Scarlett Says

by Scarlett Moffatt

  Now, I think that’s everyone, so we’re ready to get going on our night out.

  2

  . . . get glammed up

  Scarlett’s Favourite Random Facts

  Susami Bay in Japan boasts the world’s deepest postbox, which is 10 metres underwater.

  Artist Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors.

  PSYCHO was the first film ever to show a toilet being flushed on screen.

  Now having said this book’s not all about diets and lads, I’m about to spend the first part of it talking about the massive efforts I put into getting ready when I go out. For some people, that might not make sense.

  All I can say is that I feel a lot more confident when I’ve got make-up on and I’m wearing a new outfit. I feel like I put a whole new persona on. Some people might say I shouldn’t have to put on a persona to feel confident and THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT, SCARLETT, but that’s something I think we can leave for debating on a Monday morning, rather than a Friday night.8

  The only thing I know is that when I’m getting ready to go out with my friends, it makes me really happy. I don’t feel like I’m doing it for anybody else.

  Everyone worries about their appearance. I reckon it’s better to be honest about that, so I’m just going to get it all out the way in one go upfront.

  I was a funny-looking kid. I had a big football head and a monobrow, even when I was really little. Me mam got my ears pierced when I was eight months old, maybe to make me look prettier, but I think that’s child abuse. I always say to her, ‘Mam, I did not need accessories at that age.’ What possessed her to do that? Why would you put a needle through a baby’s ears for fashion? I clearly wasn’t arsed about having little gold studs back then. She says people used to think I was a boy, so maybe that’s another reason she did it? So people actually knew I was a girl? Me mam used to say I was cute but I don’t think I was to be honest. I think she’s just saying that. She says that all the old ladies on the bus used to stop her and tell her what pretty eyes I had. I reckon that means we just got on the bus a lot. Basically we rode back and forth on the number 6 bus till someone said they liked me eyes. Then we could go home.

  As I got older, I could eat an apple through a letterbox with my teeth, my massive monobrow was like Ed’s from Ed, Edd n Eddy and I had a bright orange face because I was fake-tanned for ballroom dancing. I didn’t own any straighteners so I had hair like Sideshow Bob, and the result was a very odd-looking, awkward girl.

  On top of all that, my dentist wanted to give me a head brace. I’m not being funny, but the one thing that could have made me even less cool at that moment in time was a head brace. I got the piss taken out of me enough for the way I looked as it was, and he wanted to send me to school with a fucking head brace on? He could have saved a lot of time and cut out the middleman by locking me in a room and shouting insults at me through a megaphone himself.

  I remember telling me mam a head brace was social suicide and there was no way I was going to wear one. The compromise was that I wore block braces instead, so I couldn’t close my mouth and I had to walk around looking like I was constantly surprised or scared. When I look back at my massive ’brows, giant hair, weird-coloured face and permanently half-open mouth, leaving aside the fact that anyone that bullies someone is a massive dick, it’s pretty obvious why I was a target for bullying.9

  I also liked programmes that all my mates thought I was weird to watch. I loved Red Dwarf, The Young Ones, Blackadder and Bottom. I used to really fancy Rik Mayall in that. I cried so much when he died. Watching all that stuff is where I got my sense of humour from. I used to love Steptoe and Son, but when I talked about it at school everyone looked at me like I was mad, so I’d shut up about it. That and the fact I did ballroom dancing (which we’ll come back to a little bit later), which everyone called old-fogie dancing, meant that I was basically socially untouchable at my school.

  I used to love the Jacqueline Wilson books when I was little. And me dad said to me the other day, ‘When you were a kid you always used to want us to die or for you to turn out to be adopted. You used to say, “Please can you put us in the foster home for a week, just so I can have an adventure.”’ I used to ask them to leave me in a B and B because I always thought it would be amazing to be brave under difficult circumstances. I was dead jealous of Tracy Beaker.

  I also believed in Father Christmas till I was twelve. I was in year eight and I remember the teacher saying something about Santa not being real and I put my hand up and said, ‘Sorry, what did you say?’ And everyone really laughed so I had to pretend I was joking, but then I went home and I was devastated. ‘Why did you not tell me? I looked like such a weirdo.’ And me mam was just like, ‘I’m really sorry, I just wanted to keep you as a kid as long as possible.’10

  I was one of those kids that wore my hair in two plaits until I was far too old. Some kids at my sister Ava’s school now wear make-up and that’s a primary school!

  It wasn’t until I was fourteen, and I came back from the summer holidays before year ten, that a load of things happened at once to change things. I discovered plucking your eyebrows, the braces came off, I got some really cheap (quite shit) hair straighteners, puberty kicked in11 and suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend.

  All of this is just to say that I think sometimes you can be made to feel like you’re weak or something if you want to fit in. Quite often you’ll get some amazing, beautiful person telling you that what you’ve got to do is be yourself. That the right thing to do is to walk your own path and all that. But the problem is, it can be really lonely on your own path. You can be yourself as much as you like, but being yourself might mean you want to fit in.

  Like most girls, I have been on diets in the past but they always last about two days. As soon as you say you’re on a diet all you want to eat is sugar and carbs. I did a detox diet once which was supposed to rid my body of toxins, but I got such a bad headache that after two days I went to Asda and bought myself a baguette and some Lurpak and I nearly ate the entire tub of butter. Now, I’m not saying do that as a regular thing, but I also don’t reckon living on hot water, cayenne pepper and maple syrup is the way to go.

  I think there’s too much emphasis on what people look like. People now don’t eat as much chocolate at bloody Christmas because they’re worried about how they’ll look on a beach six months later. It’s six months away. Life is too short.

  Now I don’t even bother with dramatic health kicks. I do try and cut out crap as much as possible but I hate that feeling of guilt if you fall off the wagon when you’re on a more extreme diet. It makes you feel worse than ever and half an hour later you find yourself in KFC ordering one of everything on the menu, with extra fries. The bottom line is your life is not going to get magically better if you lose a few pounds. But cake is definitely delicious. Eat the cake!12

  My friend has a theory that it’s all about making women as weak and small as they can be. If they’re not eating, then they’ve got no energy to make noise. They’re basically these shaky little pale things in the corner that don’t take up any space. Any diet that doesn’t give me the energy to dance for four hours with my mates isn’t for me.

  There’s that saying ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. Whoever came up with that, you haven’t eaten enough types of food, man. I could list you five things right this minute, just beginning with the letter M, that taste more delicious.

  These days I really don’t mind if people like me or not. I would never change who I am to fit in with how other people may want me to be. But I totally get that desire to be like everyone else and the feeling you get when you think you never will be. I’ve never forgotten what it’s like to feel on the outside of everything and that’s why my friends are so important to me, because they’re people I can have a laugh with, rather than people who just stand around the edge of the dance floor looking cool. When being nice and kind gets you nowhere, don’t change the person you are, change the people you’re ta
lking to!

  Know your north-east slang!

  Geordies: those from Newcastle. Or, as we say, the Toon. Not to be confused with . . .

  Mackems: Sunderland folk

  Smoggies: those from Middlesbrough, home of the parmo (deep-fried chicken in breadcrumbs topped with béchamel sauce and cheese)

  County Durhamers: the greatest of the north-easterners. Also known as Durhamites and pit-yakkas. Durham is the birthplace of Denise Welsh, Mr Bean and, of course, the Moffatts

  Way, aye: yes, or of course

  Howay, man: come on or hurry up

  Gan yam: going home

  Marra: friend

  Mortal: drunk

  Scran/bait: food

  Bairn: child

  Radgie: a really crazy person or when you are in a mood

  Gadgie: anyone who has male bits, basically

  Canny: nice/pleasant, or a value of measure, e.g. ‘That dog’s canny small, like.’

  Geet walla: very, very large

  Netty: toilet

  3

  . . . failing to prepare is preparing to fail

  Scarlett’s Favourite Random Facts

  The GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS book is the book that gets stolen most often from public libraries.

  Most Muppets are left-handed.

  There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.

  I don’t know about you, but any night out with my mates will usually start with pretty much an entire week’s worth of chat on our Facebook group so we can work out where we’re going and what we’re wearing. As soon as one weekend is over, the planning starts for the next one. There are about fourteen of us in our group but there are a couple that are just observers and don’t contribute. I think it’s nice that there’s a real mix of people, and none of us have got any airs and graces. All of my mates are dead down to earth. I used to go out in Newcastle sometimes with another group of girls and it just wasn’t the same. They were nice enough but they were really posey and not a lot of fun. They sat in booths being really sedate, sipping overpriced cocktails and not speaking to each other.

  Sam or Kelly usually decide where we go. They’re the shepherds and we’re their sheep. We’ll spend all week planning our outfits and we’ll post photos of potential ones so everyone can give us feedback. It’s so sad, but it’s essential! I reckon a lot of the time planning a night out is more fun than the night itself.

  I’ll be out at work and then when I get home and check me phone at the end of the day I’ll have about 176 messages to read from the group alone. I dread to think how much time everyone wastes messaging rather than doing their work. Basically all our employers should get together and invoice Facebook for the time we all spend making the site more valuable by spending all our time on it. I can’t be arsed to read all the messages so I’ll ask someone for a summary at the end of the day and just get the highlights so I know what’s going on.

  Failbook

  I don’t know how humans coped before they had WhatsApp or Facebook to plan a night out. I can’t get my head round the idea that they just agreed a time and a place and that was it. My dad was talking about this the other day, how when he was young you didn’t have mobile phones, so you just had to make arrangements and then turn up. It blows your mind.

  Facebook is definitely a great way to organize a night out but I think it becomes quite dangerous when it’s the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning. I deleted the app from me phone because I spend so much time looking at it. It’s a bit of a ball-ache having to put in your email and password when you want to go on it, so my laziness means I look at it less.

  The only thing I don’t like about Facebook is the way people check in constantly. The worst thing is when people check in at the gym and put ‘leg day’ or ‘abs day’. So fucking what?

  I know this lad who is always sitting around messing about on his phone when I go to the gym. When I went the other day he was doing it for about an hour and when he left I saw that he’d posted, ‘Hardcore workout. I’m going to have jelly legs in the morning.’ What? From fucking texting?

  Even when we’re doing our pre-pre-drinking at one of the girls’ houses me friend Sam will check us in. Why? Why do people need to know whose house we’re at? I don’t want strangers knowing my every move.

  Sam even checks herself in when she’s in bed. Again, why? The worst is when she checks us in at Bargain Booze when we’re getting our drinks for the night. I don’t want anyone to know I go there. She also checks us in wherever we’re out eating, so if I’ve told me friends I’m on a health kick and then she checks us in at McDonald’s, I’m done for.

  I’m one of those people who is guilty of blocking people on Facebook if I fall out with them. I do it to me mam all the time. If we’ve had an argument, I’ll unfriend her because I know she checks my Facebook a lot. It’s so pathetic but if you’re angry you get a little bit of pleasure out of unfriending someone. If anyone did it to me, I’d properly kick off, though.

  I was really angry when I heard about the dislike button coming in. It’s such an easy way to bully people. I see loads of statuses I think are twatty but I just ignore them. I think it would be mean to ‘dislike’ what someone writes and I hope it never happens. Sometimes when I look on Twitter it seems like some people are only there to give people grief. I genuinely feel bad for them. Sometimes I’ll tweet the people who’ve written the nasty comments and say, ‘Are you happy with your life?’ I feel sad that they think it’s OK to do that, and I don’t get it. It’s like going up to someone in the street and saying, ‘Your hair’s shite.’ You don’t know that person, so why would you say that?13

  The other thing with Facebook is that it’s a bit of a fantasy world for some people. They make out their lives are amazing. I know this girl who really doesn’t like her boyfriend and yet she messages him where everyone can see, saying, ‘Can’t wait to see you later.’ She could use that energy she wastes typing on dumping him.

  #Datenights

  Fucking #datenight. It drives me mad when people put that on social media. I just don’t understand why everyone needs to know you’re going out with your other half. When I’ve had boyfriends, I haven’t felt like I have to put our every move on Facebook.

  People will buy a meal and eat it at home and put up a photo saying #datenight. It’s not a bloody date night; you’ve just bought a ready meal and you’re sat in your own house with the person you live with.

  Too many photos!

  OK, my final moan about Facebook is this: we don’t need to see pictures of everything people’s kids do. ‘Here’s little Johnny eating.’ ‘Here’s little Johnny in the car.’ ‘Here’s little Johnny on his potty.’ Unless your kid is tightrope walking or speed skating, I don’t want to see that shit. I don’t care if your baby is smiling. It’s probably wind anyway.

  And if I see one more ‘first day at school’ photo . . . How many kids do I need to see in their uniform? Surely parents realize that everyone else is doing it and it’s boring? Do they think their kid is cuter than everyone else’s? Me mam tried to put a photo of me little sister Ava up, but Ava refused to let her do it and she’s only nine. I felt dead, dead proud of her. A friend of mine is a postwoman and she posted a photo of herself in her uniform and wrote, ‘First day at big work,’ which was really funny.

  Actually, I lied . . .

  I have one more Facebook-related thing to moan about – passive-aggressive statuses when people slag off someone else but don’t name them. Or when someone posts something really cryptic like, ‘So pissed off. Why do good things always happen to bad people?’ People start posting, ‘What’s wrong, hon? You OK? Inbox me,’ underneath. It’s all to get attention. If you’re not going to tell us what’s wrong with you, don’t bother to write anything. It’s as bad as when people just write, ‘Today is a good day.’ For Christ’s sake, no one is that interested in your life. You don’t need to do a teaser trailer.

&nbs
p; Back in the day

  It sounds like I hate everything about it but when Facebook first started I loved it. Now anything I want to say I put on Twitter because I much prefer it. For some reason people have set up Facebook accounts in my name, so it looks like I’m on there all the time talking crap.

  I mainly use Facebook for talking to me mates now, and I still like looking at other people’s statuses so I know what’s going on. I think it actually looks like Twitter now and I like that better because it helps me to know where I’m at with all my apps.

  Way back in the day, when social media apps started popping up, I had Bebo, and if I remember rightly that was where I met my first ever boyfriend. He was at university and I was at school and I remember him driving me to get my GCSE results and feeling dead cool because he had a car. Back then that was pretty much my only requirement when it came to lads.

  Bitching

  I’m not naive and I know that people gossip about me a lot more now I’m on TV. I’ve seen all sorts of things written about me on Facebook. One girl posted a while back, ‘Scarlett thinks she’s the bee’s knees. She walks around with a bodyguard now.’ I think she must have seen me with my friend Ivo and thought I’d bloody hired him, because he’s quite a big lad. Hilarious.

  Someone else put a post up saying that I think I’m too good to go out in my own town, but I’m out in it every week! A lot of people also bring up random things I did at school over ten years ago like it’s relevant. It’s dead strange.

  It makes me sad that it’s people from my home town who are the ones that have a go at me. I love where I live but I do find that the further away from it I go the nicer people are to me. I don’t know if it’s because people compare themselves and wonder why they’re not on TV, or what. I can’t think of any other reason. It’s not like I think I’m better than anyone or act any differently. I’m on a TV show once a week; I haven’t morphed into fucking J-Lo. My friends would be the first people to tell me if they thought I’d changed, and I’d be mortified if I did.