HELLO OUT THERE!
I'm used to making my opinions public. I've had two of my diaries published as books and I do write a v famous advice column for my school mag (it had mega press coverage), but this is the first time I've gone electronic. (Usually I delete everything by mistake.) So I'm a bit nervous. But there's a universe waiting to hear what I think. So here it goes! (Note to You: If you've been up a mountain in Kathmandu or something and have never heard of me you can go straight to my Christmas letter to get caught up.)
Thank God I'd a genius! I have had the most fantastically brilliant idea. Not only will it solve all my financial problems - and bring me the fame and respect I so tres deserve - it will also put all my Life Experience to good use. I went into the bookshop on the high street this afternoon (it started pissing down) and was browsing through the shelves the way one does when I discovered a startling fact. There are about a ZILLION self-help books. This is not the startling fact. (Sappho says that nowadays people don't learn about Life from the tribal elders like they used to, they depend on experts they'll never meet - which means that nobody has a clue what they're doing). The startling fact is this: even though there are books that tell you how to do (even things you wouldn't think anyone would want to do - like build a clay oven or play the saxophone) there is Nothing to help teenage girls cope with the demented demands of the twenty-first century. I had to stop myself from wailing aloud: BUT HOW CAN THIS BE? Everyone (with the exception of MY MOTHER) knows how tres stressful life is for girls like me (and probably for girls who aren't much like me, too!). I reckon that with the pressures of school, our peers, our families, our society and our bodies, we have more to cope with than any other generation in the history of human civilization. If you ask me, instead of giving us cards that say Happy Birthday Thirteen! when we start our teens, they should give us cards that say YOU'RE IN FOR IT NOW! And instead of some dumb rhyme inside there should be a government warning: You are about to enter a period of INCREDIBLE EMOTIONAL TENSION. You will be criticized, ridiculed, nagged, laughed at, publicly humiliated, corrected, ignored, misunderstood, told off, lied to and let down on an exhaustingly regular basis. EVERYONE from the Prime Minister to strangers on buses will tell you what to do. Your father will have a midlife crisis that involves either a flashy car or another woman. Your mother will go insane. Anyway, all those thoughts were running round my brain when I had my BRILLIANT idea! I'm going to write the book WE ALL NEED!!! It makes so much sense I can't believe I didn't think of it before. After all, no one knows what it's like to be a teenage girl beset by the traumas of a hostile world better than I do. But the best part is that besides understanding what it's like to be a teenage girl because I am one, I've also been a professional advice-giver. Remember Aunt Know-It-All? [HOW COULD YOU FORGET HER???] Aunt-Know-It-All was tres successful at helping the students of my high school for two tumultuous and difficult years. So I've got job EXPERIENCE and TONS of material to start me off (and what I don't have I can always make up). For once my mother was right (it's about time, really). If you want something done, do it yourself. So I'm going to put aside you, dear diary, for a while and concentrate on writing my book. I'm calling it HERE'S WHAT I THINK. WATCH THIS SPACE!
Was on my way to school today, waiting for a bus, when this truly über gorgeous guy just walked right up to me with this big smile on his face! REALLY! As if I was Kate Moss or someone like that and he was Compelled by Hormones Beyond His Control to approach me. I was prepared to be tres cool and disinterested, of course (even if he did make Johnny Depp look below average), when instead of asking me if he hadn't met me at the last Peace Demonstration or whatever he said, "Please tell me you play the country fiddle." I had no idea what he was on about. So I said, "All right. I play the country fiddle." He gave me his phone number and made me swear that I'd ring him. He wants me to join his band!!!! Naturally, the bus came before I could explain that I'm not technically a musician (if it was raining and I was being attacked with ping pong paddles by Jack Russells you can REST ASSURED there wouldn't have been one along for at least an hour!!!). The last thing he said to me was DON'T FORGET TO RING!!! I swear, if anybody else had my life they'd probably top themselves.
I think it must be because of Marcella [you know, every action has a reaction in the opposite direction] but this afternoon as I strolled up the High Street on my way home I found myself checking out the charity shops. Found a gig bag for a violin in ABSOLUTELY perfect condition! You know how I've always wished I could play an instrument (but NOT a guitar - one guitar player per family is more than enough). And also it's über cool to use a gig bag instead of a backpack (backpacks are definitely passé at my uni). Snapped it up before some other penniless but clued-up student wandered in and saw it. MC put on her I Can't Believe We're Related face when I arrived back at the House of Horror. "You bought a violin?" she shrieked. 'Why on Earth would you buy a violin? You never got past "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on the piano.' I explained (tres patiently, considering how long I've been forced to live with this woman) that it isn't a violin. It's just the bag for the case for a violin. The Mad Cow said she didn't know whether to take that as good news or not.
Went for a drive in the country with Marcus and his parents in their new car today for the Official Test Drive. The idea was to just head off and see where we ended up - then use the SNS to get us back home again. Ended up in a v nice pub that did real chips in the beautiful English countryside. After lunch we all piled back in the car and Marcus' dad told it where we wanted to go. We were all tres jolly on the way home (everyone sang along with 'Dancing Queen' on the radio - I'd always thought the only station Marcus' parents ever listened to was Radio 4!). (As per usual) Our joy had an only slightly longer life expectancy than a Mayfly. Ended up in an Industrial Estate in HARROW. Apparently there is more than one Grafton Road in the Greater London area. Marcus said we were probably lucky we didn't end up in Dagenham. I said maybe next time his dad should take the Test Drive BEFORE he buys the car.
I know all kids want to fit in and be like everybody else (except Lucrezia, who doesn't actually seem to be aware that there is ANYBODY ELSE around), but I can't help feeling that there's something really wrong with Marcella. Even her knickers have to be a certain brand. (I mean, really - that CAN'T be normal, can it?) This scintillating piece of information was revealed on Monday morning when she realised her mother had packed some of the wrong sort of knickers and she didn't have enough clean pairs of the right sort with her and refused to leave the house with the rest of us for an Easter weekend stroll through the park. (LIKE ANYONE WOULD KNOW!!) I said I know the Prime Minister is trying his best to take away our personal freedoms and any notion of privacy, but as far as I was aware she wasn't going to be stopped by the What Knickers Are You Wearing? Police the minute she stepped out the front door. Marcella said what if she was hit by a bus? What then? I said well then the hospital would immediately report her to Scotland Yard and she'd spend the rest of her life in jail, obviously.
There are a lot of differences between my family and Marcus'. I mean aside from that his comes from Jamaica and mine comes from the East End. His family shops in supermarkets and buy new things ALL THE TIME! And neither of his parents even knows how to ride a bicycle. Which I think is tres impressive. Imagine thinking you're never going to have any reason for getting on a bike (like there's a petrol crisis and a tube and bus strike on the same day). It's like being a girl and not learning to type (you know, in case you need to get a job as a secretary so you can eat). And now Marcus's dad's bought a BRAND NEW CAR! I said you mean new to you, right? Marcus said no, it's new to the planet. He said his dad even got SNS. I thought we'd changed the subject for a second. I said what's that, like ADD or OCD? He said it's not an illness, it's the navigation system in the car. We don't really go in for cars in my family (OF COURSE!) but when we do Sigmund is usually the navigation system. Which is why we never get anywhere on time.
QUESTION: Why does everything happen TO ME? ANSWER: Because in a previous incarnation I owned slaves or gave blankets infected with smallpox to a peaceful tribe of American Indians. (I reckon it MUST be something like that - I haven't had a chance to anything truly ghastly as Janet Bandry, I'm still in school!) It strikes me as v ironic that although people sell everything on eBay from grilled cheese sandwiches that look like the Virgin Mary to old hair clips, I wager I'd have no takers for my life if I tried to flog it. You think I exaggerate? READ ON. As an example of how the Fates are out to get me, I had this absolutely brilliant dream in the early hours of Sunday morning. I was having lunch in that Hare Krishna restaurant in Soho (it's tres trendy now that everybody's getting a conscience) with Leonardo Di Caprio and we were really getting on! It was so tres vivid that I didn't even know I was dreaming. I kept thinking, what am I going to do about Marcus if Leonardo asks me out? I knew I was dreaming when I WOKE UP (of course!). Went into the bathroom and discovered that I had a zit the size of the Post Office Tower on my chin. (You don't want to know how GROSS it was. Even though I was half-asleep and we only have those Save-Energy-and-Go-Blind light bulbs in this house I could tell it would be luminous in daylight!) I was still coming to terms with this disaster when I realized that the zit wasn't the only thing that had happened while Leonardo and I were discussing how to bring about World Peace (and getting v CLOSE, too!). The BAD HAIR GREMLINS had been at work and my hair was all sticking up like a lawn that was mown with a machete. Forced myself to rally (and not simply go back to bed, which would've been v easy to do). I was doing emergency damage control on my face when the Mad Cow started banging on the door like the police looking for terrorists. I jumped (well one would, wouldn't one?) and stabbed myself in the eye with the mascara wand. Showing her usual wealth of Maternal Feeling, Concern and Compassion, my mother started screaming above my heart-wrenching sobs that I had to get out of the bathroom right this minute - OR ELSE. Since I looked like Kate Moss's worst nightmare and my eye hurt so much I reckoned it was permanently damaged, it was tres difficult to imagine that OR ELSE could possibly be as bad as what I was already suffering, but I promised I'd be right out. The next person to try to break the door down was the Neanderthal Within. Justin said that if I didn't open up IMMEDIATELY he was going to piss on my bed. Experience has taught me that my brother doesn't make idle threats. I shot out of the bathroom with only half my make-up on and my hair still looking like it'd been mistaken for sugar cane. Staggered back to my room and put on my best jeans to boost my flagging morale. That didn't work. They were tighter than they were last weekend. Oh, What Fresh Hell is this? I wailed. By lying on the floor and not breathing I finally managed to zip them up. (The good news here is that if the snap won't stay closed and the zip breaks they're way too tight to actually fall down.) As soon as I walked into the kitchen the Mother Siren started shrieking. You never think of anybody but yourself... You can't go out on a just a cup of tea... What happened to your promise to sort the laundry? Where's the blue frog bowl gone, it better not be under my bed... What about that money I lent you last week... blahblahblahblahblah... [It's just as well I wasn't around for the Second World War or she would've blamed me for that, too.] I told her I wished she'd run away from home. She said that with me as her daughter it was a miracle she hadn't. I know that all this suffering and stress is meant to make me a better and stronger person. But that's only if it doesn't kill me first. It really is all TOO MUCH!!!!
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Friday 27th April 2007 