywhere except to Clacton where it rained and Dad spent all our money. Oh, and to my nan’s, but that’s only a tube ride away. I would quite like to have seen a farm but I didn’t think I could leave Mum and Dad for a whole fortnight even if Nan and Grandy offered to pay, which they might have done as on the whole they are quite generous. But I am always frightened that if I’m not there something disastrous will happen. Like I’ll get back and find that Mum has burnt the house down or Dad’s gone through the roof. Or even worse, that one of them has run away.
So I told Miss Foster I couldn’t go and she seemed disappointed and said, “Oh, Mandy, that’s a pity! I feel a change of scene would do you good.”
I don’t know what she meant by that. I don’t need any change of scene! I’m quite happy where I am.
Anyway, out in the playground afterwards Tracey Bigg made up another of her stupid rhymes.
That was when I bashed her. And she yelled, and grabbed my hair, and tried to scratch my eyes out so I kicked her, really hard, on the ankle and she tore at my sleeve and that was when Miss Foster and another teacher came running across and separated us.
’Course, I got into dead trouble for that. Dead trouble. Tracey said it was all my fault, and so did Aimee and Leanne. They said, “She attacked her, Miss.”
Nobody ever asked me why I’d attacked her, and I wouldn’t have told them even if they had. Not any of their business. But they didn’t ever ask.
It’s like I’ve got this reputation for being aggressive and Tracey’s got this reputation for being good and that’s all anyone cares. But sometimes I think you have to be a bit aggressive or people just stamp all over you. Like with Oliver, and Billy Murdo’s gang. They bully him something rotten and no one ever does a thing about it. That’s because they do it
where the teachers can’t see. And Oliver, he’s such a sad, weedy little guy, he never sticks up for himself.
I bet if he did, Miss Foster would say it was all his fault, even though Billy Murdo’s about ten times bigger.
Sometimes you just can’t win. But on the other hand, you can’t just sit back and do nothing. I don’t think you can.
Half-past three is when school ends. I can’t wait to get out! I never stay behind for anything; not if I can help it. I run like a whirlwind to Bunjy’s to pick Mum up and go shopping with her.
Bunjy’s is the name of the baker’s where Mum works. But the lady who owns it, the one who keeps threatening to give her the sack, isn’t called Mrs Bunjy but Mrs Sowerbutts. Mum calls her old Sourpuss. She’s not quite as bad as Misery Guts, but they both give Mum a lot of hassle.
Sometimes when I get there I’m a few minutes early. If old Sourpuss is around Mum pulls this face at me through the window and I know that I will have to wait.
Old Sourpuss wasn’t there that day, the day I bashed Tracey Bigg and made her nose bleed. Mum came waltzing out looking all happy and giggly ‘cos she’d left a few minutes before she ought!
I love it when Mum behaves like that. It means we’re going to have fun!
Before we went home we called at the supermarket to buy some food for Dad’s tea. Mum wanted to do him something different, something a bit posh. She started talking about making pastry and putting things inside it, but I managed to talk her out of that idea. Last time Mum tried making pastry it was an absolute disaster. It came out all hard, like a layer of cement. Dad said, “Blimey O’Reilly, you’d need a hammer and chisel to make any headway with this!”
I don’t know why Dad says Blimey O’Reilly, but he only does it when he thinks something is funny. Sometimes he just doubles up laughing at Mum and her cooking. Once she put the sugar in the oven to dry and it melted all over the place, and Dad said she was daft as a brush. He said, “Oh, what a yum yum!” And we all fell about, including Mum.
But other times, like if he’s had a bad day or old Misery’s had a go at him, he doesn’t say Blimey O’Reilly he says things that are cross and unkind and Mum gets all upset. So it seemed to me it was silly to take chances. I reckoned Mum ought to get him something he liked. Food is terribly important to men. They get really upset if they come home and their dinner isn’t ready or it’s not what they want. Women don’t care quite so much. Well, that’s how it seems to me.
So in the end we bought his favourite pie, which I reckoned even Mum couldn’t ruin as all you have to do is just put it in the oven. Mum said, “We’ll have toast fingers and a bit of paté to start with,” ’cos she still wanted to be posh.
Well, we got in and first thing we know is old Misery Guts is there waiting for us, hiding behind the door. All in one breath she says, “Mrs-Small-I-really-must-complain-about-the-state-of-the-bathroom-it-looks-as-if-a-bomb-has-hit-it.” To which Mum chirps, “We should be so lucky!” and goes racing up the stairs two at a time with me giggling behind her.
The reason the bathroom looked as if a bomb had hit it was that the hot water thingie had blown up when Dad was running his bath. The hot water thingie looks like an ancient monument.
Before you can get any hot water out of it you have to move lots of little levers and turn on lots of taps and then light a match. I’m not allowed to touch it in case I blow myself up. Half the wall is down, now.
“That Misery Guts,” panted Mum, as we pounded up the stairs to our own floor. “A pity it couldn’t have blown up when she was in there!”
“In the bath,” I said. “All naked.”
Sometimes old Misery Guts makes Mum’s life a real pain, but we just laughed about her that day. Mum was in a really giggly sort of mood. She turned the oven on, to heat it up for Dad’s pie, and we had a cup of tea and watched a bit of telly, and then Mum put the pie in and I laid the table and we got the bread out for toasting.
“Let’s do some thing special,” said Mum. “Let’s cut the toast into funny shapes. We’ll cut one into a Misery Guts shape and see if your dad can guess who it is!”
So that was what we did. We made a Misery Guts shape and an old Sourpuss shape, and Mum made Nan and Grandy shapes, and I made Tracey Bigg and Miss Foster shapes, and then we just went mad and made any old shapes that took our fancy. Shapes with big heads, and shapes with big feet, and shapes with big bums. Fat shapes, skinny shapes. Tall shapes, short shapes. Shapes of all kinds!
We ended up with way too much toast!
“We’ve used up the whole loaf!” said Mum.
But we just giggled about it, ‘cos that was the sort of mood we were in.
Dad got in at five o’clock. He swung me up in his arms and said, “And how’s our Mand?”
“We’ve been making toasted teachers,” I said.
“That sounds a bit dodgy,” said Dad. “I hope they’re not for my tea?”
“Only for starters,” said Mum, proudly. She was really chuffed with her posh starters. Paté and toast! That’s what the nobs have.
“So what’s for enders?” said Dad.
“Enders is trifle,” I said. We’d bought some little pots of it at the supermarket.
“And middles?”
“Middles—”
“Oh!” Mum clapped her hand to her mouth. I ran for the oven. Too late! Dad’s beautiful pie was ruined. We’d been so busy making toast shapes that Mum had forgotten to turn the oven down. The pie had burnt to a cinder!
I looked anxiously at Dad.
Dad said, “What’s this supposed to be, then? My tea?”
Mum, all tearful, said, “There’s always baked beans.”
“Baked beans?” roared Dad. “I don’t want baked beans!’ He banged with his fist on the table. “I want a man’s meal, darling!”
I could see that any minute Mum was going to burst into tears, and I knew if she did that it would only get Dad even madder. So I rushed to put all the toast shapes on the table and said, “We could have baked beans on toasted teacher! Look, this one’s Mr Phillpots, with his big bum! And this fat one is Mrs Duckworth. Or you could have beans on Misery Guts. This one’s Misery Guts. See? Mum made her. ‘Cos she moaned about the bathroom, so I reckon she deserves to get eaten. I think you should eat her and Mum should eat old Sourpuss. You could start with the head and work down. Or start at the feet and work up. Yum yum! Lovely bum!”
I’d picked out old Misery Guts and was pushing her at Dad and by this time he was laughing, and Mum was smiling a little tearful smile, so I knew that I could relax. Everything was going to be all right.
“Honest to God,” said Dad, wiping his eyes, “I don’t know where we’d be without you, Mand!”
My mum and dad really do need me.
I’m really enjoying telling my life story! I didn’t think I would, I thought it would be a real drag. The only bit I was looking forward to was the drawings. But now I have discovered that I can put on different voices. Like for instance when I’m being Dad I put on this voice that is very grrrrrruff and
And when I’m being Mum I speak very high and light like soap bubbles.
Old Misery Guts, she’s got a voice like a rusty tin full of nails. And when she speaks, her mouth goes like a prune.
So that’s what I make my mouth go like when I’m being her.
Cat has a really nice voice. All warm and round and bubbly, like honey glugging out of a jar.
And she has this north country accent, which is fun.
If I’d have known I could do all these voices and act out being different people I could have been in our Christmas play. I could have played the lead instead of—guess who?
You’ve got it! Tracey Bigg. Aimee Wilcox said she was picked because she speaks nice. But I can speak nice! If I want to. I don’t always want to. Anyway, I bet it wasn’t ‘cos she speaks nice, I bet it was ’cos she speaks LOUD. I can speak loud.
Not that Miss Foster would pick me. She wouldn’t ever. She reckons I’m useless
and that my mum and dad are useless and that we’re all a bunch of no-hopers. She won’t half be surprised when my book’s published!
Dad said the other day, “So! We’re going to have a famous writer in the family, are we?”
I have thought about this, but while I would quite like to become famous (just to show Tracey Bigg and Miss Foster, and also, of course, to earn a lot of money) I don’t think that I shall become famous by writing books. For one thing, I don’t expect that Cat’s mum would want to keep on typing them out for me. And for another, what would I write about??? Once I have told my life story, what is there left?
Maybe I will become a famous actress! Or a funny person on the telly, pretending to be well-known people. Taking them off. I bet I could do that! It would be a bit like Dad being Elvis. I could be … Madonna!
I could be a Spice girl!
I could be the Queen!
I could be anyone!
Dad has heard me doing my voices. He’d really love to know what I’m talking about! He said, “You’re not talking about us, are you, Mandy? Me and your mum? You’re not giving our secrets away?”
Mum told him to let me alone. She said that I was doing it for Cat (only she calls her Miss Daley) and if Cat thought it was a good thing, “We oughtn’t to interfere.”
Dad said, “I’m not interfering, I just want to know what she’s telling her.”
He’s tried wheedling and coaxing me, he’s even tried bribing. He said, “Give you half a dollar if you’ll let me have a listen!”
But I don’t know what half a dollar is, and in any case what I’m talking about is strictly private.