And the Rainbow Hearts

In my journal being in a girl group with my fabulous friends is all pink feather boas, pink glitter sparkles and well, a lot of pink fabulousness. It would not involve kicking imaginary bits of dust while I tried desperately hard to think of how I could make everything better, really, really quickly.

Running away was still my most desired option, but my pink, kicked-in Converse had other ideas. It’s like by some kind of hocus-pocus jiggery pokery, they’ve been sent by the pink thinkin’ police to re-adjust my ‘tude. Pink thinkers were not quitters. No matter how icky the sitch.

Fact. Well, that’s what I thought until Sadie joined in. Yes, you heard right, even Sadie was mad at me.

“Lola,” she says standing up from behind the drum kit. She has to stand up, because where she’s so small and petite, she’d just be a talking drum kit otherwise. “It’s not fair that you’ve made decisions without asking us. I had already started planning costumes—I was thinking about a Fluro—electrobeat 1970s collaboration with…well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, because Angel is all fashion girl glam and will have us wearing lots of tight-fitting clothes and make up.”

Now that was totes unfair, but it sounded like Bella and Sadie had already made up their mind up about Angel. I guess they just don’t know her like I do, which would be really hard to do because I’ve known her for forever and they’ve only met her a couple of times. She is uber-confident and sometimes people mistake that for arrogance, which it really, really isn’t. Personally, I think she uses it as a protective bubble, a way to stop anyone getting too close but that’s because I know her better than anyone.

Y’see, Angel had a tough time when her parentals split up. She thought they were rock solid, we all did. They had been childhood sweethearts but then her dad got really good at all things business. He made lots of money and decided to change his title from ‘husband and father’ to ‘player’ (I know, how icky?). He now has lots of different girlfriends that he invites to one of his many houses both here and abroad.

Angel’s mum was a nurse who lives in a flat right in the centre of town. Angel’s mum still is a nurse who lives in a flat right in the centre of town.

Angel’s world was rocked. Big time.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, she liked that her dad sent her money for her to buy expensive things like bags and shoes, but secretly she missed actually having him around and doing the things that dad’s should do. I say secretly, because it’s only me that knows. She’d be every kind of crazy mad if people knew how she actually felt. Oh, and our journals. We both keep journals, but they’ll never tell, they’re good like that.

Angel would take out her anger and sadness on her mum. A lot. They’d have huge, huge rows that would always end with Angel throwing a huge, huge hissy fit—something she is very good at—and demanding that she go live with her dad, at once. Except, a daughter was not part of her dad’s new Swank-Land lifestyle, so he offered up his love in the only way he knew how and paid the buckeroonies for Angel to attend a super-swank boarding school.

While I don’t think this is what Angel had in mind, she deffo does like it there. I was worried that she’d make loads of new Poshville friends from Poshville and she’d never want to hang with me ever again but it never happened. Oh, she made new Poshville friends, they’ve got names like Eugenie and Cassandra but I mean, we still talk. All the time in fact and we text each other, when I’ve got credit. Which is like, virtually never.

Bella and Sadie were both staring at me now, and more than anything I’d like someone to tell me how to make this right. It’s at this point that I would usually call on my Aunt Lullah. She is my fairy goddess girl, my agony aunt, my mentor. But she also lives in New York—the coolest city in all of the world, dontcha know—and she has a beyond cool job designing costumes for films. What’s not to love about this woman of total fabulousity?

Well, right now, I’m not entirely loving the fact that she’s not here, helping me out of my sticky sitch. And I’m not digging the fact that she’s not even emailable for another week either. She’s on location. In the jungle. She wasn’t allowed to tell me a lot about it, but I’m guessing there might be quite a lot of khaki involved.

I could channel my inner Audrey Hepburn but it really would depend on which of Audrey’s characters I channelled as to what response I would get. For example Holly Golightly, the deliciously eccentric New York City girl from Breakfast at Tiffany’s would be all “Lola daahling, walk away, you’re faaar too fabulous to get involved with all this silliness.” Holly is not renown for her ability to take responsibility.

While Audrey in the movie Funny Face, is a bookstore assistant transformed into a modelling sensation and she would say “Lola, I can’t possible tell you what to do. One minute I’m being true to my art, then I fall for Fred Astaire and everything s’wonderful and s’marvellous!”

Which, quite frankly, is of no help at all.

Nope this was up to me.

“Girls, I’m sorry.” I kick at yet another imaginary bit of dust, trying to avoid eye contact. “I didn’t mean to make anyone angry.”

“Lo, we’re not angry,” Sadie says coming over to put her arm round my shoulder.

“Speak for yourself” says Bella, not moving from where she’s stood at the other side of the room.

“Bell!” Sadie scowls at Bella, to which she responds with a defeated shrug. I don’t quite know how she does it, but with a change in tone and a narrowing of eye, Sadie can pull Bella into line in nano seconds, without ever being rude or horrible.

“We’re just really upset that you didn’t think these were things we should all decide together.”

“You’re right,” I agree. I make eye contact this time, because I want them to know I’m super serious. “I just really wanted to be in a band with all my buds, but I took you both for granted and I’m sorry. I really am. Angel’s coming back this weekend, I’ll tell her I got it all wrong, she’ll understand…”

Just as I was considering all the ways in which Angel wouldn’t understand, Bella, who had received several nudges and eye slants from Sadie, interrupts my thoughts.

“Don’t do that,” she says linking arms with me. “If she’s coming back this weekend, we could record our demo!”

“Really?” I say. “That would be awesome! We could go shopping for costumes, record our demo and take snaps of us as a girl group! It’ll make a perfect story for the next issue of the zine too!”

“So, we’re all happy?!” Sadie asks, looking at us both.

“Only if I’m still choosing the band name…” Bella asks before deciding to confirm or deny her happiness.

Sadie and I both nod in agreement.

“Yay!” Bella holds up both her hands for a high five. “No more decision without checking with everyone first, okay?” she asks.

I nod happily. My Pink Ladies are the bestest evah.

Fact.

Chapter five

Okay so the Tom Tootie to-do list was officially back on track.

Hurrah.

And in a crazy has-the-world-done-a-double-flip? change to the viewing schedule, the one person who I thought would never, ever dig the idea of Lola Love being in a band, was actually really rather excited about it all.

You’ll be just as shocked as me when I tell you.

The parental.

I know.

I can’t quite believe it either.

I think it has a lot, if not all, to do with Bella’s bendy yoga dad, who really is the sweetest, most chilled-out dude you will ever meet. My parental however, was not. When my pa-shaped parental left, she got sad x 100. ‘Cept I didn’t know at the time that’s why she was sad, I thought she just didn’t like me very much. And that made me sad, it was not a pretty place to be. She shouted. A lot. Even Cat, our adopted kitty, developed a ‘tude just by being around her, I’m sure of it. I spent lots of days creating exciting new worlds in my journals, anything to escape the sucky real one. But then Bella, despite my initial concerns, hooked her yoga dad up with my shouty parental.

And while it shouldn’t have worked, it absolutely did. Proof that the saying opposites attract is 100% factuality. I don’t mean hooked up romantically, btw—ick. That’s just wrong. They’re adults, remember?

No, they became hang-out buds, stopping each other from residing permanently in Lonelyville. The parental still gets a re-occurring case of the grumps every now and again, which is why her face sometimes looks a lot older than she actually is, but since hanging with yoga dad, she’s switched to herbal tea so she’s not as jumpy as she used to be, and she doesn’t shout twelve octaves louder than the rest of the human population. Well not on hourly basis at least, which for anyone within a five mile radius of Chez Love will tell you, is good news all round.

But while the ma-parental has definitely shown real signs of visable chillaxation, she still has a lot of work to do on her ‘tude.

“What are you wearing, Lola Love?” she barks as I walk down the stairs to join her at the breakfast table.

See? It’s not like she’s blind, she can see what I’m actually wearing. If I were to critique my parental on this particular piece of dialogue, which, don’t worry, I’m really not silly enough to actually do, I think a more appropriate question to have asked me would be something along the lines of, ‘now that’s an interesting outfit, what made you choose that Lola Love?’ therefore giving me the opportunity to describe in detail today’s creation from the treasure chest that is Aunt Lullah’s old wardrobe.

I swish the skirt of the 1950’s style prom dress, which I’ve customised with a rather cute frou-frou bow and a pair of black biker-girl gloves.

“Well, it’s a dress, mum,” I say with a slightly risky amount of sass, “it used to be Lullah’s, don’t you like it?’

“You look ridiculous Lola,” she informs me.

If my parental had gone to charm school, which clearly she did not, she would have scored herself a big, fat ‘D’.

“So, where are you going dressed like that?” She asks, switching direction, obviously choosing to now take her own advice of ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’ Her questioning, as always, is relentless and not dissimilar to a sergeant major in both tone and delivery. I seriously think that she missed her calling.

“Angel’s back, and the girls and I are going to meet her in town.” I tell her. As an ed-girl of my very own zine, Think Pink, I am now also able to edit my own vocab as I speak. It’s a total talent. Y’see, my deletion of the line ‘and we’re going shopping’ has now saved a whole lot of unnecessary ear ache about how I should ‘save my money’, yada, yada.

Yay me!

The parental has always really liked Angel. She would always comment on how ‘polished’ she was, not like a doorknob, but in actual appearance. The parental said that only people with money can be ‘polished’ and that all I had to do was look at the celebrities in pages glossy magazines to see that. It obviously has nothing to do with the fact that those celeb-types have been airbrushed to within an inch of their lives by someone with a fancy-schmancy computer programme then, non?

I’m not exactly sure from what, or where, my parental plucks her golden nuggets of deep, thought-out life deductions, but this, mes pink amies, is just one of the classics that you will hear if you hang out in the wonderful, mixed up world of my parental.

Thank goodness I am a pink-thinking diva of fabulousness and am able to rely on my gal-pals to make life sweeter. A girl could really go crazy around here.

“A band?” she asks as she puts another slice of bread in the toaster. She has already burnt two, the remnants of which, even Cat turned her nose up at. “What kind of band?” she asks watching me pour milk on my cereal.

“A rock/pop band,” I tell her between mouthfuls. “‘Y’know, like The Pipettes or The Sahara Hot Nights—we’re going to write songs that will make girls want to throw shapes, write songs and be pleased that they’re a girl!” My parental looked at me and smiled. This was definitely a new addition since hang-time with yoga dad. Her face looked so pretty when she smiled, she should do it much more often.

“Sounds like fun,” she said, saving the toasted bread just in time. Fun is a severely under used word that I was pleased to see making a new entry in the parental vocab.

“It’s deffo going to be!” I tell her. She took a bite of her toast and looked at me with misty-eyes.

“Your Aunt Lullah and I used to want to be backing singers,” she announced. “Y’know, like Pepsi and Shirley.”

“Pepsi and what now?” I had asked, which was a total mistake because I then had to endure a whole hour-long discussion about how ‘Pepsi and Shirley’ were in fact, the ‘bees knees.’ Other such irritatingly parental vocabulary was used in the describing of how they sang with ‘George Michael’, whoever he is.

Now I dig musical history as much as the next all-things-retro-lovin’ girl, in fact, I love, love, love all things that aren’t now, but Pepsi and Shirley? Well, they did not sound like they needed to be added to my inspir-o girl wall anytime soon. But parental in not-freaking-out-about-Lola-being-in-a-band shocker!

Who’d have funked it, huh?

Chapter six

Today is the offical start of Sadie’s new project.

We L-O-V-E a project, and this one, like all the projects before it, has yet another really snappy, roll-off-the-tongue title.

Are you ready?

It’s Project Win-The-Contest-Bag-Tootie-Cuti.

Don’t you just love it?

The project is deffo one of Sadie’s best yet. There is nothing not to love about this project. Nothing.

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