Fruit and Nutcase

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.

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