by Rae Earl
Mum made macaroni cheese tonight. Perhaps she realises how totally pissed off I am. Ate it watching Coronation Street – Audrey Roberts and Don Brennan bought a greyhound called Lucky. I don’t know why I am telling you that. I do know why – it was funny, and probably the best thing that happened today.
10.42 p.m.
Mum just said she is starting Slimming World on Monday, so she is having naughty things now. Oh great. Another diet. Another week when my bag is checked at the front door for ‘nibblies that might tempt her’.
Tuesday 23.5.89
8.19 p.m.
BETHANY HAS JUST BEEN ROUND. She told me Luke was getting on her nerves. He has come on to her too heavy. He wants to take her to ‘his folks’ place’ in Tuscany. He wants a year off with her building a community centre in Uganda. He wants her to meet his parents over Sunday brunch. She is like Medusa – these blokes just fall for her like lambs to the slaughter. She was moaning, though – emotionally she said he was clingy and acted too adult. Plus the fact – and listen to this – after Vroom she realised she needed to hold back more so she didn’t give out the wrong messages!! She said, ‘In 1989 I am about discovery.’ Yes, I very nearly did piss myself at that bit.
So it looks like this relationship won’t last long. Good. I fancy Luke, but I actually don’t think we would be right together – even if he did fancy me, which he doesn’t. I don’t want to go to Uganda for a start.
9.50 p.m.
Just been thinking about a year abroad. Somewhere mad actually might help me lose weight. They surely don’t have Boost bars in Africa.
Wednesday 24.5.89
10.35 p.m.
WELL, I HAVE HAD QUITE a brilliant day. Bethany chucked Luke. She did it before most people got into the pub, and Luke ended up talking to ME about it by the men’s bogs.
He started to cry and say things like, ‘I am such a sensitive git.’ I pretended to care but inside I was laughing my head off. Seeing him so pathetic really put me off him.
Eventually he disappeared and Haddock and girlfriend, Fig and Dobber and Battered Sausage came and sat with us. Battered Sausage was taking the piss out of Luke, and Bethany was joining in. They kept chanting, ‘Uganda! Uganda! Uganda!’ in Luke’s slightly annoying public-schoolboy voice. And apparently Luke is not his real name – it’s Colin! Luke is only his middle name. You can see it on all his report cards!
I know it shouldn’t have done, but it really has put me off him. But I hate that in me. I know what it’s like to be teased so much that you go home and sob – I shouldn’t laugh along. Haddock didn’t – but I think this is more to do with him being a grumpy cock rather than some moral point he was making.
Me and Battered Sausage are getting closer and closer. Surely it’s just a matter of time? Apparently he said to Bethany, ‘I love Rae – she’s the girl I love being with the most. But I don’t fancy her.’ But perhaps he can learn to fancy me? One thing’s for sure – I am not telling Bethany how I feel. She’ll jump on top of him before I can finish my sentence.
Came in tonight to Mum playing ‘Requiem’ by the Lon don Boys full blast. Shouldn’t it be ME doing this? She is not meant to like the London Boys – she is meant to like Engelbert Humperdinck. She said to me, ‘Oooooohhhhhhhh, Rach – I like the one in the leather cap!’ Like I need to know that? And when I don’t respond she says, ‘Have you revised the Constitution yet?’ No, I haven’t, Mum, and I won’t be when you have two blokes on full blast singing and you are flinging yourself around the living room like a 12-year-old. ACT LIKE THE PARENT.
Thursday 25.5.89
6.25 p.m.
IHAVE TO DO REVISION. I MUST start tonight. Bloody French-exchange students are at school, and bloody French girls are gorgeous. They hang around together like they know it too. Daisy’s is called Jeanne – and she was making everyone piss today with stories of her boyfriend, Claude. Apparently, when they went skiing together they made love in the chalet while his parents were in the next room. This girl is five months younger than me. Look at the life she has. She makes love regularly, and everything she wears is from Benetton – even the little jumper tied round her neck. She referred to me as the ‘grande fille folle’. I know ‘grand’ means ‘big’. At least ‘big’ is better than being described as ‘fat’. A bit better.
We are taking them out for a coffee with a load of blokes tomorrow. I don’t think we should let them loose – they all have tans and they all smoke cigarettes in a way that if I spent the next 50 years practising I could never do. They are sexy as hell.
8.23 p.m.
I am not a lesbian, by the way, and I only fancy men. Just read that sexy bit back and I sound a bit weird.
Friday 26.5.89
6.01 p.m.
GREAT USE OF EXAM STUDY leave this afternoon. We took the French girls to the Meadows to meet the boys’ school. Battered Sausage was all over Jeanne and she was lapping it up. Bethany did NOT look happy. She was being upstaged brilliantly by someone who could flirt for Europe. Battered Sausage for some reason was smoking CIGARS. I said, ‘What the fuck do you think you look like? You’re not Winston Churchill – just a twat from Lincolnshire.’ The French girls found this hysterical, and so did Battered Sausage – who told the French girls to call me ‘La Big Razza’.
We are great friends – why can’t it go all the way? I mean, I don’t massively love him, but you can build a bit on fancying.
Just getting ready to go out again. I know I should be revising but they are only mocks, and if I don’t know it now I never will. Battered Sausage is leading the way – he has got an actual A level on Monday but he is out all weekend. He says there are always retakes.
Saturday 27.5.89
5.02 p.m.
REALLY WEIRD NIGHT LAST NIGHT. Basically, peer pressure got the better of my emotions. Dobber pointed out that the way Battered Sausage looked at me meant that he fancied me. So we arranged to find out. I conveniently tailed off with Dobber, and Bethany asked him and he said, ‘No.’ So much for the body language, Dobber!
Then me and Battered Sausage went for a soda and black in the Vaults, then walked home and he told me that he loved me and poured his heart out. I told him I’d miss him when he buggered off to university, and he said, ‘We’ll have fun all summer!’ But it’s weird – because like in the High Street today when he was with his mates it seemed as if he didn’t want to know me. Then later when Kieran Wren chucked me in the river down the Meadows, Battered Sausage said, ‘Don’t worry, everyone, she’s like a buoy – she’ll float.’ While I was in the river, I caught Battered Sausage looking at Bethany. She looked like a swan – I felt like a big fat water vole.
Bethany and Jeanne also got into a right slanging match in the Vaults pub garden. Bethany said to Jeanne that women who lead men on in this country are called slags. Jeanne said something really fast in French and she just flicked her fag and said, ‘You are green,’ and smirked this incredibly gorgeous grin. Bethany just walked off – she was beaten by a better woman, and she knew it.
Even the mole on Jeanne’s top lip suits her.
Going out tonight and staying at Bethany’s. Her floor is like kipping on concrete, but at least you can go for a wee in her house in the middle of the night without the Spanish Inquisition of Mum.
6.16 p.m.
Just read that back again and just want to say again I do not fancy women. I can just see that Jeanne is beautiful, from almost a bloke’s perspective.
Sunday 28.5.89
2 a.m. (in Bethany’s bedroom)
YOU CAN TELL BY THE location that it’s a bit dangerous to write. In Bethany’s bedroom, and Bethany is going out with Battered Sausage. She told me tonight. I was due to be staying at hers and it was too late to go home. She has been a total, total cow. She is now covered in yoghurt because she says it helps her spots. You’ll need to raid the European dairy mountain with your zits, bitch.
FANCY UPDATE
Battered Sausage: slight outside chance – like a donkey in t
he Grand National, but at least it’s running.
Haddock: not a chance. Mr Grumpy Arrogant Rugger-Bugger . . . Everyone bloody fancies him. Plus the fact you’d only want to snog him – going out with him would be torture. You could have better conversations with a tortoise.
There’s no one else I fancy at the moment.
And no, I am not a lesbian.
11 a.m.
Bethany’s mum only provides muesli or Weetabix for breakfast. She says there is no need for a full breakfast, and doesn’t want Bethany to get ‘un-athletic’ (aka fat). Weird how many people eat breakfast at a specially laid table. Weird how many people are so frightened of getting fat. Actually, it’s not. This is hell. They must know it.
Tell you one thing, though – I didn’t feel that hungry anyway after last night’s revelation. Bethany seems to have a radar for anyone I like. Lying in that sleeping bag last night listening to her breathing I just wanted to scream at her. But let’s be honest – if it wasn’t her going out with him, it would be someone else. Just not me.
Listening to ‘The Power of Love’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Makes me cry like a baby. Don’t know why.
Feel bad about the zits comment. It’s not Bethany’s fault she has bad skin.
10.40 p.m.
I have just had such an odd evening. Went down the pub expecting to see Battered Sausage and Bethany all over each other. Bethany wasn’t there, but Battered Sausage almost jumped on top of me when I got in the pub. He bought me a drink and said, ‘You do realise that Bethany and me are not actually together . . . ?’ He went on to say that he reckons he will not go out with anyone at all until after the exams. I went, ‘Errrr . . . that’s good to know.’ Then we talked about how he once got dumped by a girl and now he has to be ‘careful’, and how women come and go but good mates are like herpes – once you have them you can’t get rid of them. What he is saying is: women he shags mean nothing to him but I mean more. Yes, but that’s no comfort to me at the end of the night, is it? No mates of mine get into bed with me to stroke my hair and tell me everything is going to be OK and that I’m not really a ten-ton Tessie. That’s what I want.
He is such a bastard in the boyfriend sense, yet probably the best boy-mate I’ve ever had.
I don’t think I do fancy him. He is going bald and he is only 18.
Like Lloyd Cole says, ‘I’m just looking for a brand new friend.’
I fancy Lloyd Cole. Even in the polar neck he wears.
Monday 29.5.89
JEANNE THE FRENCH-EXCHANGE STUDENT caused outrage in the common room today. She reckons most French girls lose their virginity at about 14, and there’s a trend over there to have sex in raincoats. We were all thinking what a bunch of frog weirdos, until she explained that ‘raincoat’ is the French slang for ‘condoms’, and ‘having English lessons’ actually means ‘teach me the art of lovemaking’. I think I will remember the French word impermeable for ever now. Hopefully one day it will come in useful. Though I doubt it with French boys – they are used to thin. All the French girls are like rakes and leave half their lunch. They must be trained to do that somewhere.
Tuesday 30.5.89
8.10 p.m.
AVERY STRANGE PHENOMENON – BETHANY and Battered Sausage have just been here. I don’t fancy Battered Sausage. Oh, I don’t know . . . I love him. I get a bit miffed with women near him. It was weird having him in my bedroom – it felt wrong. The bloody Dairy Book of Home Cookery was by my bed. I have just been using it to lean on, as this diary is flimsy as anything, but it must have looked like I read rice-pudding recipes to get to sleep. I don’t, by the way. It just looked like such a cliché – fat girl reads food as well as eats it. I can tell what people are thinking. I could see Bethany had clocked it. She only reads Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins, and her dad’s copy of Forum that he thinks he is hiding beneath a box of tissues in his bedside table. Perv.
It was a really odd conversation:
BS: Hello. We’re going down the pub – coming?
(He was rubbing her back.)
ME: No – I’ve got to revise.
BS: Oh come on, Big Razza, we’ll have a snakey B and then a sound bit of sausage and a battered flange. (This means fish – yes, ‘flange’ does mean a woman’s part – he thinks it’s funny to go into chippies and ask for this.)
ME: Nah – you two go . . .
BS: Suit yourself. Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.
BETH: See you at school.
And they went. They didn’t beg me to come. They didn’t fight. In fact, they were visibly relieved. And all the time Bethany is giving it the doe eyes . . . Slight glance downwards . . . Butter wouldn’t melt . . . I KNOW YOUR GAME, BETHANY.
Being called Big Razza doesn’t normally bother me, but in front of Bethany it’s different. She does this crap little giggle and sniggers and looks embarrassed, like somebody has broken the big taboo: REFERRED TO MY WEIGHT.
But I stay quiet like I always do. Because it doesn’t bother me. Me and Battered Sausage are just friends.
I wonder what Bethany and him have been up to all night?!
Oh yes, I do fancy him, Diary. Why am I lying? Nothing would make me happier than him kissing and hugging me. I hate her near him – she’s got men after her left, right and centre. Why can’t she be satisfied?! PIZZA-FACED COW.
I’m so possessive over him. Why? I’ve never felt this way. I can’t tame him – he will always go for pretty bitches.
Now I’m unhappy, and I still haven’t revised sodding Paradise Lost.
Playing ‘The Story of the Blues’ by The Mighty Wah! Pete Wylie sings it like it is. ‘They’ take every emotion you have. Then you realise there’s nothing left inside of you. You are just empty and dead inside. I’ve been there. I’m there now.
If it wasn’t for music, Diary, I would be done in by all of this. At least I know other people have felt like shit.
Wednesday 31.5.89
7.15 p.m.
LAST ENTRY WAS A BIT bloody psychopathic, wasn’t it?
Just did three hours’ panicked cramming, and the alarm is set for 5.45 a.m. That’s why I’m not writing much, because I’m having to learn irrelevant nonsense like HENRY VIII’S DOMESTIC POLICY – WHO GIVES A MONKEY’S?! I now know that the Court of Augmentations made £25,000 in its first year from the dissolution of the monasteries. But WHO CARES??!! I can’t imagine a time when this fact will EVER be useful.
Why can’t they teach us something useful? The French girls were telling us today they have make-up application and deportment lessons as 11-YEAR-OLDS! Their parents even rub Gorgonzola on to their gums as babies, so they appreciate fine flavours. No wonder the boys’ school are queuing up to do these women. They are women.
Avoided Bethany all day. Don’t want to know what went on OR what’s going on.
Thursday 1.6.89
8.30 p.m.
BETHANY COULD NOT WAIT TO tell me today that Battered Sausage tried to get off with her the other night down the Meadows. I swear this is all punishment, you know – for all those times I have thought, ‘Well, Bethany is not that amazingly pretty.’ I remember thinking in March that even I had a boyfriend for all of three days and that I would have another one immediately after that, and NOW everyone is dropping at HER feet! It all bloody fits!
Bethany told Battered Sausage that she is not interested until after the exams. He ‘understands’. But after the exams there’s a whole summer stretching ahead of long nights and short skirts and shagging in fields. I hope Bethany’s hay fever makes her snot like a baby with a cold.
I wish I could wake up tomorrow somewhere else. As someone else.
Weird thoughts so bad today. As bad as it gets. Took 22 minutes in all. And even then I had to come back to the house.
Friday 2.6.89
After 11 p.m.
HAD A BRITISH POLITICS EXAM. Bollocked on about voting behaviour for four sides. Five minutes before the end we all got done because Jasmine Bobs did one of her legend
ary comedy sneezes. She sneezes like a horse. We all creased up – and the invigilator went loony going on about how serious it all was and how our future partly depends on the outcome of these exams. THEY ARE MOCKS, WOMAN!
Just been down the Vaults. Left early tonight to avoid Bethany coming round. Sat with Dobber and Haddock’s girlfriend because Battered Sausage, Fig and Haddock were having a bloke’s night and being lads. No women were allowed. There was lots of loud laughter, and later in the garden they were talking about anal-chugging. Rugby players do it because they are hard. Well, not in Haddock’s case – because he was spewing by the barrel-shaped flower pots before ten o’clock, after only about three pints. He tried to save face by claiming it was a ‘tactical chunder’ that would allow him to take in more lager. I shouted that he was a lightweight across the pub. He then marched over and slurred the following:
HAD: What’s your problem with me?
ME: My problem with you – and the other members of your gang – is that you are public-schoolboy prats who even have your own made-up dance to Salt-n-Pepa’s ‘Shake Your Thang’. Dancing like you’ve had a stroke is not funny. And, when everyone else was dressed like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, YOU went to Nathan Thompson’s fancy-dress dead-celebrities party as a member of the Space Shuttle Challenger crew: a) the victims were not celebrities, and b) they had families, and that is not funny either. You don’t give a shit about other people’s feelings because you are a prick. (Massive long death-stare pause.)
HAD: I have NEVER called you Slug.
ME: So???
He then walked off. Swearing. Bugger him, two-dimensional tosser.
Me, Dobber and Haddock’s girlfriend had such a top night tonight. We have decided to call ourselves ‘the Gads’ – it’s a girl version of the lads. We have even written our own song to the tune of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. I do feel slightly bad because that was a song for famine relief in Ethiopia – but I bought the single five times and wanted to go to Live Aid, so sod it.
