Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants

by Louise Rennison

  “You are getting very set in your ways, Jas.”

  “I am not.”

  “Well, name an interesting thing that you and Tom have done lately.”

  “We’ve done loads of really interesting, crazy things.”

  “Like what? And don’t tell me about collecting frog spawn.”

  “Well, Tom is going to do ecology and so on….Do you know we found some badger footprints in the park near—”

  “Jas, I said name an interesting thing that you and Tom have done lately, not something about badgers.”

  But she had gone off into the twilight world of her brain. “Tom gave me a love bite.”

  “Non.”

  “Oui.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “I know.”

  “Where is it?”

  “On my big toe.”

  9:00 p.m.

  I am worried that in my capacity as the Sex God’s girlfriend I may have to give a celebrity interview about my life and Jas will have to come on it. And she will talk rubbish. And perhaps show her love bite. Or knickers.

  9:15 p.m.

  Still, it has taken her mind off the Dave the Laugh fiasco.

  I will have an early night to prepare myself for heavy snogging duties. I want to look all gorgey and marvy for SG and not have those weird little piggy eyes that I get sometimes when I have been kept awake all night by loons (Angus and Libby). Mutti has let Libbs sleep in the cat basket with Angus tonight, so I am safe.

  9:35 p.m.

  Ah…very nice and cozy in bed, although I am having to sleep sitting up because I have rollers in my hair for optimum bounceability.

  9:40 p.m.

  Phone rang. Vati yelled, “Georgia, another one of your little mates on the phone. You’d better hurry, I think it’s an emergency. She might have run out of lip gloss.”

  Vair vair vair amusant, Vati.

  As I came down the stairs, he said, “We mean no harm, take us to your leader,” because of my hair rollers. He really is in an alarmingly good mood.

  It was Ellen. Uh-oh. I hoped she couldn’t detect my red minxiness.

  “Georgia, can I ask you something?”

  “Er, like what?”

  “Well, you know Dave the Laugh?”

  DID I KNOW DAVE THE LAUGH???!!!

  I sounded a bit vague. “I know Dave the woman, but Dave the Laugh…? Oh er, Dave the Laugh…yes, what about him?”

  “Well, you know I really think he’s groovy and so on and he did the lip nibbling thing, and that was, you know, quite groovy and not, you know, ungroovy…and how I have thought he is quite groovy for a long time and lip nibbling would, like, mean he thought I was groovy as well…”

  (It was going to be the twenty-second century at this rate by the time she got round to telling me what she was on about.)

  “Well, anyway, it’s nearly Tuesday.”

  “Yes, and…?”

  “Well, he hasn’t called me yet,” she went on. “Well, what should I do?”

  “Did he say he’d call?” (Not that I am remotely interested in what my ex-snoggees say. I am just being a great pal.)

  “Not exactly.”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  “He said, ‘I’m away laughing on a fast camel—see you later.’”

  “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the old ‘see you later’ thing, isn’t it?”

  “You mean it might be see you later, as in see you later not see you later?”

  “Exactamondo.”

  She went on and on about Dave the L and about how surely he wouldn’t nip libble her if he didn’t like her, etc., etc…. I was so tired I tried to lie down on the floor, but couldn’t because of my rollers. Good Lord, what am I? The Oracle of Delphinium?

  Eventually she rang off.

  10:00 p.m.

  What if Ellen finds out about me and Dave the Laugh? Will she still like me and realize that it is just one of those things? Or will she beat me to within an inch of my life?

  How would I feel if the boot was on the other cheek?

  I wish I wasn’t so caring and empathetic. As Hawkeye said in English, I have a very vivid imagination.

  10:15 p.m.

  Actually what she said was that I had a “hideous” imagination. But she is just jealous because she has no life to speak of (apart from torturing us).

  10:40 p.m.

  My nose feels very heavy. I’d better have a look at it in case there is a lurking lurker situation.

  10:47 p.m.

  Hmm. I can’t see anything. It doesn’t get any smaller, though. I must make sure I always suck it in when I see the Sex God full on.

  10:55 p.m.

  On the plus side, my nungas don’t seem any more sticky-out than they are normally. Perhaps they have stopped growing. Or maybe they are on Christmas vacation, before they burst (quite literally) into life in spring.

  11:00 p.m.

  I’ll just give them a quick measure.

  11:05 p.m.

  Sacré bloody bleu and also mon Dieu!! They measure thirty-eight inches!! That is more than a yard. There must be something wrong with the tape measure.

  11:10 p.m.

  I’ve done it again and it’s still the same. It amazes me that I can lumber around at all. It’s like carrying two small people around with me.

  I’m really worried now. I wish there was someone I could talk to about this sort of thing. I know there is an unseen power at work of which we have little comprehension, but I don’t really feel I can consult with Jesus about my basoomas.

  Or Buddha.

  Anyway, I don’t want to offend Buddha and so on, just in case He exists, which I am sure He does…but…I have seen some statues of Buddha, and frankly his nunga-nungas are not small either.

  midnight

  When I was in M&S the other Saturday, I saw a sign that said they had a breast measuring service (top job…not). Maybe I should get properly measured by a basooma professional and learn the truth about my condition(s).

  1:00 a.m.

  Angus is on the road to recovery. I can hear him serenading the Prat Poodles with a medley of his latest hits: “Yowl!” and “Yowl 2: The Remix.”

  I got up to look. He is so brave in the face of his pain. I really love him, even if he has destroyed half my tights. He could have just given in, but no, there he was, biffing the Prat Poodles like normal. Naomi was parading up and down on the Across the Roads’ windowsill, sticking her bottom in the air and so on. She is an awful minx. She is making a mockery of a sham of her so-called love for Angus. It’s like in that old crap song where the bloke is wounded in the Vietnam War and his wife goes off with other men because he can’t get out of his wheelchair. He sings, “Ru-beeee, don’t take your love to town.”

  That is what Angus would sing. “Naom-eeeee, don’t take your love to town.” If he could sing. Or speak. And had a wheelchair.

  school panto fiasco

  (a.k.a. complete prats in tights)

  tuesday november 23rd

  breakfast

  Dad was singing, “Sex bomb, sex bomb, I’m a sex bomb,” and doing hip thrusts round the kitchen. He’ll end up in casualty again if he’s not careful. He was being all interested in me as well. Red alert, red alert!

  He gave me a hug (!) and said, “I thought we’d all go to the cinema tonight. My treat.”

  I said, “Fantastic!” He thought I meant it and went off happily to flood people’s homes or whatever it is he does at the Water Board.

  I said to Mum, who was trying to get all the porridge out of Libby’s hair before she went off to kindergarten, “Mum, I can’t go to the cinema tonight, I…I’ve got to stay behind and help with…the school panto.”

  She didn’t even look up. “I didn’t know you were in it.”

  “I’m not, I’m just, er, helping backstage. ’Bye, Mutti. ’Byeeee, Bibbet.”

  “’Bye-bye, Gingey, kiss Mr. Cheese bye-bye.”

  It was disgusti
ng kissing Mr. Cheese. (Mr. Cheese is a bit of old Edam in a hat.) Not as disgusting as it will be at the end of the day when Libby brings him home again from playschool. With a bit of luck Mr. Cheese will be eaten by one of Libby’s little pals.

  I had a look at my pocket mirror as I walked round to Jas’s place. Eight out of ten on the hair bounceability front. I am sooo excited. I love the Sex God and it will be beyond fabulosity and into the Valley of Marv when we go on tour to America. I think I could easily write song lyrics myself.

  I said that to Jas as we walked to school. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this one is called ‘Sex God’ and it goes like this: ‘Oh, Robbie, you’re the one for me, with your dark blue eyes and your…’”

  I had a bit of writer’s block then and I said to Jas, “What rhymes with ‘me’?”

  “What about ‘two-timer’? Or ‘crap mate’?”

  “Jas, don’t start again…oh hang on, I know: ‘You’re the one for me, with your dark blue eyes and your…snogability!!!’ I am clearly a genius.”

  I put my arm round Jas in my happinosity and said, “You can show me your love bite when we get to Stalag 14.”

  She went a bit red and said, “OK, but don’t tell anyone else about it.” Which is ironic coming from Radio Jas.

  assembly

  Slim really on tip-top boring form this morning.

  She bored us beyond the Valley of the Dim and into the twilight world of the Elderly Mad.

  Speaking of which, we saw Elvis Attwood tapping at pipes with his hammer as we went out.

  I said to him, “I think you should receive a knighthood, Mr. Attwood, for your services to caretaking. Surely you of all people deserve to be hit over the shoulders with an old sword.”

  10:00 a.m.

  What IS it with this place???!!! Rosie and I have got bad conduct marks AND have to stay behind and help with Peter Pan every night this week after school. I cannot believe it! Just because we have naturally high spirits and joie de vivre. (And also got caught doing our “Let’s go down the disco” dance to “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” in Assembly.)

  It is so obviously hilarious. And not at all “indicative of stupendous childishness,” as Hawkeye said.

  10:30 a.m.

  Perhaps I am Spawn of the Devil in a skirt and have the third eye. No, I mean the second whatsit…sight. Because I told Mum that I was staying behind to help with Peter Pan, even though I wasn’t, and now I am. I may have special powers.

  11:00 a.m.

  No, I haven’t got special powers. I tried for about a million years to make the wall clock fall onto Hawkeye’s head, but it just gave me a very bad headache.

  in the loos

  I said to Jas, “For once in the entire existence of humankind my hair has got bounceability and whatsit and I am on detention.”

  She said, “Well, you shouldn’t be so silly.”

  What is silly about disco dancing?

  She wanted to show me her love bite, but I couldn’t summon up any interest.

  r.e.

  Miss Wilson has written on the board: “Relationships—what are the ingredients?”

  Good Lord, she would be the last to know, and also I don’t think I have ever seen anyone over the age of six months wearing a pink smock, apart from her. Has she really not got one single mate who would have said to her, “Put the smock in the bin and we will never mention it again”?

  I wonder if I should make Naomi a little pregnancy smock. In the spirit of Christmas?

  Rosie has made some dreadlocks for her pencil and stuck them on to the end of it. She wrote me a note: “As a Rastafarian he has strong views on religious freedom.”

  I wrote back: “It’s a pencil, you fool.”

  And she wrote: “That is what makes it even more remarkable.”

  But we are only trying to cheer ourselves up because of the Peter Pan fiasco.

  What am I going to do about the Sex God? He is supposed to meet me after school. I wrote to Jas: “If I tell SG I have been given detention duties helping complete prats into tights he will think I am a silly little schoolgirl.”

  She wrote back: “You ARE a silly little schoolgirl.”

  Cheers, thanks a lot. Good night.

  last bell

  3:50 p.m.

  I ran down the corridor to the cloakrooms and threw myself in front of the mirror. This was my plan: emergency makeup, dash to the school gates, quick snog, explain to Robbie about my unfair incarceration by the Nazis (but not exactly mention the “Let’s go down the disco” incident, in case it was construed as a bit on the childish side), another quick snog, possibly number four, then quick as a bunny back to the main hall before ten past four.

  Pant, pant. Alors, alors. Mascara, lippy, lip gloss, rolly-over skirt, bouncey hair, bouncey hair.

  Right. Ready for the Sex God in five minutes and thirty seconds. A new world record.

  When I stepped out into the corridor, I walked straight into Hawkeye lurking like a piranha. Oh, Scheissenhausen.

  She loomed over me. “Georgia, you are helping with the Christmas entertainment. Why does that require mascara? Remove it and go along to the main hall NOW!”

  I slunk back in the loos. This called for the famous getting-out-through-the-loo-window-and-jumping-onto-the-back-field routine. I almost decapitated two First Years getting out of the window, but I made it. I ran along the back field and then down fag-ash alleyway (so called because it is where the Bummers hang out) that runs between the Science block and…there he was, waiting for me. Sex God unleashed. He looked amazingly groovy. All the girls streaming out of the gates were eyeballing him as they went by. He said hi to Ali King and she practically evaporated on the spot.

  After a quick suck in of the nostrils I sauntered out with an attractive air of casualosity and said, “Hi.”

  Blimey, I’d managed to say something normal to him. That was a turn up for les livres. He smiled his smile and said, “Hi.”

  He put his hand through my hair (feeling its incredible bounceability, probably) and leaned down and kissed me. Wow. I knew that everyone walking past us was looking, but I had my eyes closed. I did try slightly opening my eyes, but I could only see a big sort of blurry pink thing, which gave me a bit of a turn, until I realized it was my nose really close up.

  4:15 p.m.

  Probably because I am such a kind and caring person, Jesus has decided to take me for His sunbeam by letting me off the hook. The Sex God told me that he had to go and have a conference call with some record people from Hamburger-a-gogo land and so he couldn’t see me tonight.

  I feel a mixture of sadnosity and reliefosity, with just a hint of peckishness.

  4:30 p.m.

  Rosie and I have the ridiculously sad task of helping the “cast” of Peter Pan into their costumes and sorting out the props. We are in charge of the “dressing room,” or P.E. changing room, as the normal might call it. We have to hang everything up in order and on different pegs, whilst Miss Stamp dashes about “supervising.”

  Wet Lindsay has got the leading part of Peter in Peter Pan, which I think is unfortunate casting, because she has to wear a green tunic and tights. She has got astonishingly sticklike legs. Also, for no good reason (other than I stole her boyfriend), she has taken against me. She wouldn’t have me as her little helper, so Rosie has to help her into her tights and so on. (Erlack.) Tragic Kate is Wendy in the show and I have to help her into her duff wig with plaits.

  Hours of boredom stretch ahead. Will I never be free of this hellhole?

  5:10 p.m.

  The SG will be talking to people in Hamburger-a-gogo land now.

  6:00 p.m.

  I said to Rosie, “Do you and Sven talk a lot?”

  Rosie thought a bit. “Sven talks a lot.”

  “What about?”

  “I haven’t got the faintest idea. He’s not, as you know, English. Reindeer, possibly.”

  “Don’t you mind that all you do is snog?”

  “No.”

>   8:00 p.m.

  Home again, in the sanctity of my luurve boudoir.

  Mon Dieu, how boring was the rehearsal? It was almost as boring as Dad’s stories about Kiwi-a-gogo land. Still, home at last and my bedroom is a Libby-free zone!

  I haven’t listened to my dolphin CD for a bit. I think I will put it on and meditate on my inner me.

  8:10 p.m.

  I don’t know who it is that thinks dolphins are soothing. It’s just squeak squeaky squeak.

  8:15 p.m.

  I do feel a bit sorry for them, though, because they get all those depressed people insisting on swimming with them. It might cheer up the depressed people, but I bet it depresses the arse off the dolphins. They just want to go out with their mates for a laugh and no sooner do they start playing Chase the Cod or whatever, than all these miserable types come and hang around stroking their snouts and crying.

  Or am I being a bit harsh?

  8:35 p.m.

  Everyone out as usual, round at Uncle Eddie’s. God it’s boring being by yourself. I may be forced to do my blodge homework.

  9:00 p.m.

  Rang Jas.

  “Jas.”

  “Quoi?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Blodge homework.”

  “Moi aussi. Are you drawing a hydra?”

  “Oui.”

  “Have you drawn its wafting tentacles yet?”

  “Non.”

  “I have. Also I have drawn in some cheesy whatsits being wafted in by its tentacles.”

  “Hydras don’t eat cheesy whatsits. They are pond life.”

  “That’s a bit rude, Jas.”

  “It isn’t—it’s a biological fact.”

  “OK, Jas, but have you considered this? Perhaps hydras don’t eat cheesy whatsits because no one has had the GOOD MANNERS to go down to the pond and offer them round! Don’t hydras deserve to be treated like human beings?”

  9:15 p.m.

  Oh, I am so bored!!

  In my Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens it says: “Do something interesting and useful for others.”

  9:30 p.m.

  I can get forty-eight little plaits in my hair.

  9:35 p.m.