Diary of a Chav

by Grace Dent

  Then Carrie caught up with me by the traffic lights and put her arm round my shoulder and said, “You all right Shiz?”

  And I said, “Yeah, but that clown was doing my head right in.”

  And I thought she would be mad ’cos I spoiled her date with Cotch, but Carrie didn’t say anything for about a minute and then she chucked back her head and laughed dead loud and said, “Yeah they are right pair of clowns, I know. Come on Shizza, let’s go home.”

  We went back to Carrie’s house and she got us both big bowls of Ben & Jerry’s with tons of strawberry sauce on them and I sat and ate mine and didn’t speak and worried for a long long time that I am a lezboid after all, ’cos if that’s what having a boyfriend is like I don’t want it ONE LITTLE BIT.

  MONDAY 18TH FEBRUARY

  I was in trouble quite a lot at school today. I don’t know why. Some days I just wind the teachers up all day long. In geography I got sent out for talking. In math, me, Uma, Kezia, and Carrie got the back row seats and that meant we never did anything but send texts. In religious studies we had a class debate about world famine but I’m no good at debating ’cos some people’s opinions are so totally stupid that I can’t be bothered to listen. Like Sonia Cathcart’s. She reckons we should just pray to Jesus Our Savior and then everything will be OK. How can we stop babies dying every day in Africa? Let’s all pray!! And what if babies keep on dying anyhow, Sonia? We should just all pray even harder! Yeah, okay, Sonia, you bleeding nutjob. So I said this proper loud and got into trouble for being “prejudicial.” This is just like two weeks ago when we were debating Islam and I said that I wasn’t being funny or nothing but Nabila Chaalan’s mother looks well unapproachable when she comes down the school gates in her robot outfit. Yeah, I know I was meant to call it “the veil” or whatever but Nabila knew what I meant. Sometimes I feel like we live in a world where no one wants to hear the truth. Next week we are doing Judaism. Mrs. Radowitz says I should practice saying things through quietly in my head and working out how they sound before I say them out loud ’cos some words can sound “stigmatizing.” I said I would try.

  Then I went to English and realized I’d not brought my Jane Eyre or done the homework. Ms. Bracket wouldn’t even hear my excuse. She stuck me on a Friday lunchtime detention. She is a bleeding nightmare.

  THURSDAY 21ST FEBRUARY

  Uma Brunton-Fletcher’s brother, Clinton, got out of juvie today. My mum totally won’t let me go to his homecoming party even though Uma was showing off all day about all the Peach Lambrella and shrimp cocktail and trifle her mum bought from Iceland for the buffet. Mum is definitely prejudicial toward the Brunton-Fletchers. The moment I told her that Clinton Brunton-Fletcher wasn’t locked up no more she went straight to Mr. Patel’s dollar store and bought a “Beware Of The Dog” sign with a picture of a Staffordshire bull terrier on it and stuck it in the living-room window. The Staffy on the sign looks nothing like our Penny. For a start it’s sitting upright and looks awake and NOT lying on its back with its paws in the air snoring with a belly full of Cheese and Chive Pringles. I pointed this out to Mum and she laughed well loud for ages and said that Penny was having a day off.

  11 PM — Now I come to think, I don’t know whether Clinton is a Brunton or a Fletcher or a Brunton-Fletcher. I don’t know who his dad is. I just asked Mum ’cos she knows stuff like this. She reckons last time he was up in court for TWOCing that Merc, he was in the Ilford Bugle as “Brunton-Fletcher,” which made her laugh ’cos he don’t look like any of them in that house. Mum says Clinton is the spit of a bloke called Swanny who used to sell cheap cigs down the Ilford Social Club. “And all I’m saying,” said Mum, “is that his mother, Rose, was never short of a packet of Marlboro Red, if you know what I mean?”

  I pretended to NOT know what she meant. Mum talking about sex makes me want to vomit.

  FRIDAY 22ND FEBRUARY

  I went to Ms. Bracket’s detention today. It was less trouble than skiving. Ms. Bracket already warned me that if I didn’t show that she’d keep tracking me down and making it doubly bad, and the thing is with her that she bloody would. She’s a bit nuts I reckon. Sonia Carthcart says that her dad, who is on the PTA, says that Ms. Bracket was one of Mr. Bamblebury’s chief weapons to get Mayflower on track. Huh. BONNE CHANCE TO HER! So I go in and there’s Uma and Latoya and a few other usuals and I sit down and Ms. Bracket gives me this exercise where I have to look at the first pages of Jane Eyre and find words that the author has used to create sympathy for the lead character. That was well easy, so I just did it ’cos I was hungry and Friday is one of the days they do chips in the lunch hall.

  “So, not too fazed by that then?” Ms. Bracket said, when she saw what I’d written.

  “No,” I said.

  And she said, “Why is it not that easy in class?”

  “Dunno,” I said.

  Then she said quietly so only I could hear, “I’ve been doing a bit of investigating about you, Miss Wood,” and I thought: Oh here we go, earache. Then she said, “It transpires that if your SAT scores are anything to go by, brain-wise you’re in the top half of the year.”

  I just shrugged at her then and stared ahead.

  “And I spoke to Mrs. Radowitz and Mr. Gilligan today,” she said, “and they both said the same thing. Bright girl. Probably could do A-Levels. But she couldn’t give a damn.”

  I just scowled at the silly old bag then, ’cos she was getting on my nerves.

  “Always in trouble,” said Ms. Bracket, “always being chucked out of class. Suspended once. Chucking it all down the drain.”

  I just zoned out then and tried to do that scary stare Uma does.

  “What’s the plan then after GCSEs next year, Shiraz?” she kept on moaning. “Have you thought of staying on at college? You know from next year we’ll have a sixth form here too?”

  I just stared at her and said nothing. I was going to say that college is full of snooty folk doing A-Levels in nothing useful and scrounging off the system, a bit like our Cava-Sue, and I was going to get myself a job in a sports shop or something, but I just shrugged again ’cos I don’t have to explain myself to no one and eventually she let me go. SHE IS A NIGHTMARE.

  SUNDAY 24TH FEBRUARY

  Carrie has NOT been put off boys by the Cotch/Eric disaster. In fact she’s worse than ever. Especially now she’s found Bezzie with the Vauxhall Nova’s profile on MySpace. What happened was that Carrie was on her iMac the other night and she went on to Cotch’s MySpace to leave him a comment ’cos she’s been giving him a bit of a swerve since Valentine’s and she wanted to know if he wants the teddy back to give to another girl seeing as the date never really happened. So she clicked on one of her mates and then she just kept on clicking their mates and seeing who was there from Ilford and Goodmayes and Romford that we knew. Then after about five minutes of random clicking she said she couldn’t believe it but THERE WAS BEZZIE!!! Or BEZZIE KELLEHER as is his full name. Oh and his mate with the brown hair and the fat bum is called WESLEY BARRINGTON BAINS II. (As in Wesley Barrington Bains the Second, like there was a first one and he is the second!!)

  And they have a grime collective called the G-Mayes Detonators!!!! Carrie let me hear one of their tracks last night called “We Got Da Beef” which was basically Bezzie bragging about how brilliant his life was for ten minutes over human beatbox. Carrie thought it was amazing. She has downloaded it on to her iPod and has listened to it fifty-six times since.

  I went home quick before the words “double-date” came up again.

  MARCH

  MONDAY 3RD MARCH

  What a crap day. Mr. Brightwell from the career advice service came to Mayflower to visit Year Tens this afternoon. We all had to go in and see him one by one and talk to him about what we wanted to do next year after Year Eleven, which ISN’T THAT FAR AWAY so the teachers keep moaning ALL THE TIME.

  Mr. Brightwell was sitting in one of the IT labs wearing the same green jacket with the leather patches on the elbows and the
tinted glasses that he used to wear when he did substitute teaching at Mayflower, which makes him look like one of them blokes off of ITV’s Britain’s Scariest Pedophiles or something — even though he isn’t a pedo, he’s okay. I quite liked Mr. Brightwell. He was a totally rubbish substitute teacher though. He was always forgetting what class he was meant to be teaching, or losing his bag, and eventually he stopped doing substitute teaching at Mayflower and Latoya Bell told everyone that her mum said that he’d gone a bit loony ’cos she saw him at the social security office filing a claim, but Latoya Bell is a faker and says all sorts of things to get attention on herself, so that’s probably not true.

  Anyway, all I know is Mr. Brightwell was rubbish as a substitute so I’m not sure how he even has a job himself let alone a job telling everyone else how to get a job, but I didn’t say that to his face ’cos I did what Mrs. Radowitz said and thought through quietly in my head how that sounded and I reckon it probably was “prejudicial” and “stigmatizing” toward folk who just happen to look a bit like pedos but who aren’t.

  Everyone else in class 10W had something worked out to tell Mr. Brightwell, aside from me. Carrie reckons she wants to be a nail technician and tanning supervisor like Collette Brown at Cheeky’s and Luther Dinsdale wants to start his own grime collective ’cos he’s got some pretty good rhymes and his dad knows people who have a recording studio in Stratford and run a pirate station called RUDE FM so he reckons he can get a slot. Kezia wants to be a singer ’cos she always does karaoke at Goodmayes Social Club and once won fifty quid of Iceland vouchers and everyone said she should go on Pop Idol. Uma Brunton-Fletcher wants to be a model ’cos she’s dead tall and has the “right attitude,” or so she keeps saying but she’s forever hanging about Oxford Circus Top Shop on Saturdays and it’s not like anyone from one of the posh agencies has picked her out to be one or anything (probably ’cos she has front teeth like a llama).

  So I saw Mr. Brightwell and he asked if I was thinking of staying in education and I said no and he said, “What about an NVQ?”

  And I said, “No I want to get a job in JD Sports or somewhere ’cos I want to earn some proper money.”

  So Mr. Brightwell said how am I coming on with math and English GCSE?

  And I said, “Dunno, ask my teachers.”

  And he said, “Well, it’s difficult to get your foot in the door in retail without a math and English GCSE, Shiraz.”

  So I said, “Well if I can’t get a job in a shop or something I’m going to be on telly as I think I’m quite unique and the stuff I do is proper mad.”

  Mr. Brightwell sighed quite loudly then and said, “Like what?”

  And I said, “Well I always say exactly what I think and if I was on a TV show I would definitely cause drama ’cos I say what I think to people’s faces.”

  So Mr. Brightwell said, “Well that’s not enough to make a career out of, Shiraz.”

  And I said, “Well, how come Tabitha Tennant from Dagenham who got kicked off Big Brother for breaking rules was in the Sun last week saying she made two-point-two MILLION QUID last year just from stuff like her new TV show called Tabitha’s Tantrums on Living TV where they just film her doing stuff like getting her hair done and going around being well gobby.” I said I could TOTALLY do that ’cos if I went on Big Brother I’d cause more friction than Tabitha.

  Mr. Brightwell looked really depressed then and said every girl in Essex wanted to be Tabitha Tennant but that was “cloud cuckoo land” and we needed to think of a more “viable option for the future.” He typed all of my strengths and weaknesses into the computer and some of my “guesstimated” grades for GCSE too and said that he would help me find a work placement to give me a taste of the job world. When I looked at the paper what he’d printed out it said: Tilak Foods — Unit 57, Bishop Fledding Industrial Estate, Goodmayes.

  Mr. Brightwell said it was a small factory that supplies foods like samosas and pakoras and stuff to newsstands and gas station refrigerator sections. He said I should write them a letter to see if they can give me a job. I took the piece of paper and left the IT lab and felt a bit weird.

  Mr. Brightwell is rubbish. I don’t know how he has a job.

  FRIDAY 7TH MARCH

  We got to meet Cava-Sue’s boyfriend, Lewis, tonight!!! Well, for about fourteen seconds. That’s all Cava-Sue would let us see of him and even then she was standing in front of him in the living room door answering all our questions like he had learning difficulties. He’s called Lewis and he is studying Art A-Level, that’s all we got to know.

  Mum blackmailed Cava-Sue to bring him home ’cos she said she would only lend Cava-Sue a tenner to go out with Lewis if we could all have a butcher’s at him. Mum said this Lewis could be a bloody psycho or anything for all that we knew. Mum kept moaning on that when she met Dad in 1985 she brought him home to meet her mother within a fortnight for a cup of tea. “Didn’t I, Brian?” my mum kept saying. “You came and met my mother and had a cuppa after a fortnight? You remember, Brian?”

  My dad made a face like he definitely DID remember. I don’t remember Mum’s mum at all ’cos she died when I was like three or something but Dad always says that me and Cava-Sue take after her ’cos “she called a spade a spade too,” whatever that means. Dad says the first time he went round to see his future mother-in-law, the first thing Gran did was look at his hair and pull a face, then open up her handbag and pull out a comb and say, “I reckon you’ll be needing this.”

  Lewis ain’t much to write home about. The blokes at Cava-Sue’s college can’t be up to much if this is the best she can do. Lewis is the same height as Cava-Sue (medium height) and wore a white button-up shirt with a red T-shirt underneath and tight black jeans and Converse high-tops.

  His hair is quite long on the top and short at the back and I reckon he had black hair dye in his hair. Weirdest of all he was wearing A WHITE TIE. Not one single thing he had on was a proper label like Hackett or Adidas or Nike, it all looked like it was from Save The Children in Ilford. I said this to Cava-Sue when he popped to the loo and Mum was sticking the kettle on, and she told me to shut my trap or she’d tell Mum she saw me in Ilford Mall this afternoon when I was meant to be at school, so I shut right up then.

  Cava-Sue has gone to a club near Oxford Street in London called Young and Lost to see a band called DIY Taxidermy. I know this ’cos I was earwigging on her phone call and I found a flyer in her college bag when I was nicking a pen to do my OK! crossword. Cava-Sue has LIED to Mum!! She said she was just going to the Wetherspoon’s in Goodmayes then to Lewis’s house for a bit ’cos she knows Mum don’t like her going to central London on nights out.

  I agree with Mum, central London is full of all sorts of pedos and terrorists. I don’t know why Cava-Sue needs to go there. Maybe she thinks if she goes to clubs in central London she might meet someone a bit better than Lewis ’cos, let’s face it, he’s never going to keep hold of our Cava-Sue if he keeps turning up in his old school uniform and bringing her “pieces of his art” made from bits of pasta and ribbon glued to old Pop-Tart boxes. What a freak.

  My mother didn’t say anything about Lewis when he went. She just shook her head. If you knew her like I do, you’d know that’s not good.

  3 AM — Cava-Sue has just got back from central London. I asked her if she had a good time and Cava-Sue said it was probably the best night of her whole life EVER then she took about three goes to climb the bunk bed ladder and fell asleep on top of the duvet with all of her clothes on.

  SATURDAY 8TH MARCH

  Went to Ilford with Carrie today and we had a look around Top Shop and Superdrug for a while but it was a bit cold for just hanging on the benches so we went and sat in McDonald’s and I got a McChicken Sandwich and a strawberry milkshake and Carrie got a Fillet o’ Fish and a Rolo McFlurry and we sat in the window watching all of the folk passing by and we played That’s Your Boyfriend, which usually makes us both laugh so much we can hardly breathe. Basically, I point at some lad and go,
“’Ere Carrie, that’s your boyfriend,” and it’s always some geezer with, like, no hair or a big fat bum or yellow teeth.

  Then Carrie says “’Ere, Shiraz, well THAT’S your boyfriend,” and when I look it’s some forty-year-old bloke with a beard and all his stuff in a tartan shopping trolley.

  So then I go, “’Ere Carrie, THAT’S your boyfriend,” and when she looks it’ll be some little hundred-year-old Chinese bloke carrying a tray of vegetables back from the market.

  We can play this game for hours and usually we never ever get bored of it but today Carrie was a bit down. Carrie said she is completely totally pissed off as she feels like this whole thing with Bezzie Kelleher is just going nowhere. So I said to Carrie, “What whole thing, you nutter?!”

  And she said, “Exactly.” Then she told me that she invited Bezzie as a friend on her MySpace last week and about four days later he accepted which was fair play ’cos he hadn’t logged in since then but when he did accept she left him a comment saying hi but he didn’t even comment her back.

  I said to Carrie, “Well maybe he don’t check his MySpace that often ’cos I’ve not checked mine for like four weeks.” (Our crap £200 computer has got a virus and Mum won’t get it mended ’cos she says we just use it for rubbish anyhow.) Carrie just looked sad then and said that Bezzie Kelleher was breaking her heart.

  I laughed well loud when she said that but then I felt bad ’cos I realized Carrie meant it.

  So we walked back through the town center to get the 679 bus home and we saw Collette Brown coming out of Cheeky’s with a big smile on her face carrying a box, so we stopped to say hello. Collette Brown was well excited and she showed us what was in the box and I couldn’t bloody believe it. It was a TIARA. A silver one with diamonds in it like a princess would wear. Collette Brown said it was a pressie from her new boyfriend, Lennox, and she was off to Curl Up and Dye hair salon to get Jez who has won awards for his hairdressing in Essex to put her hair up and weave the tiara in the front.