by Rae Earl
Monday 18.12.89
Late
LISTENED TO ELECTRONIC ALL DAY. It is an astounding piece of music with Johnny Marr from The Smiths and the bloke from New Order. The lyrics are just . . . IT COULD BE MY SONG – I COULD HAVE WRITTEN IT. It talks about mirrors making you look shit and I do hate mirrors. And do you know what else I HATE about this time of year? Mistletoe. If there’s one thing that forces the issue about how unattractive I am to men, it’s that stuff.
When we are down the pub – one of the lads gets some – puckers up to everyone – gets to me – and decides he needs a pint. It happens EVERY TIME.
It seems wrong to me that Electronic have to share the same chart as Jive Bunny AND THEIR LATEST PILE OF FESTIVE TOSS.
Tuesday 19.12.89
11.54 a.m.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS PRESENT – opened it early and it’s utter crap. A cute black ceramic elephant with MAKE-UP BRUSHES!!!!!!!!!!???????
HELLO?! DO THESE PEOPLE KNOW ME???
A) I DON’T WEAR MAKE-UP, AND B) I HATE CUTE THINGS.
Have customised the elephant with Mum’s nail varnish, and written on it ‘Vanity kills’. Mum came upstairs and said I was an ungrateful so and so. But why don’t people get the message and buy me stuff that I want, like records and books?
Wednesday 20.12.89
5.50 p.m.
W ROTE A CHRISTMAS CARD TO Haddock to give to him tomorrow but I never will. I ended up putting too many kisses on it – he’s bound to get suspicious. I wish you could see Haddock. Then you’d appreciate him for what he is visually. And down there under all the crap is a shining soul – a gem of a man. Yes, he is screwed up, but the best ones are as far as I can see. He is meant to be going to South Africa for six months next year. I’d love to be able to say in that time I could make a caterpillar-to-butterfly-type transformation, but while prawn cocktail crisps exist, this seems unlikely.
What I feel for Haddock is so positive, but totally wasted. Depressing really.
Thursday 21.12.89
12.20 a.m.
IT DOESN’T SEEM LIKE CHRISTMAS, you know.
When I think what I was doing a year ago, it isn’t pleasant. I was off my head after the breakdown. I kept thinking I was dying every five minutes. On Christmas Day I got it into my head that I was slowly choking on a 5p that Mum had put in the Christmas pudding.
Last night Fig bought me a Jack Daniel’s, then gave me a fireman’s lift from near Beewise to outside the old cinema. A fair way – I was quite impressed. It’s the lightest I’ve felt in years, though he looked red afterwards.
I think Haddock’s girlfriend has clicked on to the fact that I have a huge crush on Haddock. I just get a vibe. Oh, so what? I’ve got a 38-inch waist – I am hardly a threat!!
11.37 p.m.
Oh, Haddock looked so horny tonight, I swear . . . He makes my heart nearly come out of my bloody ribcage. I don’t think his girlfriend has clicked on actually – I cover it up well. He was wearing a grey wool jumper that just smelt of Lenor and aftershave, and a little tartan scarf. You could just eat him. And then we had the most brilliant conversation about the record he lent me:
HAD: What did you think, then?
RAE: I thought it was bloody brilliant, mate.
HAD (LOOKING ME STRAIGHT IN MY EYE – BAM!!): It’s my song.
RAE: Piss off, it’s my song. It says it all.
HAD: Well you and me have got a lot in common, then.
(GAP – GAP – GAP. QUICK, RAE, FILL IT BEFORE YOU BURST WIDE OPEN WITH SO MUCH LOVE FOR THIS MAN YOU MIGHT VOMIT OR DIE.)
RAE: That album you bought me for my birthday has got some prime shit on it. Hot Chocolate?? Sonny and Cher?? Where the hell did you get it from?
HAD: Bargain bin at work, mate. It was £2.99.
RAE: Thanks – I hope you won’t starve because of you lavishing so much money on me.
HAD: Nah, there’s a big tin of Quality Street in our front room. I’ll be fine. Do you want a drink, Funky Chick?
RAE: Yes, you tight arse – get me a beer.
So he goes to the bar, none the wiser . . . that I may just die if I never go out with him. Fucking hell, I deserve an Oscar. No one covers shit up like me. People think I am confident and happy with myself. Haddock thinks I am just a friend of his. I am the Meryl Streep of Stamford.
I was going to a review of the 80s, but I’ve decided it would be too depressing.
Friday 22.12.89
10.50 p.m.
WELL, ADNAN IS BACK FOR Christmas. His English has improved. He must have been having lessons, as when I wished him happy Christmas, he said, ‘You also. Jesus prophet me too.’ Mum was quick to tell me that Islam has Jesus as a prophet. They are mooning over each other like a couple of teenagers . . . and keep disappearing into the kitchen muttering and kissing.
Tonight in the pub Battered Sausage said I looked like the inflatable Father Christmas that was hanging off the bar. So I said, ‘Rudolph the Reindeer has got a bigger cock than you, and is prettier to shag.’ He laughed. Everyone laughed. He has gone somewhere to snog. I am sat here looking at my Father Christmas figure.
That is my life. The smart comment. Then fuck all.
I can’t cope with Christmas like this. I am so lonely I could cry.
I am depressed. No one has noticed.
Saturday 23.12.89
Bloody late (knackered and pissed off beyond gooseberry belief)
WELL, IT’S LATE, AND FRANKLY it’s not the 23rd but I refuse to have a crap Christmas Eve. Tonight was a right snog-fest for everyone BUT ME!! Battered Sausage and girlfriend sucking each other’s faces off. Haddock was snogging his girlfriend like something I didn’t want to see – but like a car crash I couldn’t stop staring. At one stage he caught me looking at him. I just stuck my Vs up. He came over and said:
HAD: The Funky Chick looks pissed off. What’s the matter?
ME: Just a bit pissed off, mate.
HAD: Why?
ME: Doesn’t matter.
HAD: Tell me.
ME: All right, then. I’m fucked off, fat and a gooseberry everywhere I go. And if you must know, my mum’s bloody foreign boyfriend is back.
HAD: Let’s go out tomorrow and get ratted. On me – I’ve just got paid.
He then kissed my hand in a comedy way and ran off.
He is so horny it’s . . . Oh, I wish you could see him. Too knackered to write now. Going to sleep on that thought.
Sunday 24.12.89
LATE
CRIMBLE EVE!!!
Went down the Vaults. Elva the landlady gave me a Vaults diary for Christmas. Got loads of Christmas kisses off people and had such a laugh with Dobber.
Oh, BUT . . .
HADDOCK . . .
Took me on a pub bender to cheer me up. He succeeded. If he had taken me to a building society he would have cheered me up. In the snog way Battered Sausage is repulsive – leering, uncaring, cold. Oh, he reckons (and he tells me) that he is good at ‘it’, but so what? But Haddock is so funny, gentle, yet strong. How I contain myself I don’t know.
We had such a laugh. He is witty, he is kind. He is grumpy, but only in a comedy way. He is . . . And on a few occasions tonight I caught him looking at me, and I swear . . .
No, that is just bollocks, Rae. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t spoil what you have, because what you have is a lovely, wonderful thing. What you pray and hope for, and what you wish he thinks – he doesn’t.
I swear he is my ideal man and I’m not joking. I don’t think anyone will come close to matching him.
But his presence plagues me with the ‘if only’s more than anyone. If only he wasn’t spoken for, etc. If only I wasn’t fat.
I swear – if it means lettuce leaves for three years, and my mum’s Green Goddess video – I will snog that bloke one day.
His poor girlfriend had family commitments tonight. Her loss – bloody hell – was my gain.
Monday 25.12.89 (Christmas Day)
8.34 a.m.
MUM
HAS JUST WOKEN ME up with a turkey sarnie . . . at 8.31 a.m!
Two things can be relied upon today:
1) I won’t get anything I want.
2) Mum will force me to eat a ceremonial Brussels sprout ‘just for her’.
3.50 p.m.
Mum is watching the Christmas edition of Bread. It is not funny.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that Haddock is desperate to put me off him. He probably finds me repulsive, and the little things he says are there to prove a point.
The more I think about it, the more I realise just how much I want him – I mean really, really want him. Totally impossible situation.
8.32 p.m.
Sitting here feeling really worried. Have had about 50 Just Brazils and a couple of walnuts and now I am beginning to feel like I am blowing up like a balloon. Told Mum I think I am allergic – she just laughed and said I’d eaten too much. BUT what if I DO have a fatal nut allergy? I really don’t want to die – I’ve only snogged one bloke. And what is beyond death? Nothing. A void. I don’t want to die for nuts.
Tuesday 26.12.89
11.05 p.m.
JUST BEEN DOWN THE PUB. Loads of people got CARS for Christmas! It’s the hazard of being poor while going to a private school. One girl even got a car and a private numberplate. I was moaning about this loudly, so Ryan the RAF groper made me a car from a beermat and wrote ‘RAE 1’ on the back. I said, ‘Thanks, mate – that really makes up for it.’
Dobber thought he was trying to be sweet. He is a sarky shit of a man.
No Haddock. Bet he looks cute in a paper hat from a cracker. That’s the mark of a true man.
I had a bit of Pimm’s before I started on the vodkas.
Everyone out. Everybody got off with each other. The year is ending just like it started – with snogging couples everywhere and me lurking around the fruit machine.
THE CORNER OF MY EYE
The corner of my eye
If I could
I would disown you.
When I’m looking away you catch glimpses of torture.
Corner of my eye always sees couples kissing
It reminds me of the things I’m missing.
Corner of my eye is where agony lies – I look straight ahead but you see love.
Corner of my eye – be useful – FIND
Someone who doesn’t mind my fat – someone blind.
Wednesday 27.12.89
3.35 p.m.
JUST WATCHED GREASE. WHAT I need in the year 1990 is an Olivia Newton-John-style transformation. You know the bit at the end where she goes, ‘Tell me about it, stud,’ in all that tight black stuff like Mrs Sex on Legs? That’s what I need! I need a complete image change so people think, ‘Who the hell is that? Is she available? And can I do her?’
Going down pub later. Haddock apparently – according to Dobber – will not be out. He is having an evening at his girlfriend’s house.
She mentioned this in passing. Obviously to me it was like the most important news ever, but I just grunted.
11.55 p.m.
Shit-stirrer of the year BETHANY turned up out of nowhere tonight in the pub and said, ‘What’s going on? Haven’t you got off with Haddock yet?!’ SILLY BITCH. Luckily it fell on mainly deaf ears, but Dobber heard and said, ‘What??!!’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry – just a private joke.’ Luckily Haddock and girlfriend were not there. Bethany is a shit-stirring cow. Wish I had not told her a thing EVER. That’s a lesson if ever there was one.
Thursday 28.12.89
4.28 p.m.
FORGOT TO TELL YOU – got a CD player for Christmas. Unfortunately I currently only have one CD and that’s the Eagles Greatest Hits borrowed off one of my mum’s friends. Still, it’s brilliant – and no more record jumping when I dance.
The end of the decade is fast approaching. Here is a list of objectives and resolutions – AKA ALL THE THINGS I INTEND TO DO (first two in order – rest not in order):
1) Get spiritual peace and fight for a better world.
2) Lose weight and learn how to LOVE.
3) Fall in love with someone who can give it back – not some glorious unobtainable.
4) Try to be kind even to people who I can’t stand.
5) Never sell out to materialism.
6) Get to university.
7) Fight for good.
8) And try to beat all bad.
9) Get rid of mental confusion.
10) Marry Haddock.
No. 10 just being silly.
Well, only partly silly.
Friday 29.12.89
RIGHT – NOTHING ON TV, AND no money for sales, so it’s time for the:
REVIEW OF 1989
A year that I greeted in an extremely strange way. I had been ill for six months, primarily physically but also mentally. I was unhappy. The pub then came along: the Hole in the Wall primarily, then the Vaults (said ‘primarily’ twice – bad English – I do apologise). That’s where I met everyone, including Harry. I let that one get me down for a bit – well, more than a bit. Heaven knows why I bothered. He was a crap snogger with the personality of a duster.
At first I hated the Vaults – I thought it was a really grubby, sleazy dive of a place. I have now grown to love it – it’s an epic. Elva the landlady is fab, the atmosphere is brilliant. That’s where I first met Battered Sausage and Fig. Fig has introduced me to a top mate in Dobber – who has replaced Bethany as the person to socialise with. The key improvement between Bethany and Dobber? Dobber is not a bitch.
Haddock
The first time I met Haddock he was pissed and trying not to chunder on the stairs by the Hole in the Wall. He still looked gorgeous then. I thought he was a rugger-bugger twat. I was wrong. He is . . .
. . . just something for the moment I can’t tell anyone about. But he is worth changing for.
I don’t know what 1990 or the 90s will bring. But I hope they bring more Haddock and less Jive Bunny.
Saturday 30.12.89
JUST GOT IN AND I AM FREEZING
AS SOON AS THIS YEAR IS OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY I WILL BE HAPPY.
Tonight I realised that all these things I write here are just nonsense. What I feel belongs to dreamland, not reality. Tonight it was a lads’ night out – so Haddock, Fig and Battered Sausage were all getting ratted on their own. So me, Dobber and Haddock’s girlfriend all sat there. And while Dobber was at the bar, Haddock’s girlfriend was telling me about an argument her and Haddock had about her being possessive. Let me quote to you what Haddock said, as a basis for an argument with his girlfriend, about jealousy:
‘You don’t let me have any female friends other than Rae.’
You see? I am ALWAYS the fat, ugly-cow exception. I am safe. No threat. I mean – who would? That was quoted to me in all innocence – but it cuts me up so much.
And to him I am just the sister, and that’s why I am the agony aunt to her – because I will never, never be a threat.
She said, ‘He thinks the world of you, Rae. You know that, don’t you?’
Yes – and you are fine with it because the way he thinks of me will never be in competition with you.
At the end of the night Haddock said, ‘How is my Funky Chick?’ I said, ‘Your Funky Chick is fucked off.’ He went to ask why but I just left.
I feel off it.
I can hear my mum giggling.
And if I hear ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ by Slade one more time I will smash everything to shit and I don’t care if they lock me up again.
Sunday 31.12.89
ACTUALLY IT’S 1.1.90. I AM lying on Dobber’s mum’s sofa with Wally, Dobber’s budgie, going mad at me.
OH MY GOD.
MEN ARE ALL NUTTERS.
FREAK-OUT NIGHT. I CAN’T GET MY HEAD ROUND IT.
The pub was packed tonight. You could hardly move, but it just turned into the most surreal night in history. Dobber and I were just sat there getting pissed, when honestly out of the blue Ryan the RAF groper marched up to me
and said in a really angry way, ‘You missed your chance. I am seeing someone else. You know, you shouldn’t be such a sarky bitch – it gets tedious after a while.’ He then grabbed this girl he was with and stuck his tongue down her throat right in front of me. HELLO??? He’s obviously on something. Dobber said, ‘What the fuck was that about?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, mate. But WHAT A WEIRDO!’
Then almost immediately Battered Sausage got dumped by his girlfriend and started semi-crying by the fruit machines in full view of everyone!!! When I went to see if he was OK, he wouldn’t let go of me – and started saying, ‘All women are bitches, Rae. I’m just shagging the flange. I won’t marry a slag. Just want special minge long term.’
So basically the mega lad Battered Sausage just wants to be loved like the rest of us!
Bloody hell.
Dobber agreed – it was getting more weird the more pissed everyone got. Some twat even put the Nolans on the jukebox – it was like the world was ending.
We stayed in the Vaults until 11.45, then we all ended up in Red Lion Square. We didn’t hear the bells but the word went round it was 1990. Had a moment of ‘total fat cowness’ when every man went to kiss Dobber first, then seemingly everyone else next and THEN me. I got an uncomfortable peck off most . . . It was one of those ‘I am Jabba the Hut’ times. I thought, ‘Bugger it’, though. Was trying to make the most of the rest of the night, when the following happened:
Haddock and me had been having a laugh all night but all of a sudden in the square he grabbed me and dragged me to Horseshoe Lane by the men’s toilets. I was pissing myself laughing . . . but he wasn’t. He told me to shut the fuck up and shouted at me to LISTEN!!
When I said, ‘Calm down, mate,’ he said, ‘Fucking shut up. I know you were down yesterday, and I know you get down.’ Then he put his fingers in my hair and said, ‘Do you know . . . it’s just a bit of weight you need to lose. You’ve got a pretty face . . . Other people have said it. And you are funny . . . and if you just toned up a bit . . .’ (STROKING MY HAIR – I AM TELLING YOU I WAS DUMBSTRUCK) ‘ . . . things would change for you. Fuck other people! You’d feel better, and I would—’
