Posh and Prejudice

by Grace Dent

  Cava-Sue tutted well loudly. “Shiraz ain’t got a proper job, Mum! She works at Mr. flaming Yolk!” she said, and she poked me in the arm well hard. “Shiz, have you not told Mother what you’re doing?”

  “Well I didn’t know what I was doing!” I moaned.

  “Well you do now,” said Cava-Sue. “You’re doing Sixth Form! You can’t just stop now. You wanna get a proper education!”

  Murphy and Wesley started to try to leave the room.

  “Oh, bleeding wonderful!” said Mum, pointing at me. “Another one of my kids farting about after school instead of earning a living!”

  Cava-Sue looked annoyed then.

  “I was NOT farting about!” shouted Cava-Sue, “I took bloody AS-Levels in Theater Studies and General Studies. I passed them both too! I was in London when the results came so NO ONE THREW ME A PARTY!”

  “Oh well, that may be, Cava-Sue!” shouted Mum, “But I thought you were doing them exams so you’d get an important job afterward and earn some cash! But you ain’t got jack! Just floating about from one thing to the next! I’m still footing the bill!”

  “Right! Come on,” said Nan. “We’ve all had a drink! Let’s just pipe down!”

  We’d only had bleeding half a bottle of Peach Lambrella between nine of us!

  “Me and Lewis are going traveling!” shouted Cava-Sue, pointing at Lewis, who was trying to hide behind the sausage porcupine. “That’s why we’re not starting our careers yet! And to be quite frank, Mother, it ain’t all about getting a proper flashy job anyway. What about education just for education’s sake!? What about just bettering your brain!?”

  Mum looked well hacked off now.

  “Well, my brain is fine thank you and I didn’t do any of these AS level thingies!” shouted my mum, “I got myself a job the very second I could. I wasn’t even sixteen! I was fifteen! Clive, the manager at Edmund Bosworth Bookies—God rest his mortal soul—had to pay me out of the petty cash float ’cos I was too young to legally work! But I was on the doorstep at 8AM every day and I went there with PRIDE.”

  “Oh really, Mother?” sighed Cava-Sue proper snarky like. “Do tell me that again. I’ve only heard it EIGHT MILLION NINE HUNDRED AND TWELVE TIMES since I was born.”

  Suddenly, I had to say what was burning up in my head, ’cos it was dying to get out.

  “LOOK, EVERYONE! SHUT UP A MINUTE,” I shouted. Everyone shut up and looked at me. “I WANNA GO BACK TO SIXTH FORM, RIGHT! I WANNA DO SOME A-LEVELS!”

  No one said anything. They all stared at me with their gobs open. Mum just pursed her lips. My dad gave me a wink. I could see him trying not to smile.

  When I got home from Mr. Yolk the next day I went in my room and Dad was fitting together a desk in the corner. It’s only a little one from Target with a fold-up chair, but it’s a proper place for me to study.

  Ha! “A proper place for me to study.”

  Oh my days, listen to me, I am such a flaming boffin.

  SEPTEMBER

  The Ilford Bugle

  TIME FOR A FRESH START, SAYS “SUPERCHAV ACADEMY” HEAD

  —reporter Mark E. Taylor

  A brand new Sixth Form “center of excellence” and banner GCSE results spell a fresh start for Mayflower Academy, claims optimistic headmaster Siegmund Bamblebury.

  Mayflower Academy—nicknamed “Superchav Academy” by the national press following a catalogue of antisocial behavior issues—has recently received a multi-million-pound cash-boost from central government. The funds have been plowed into renovating and extending the school, as well as employing new teaching staff and restocking the library.

  “I want to draw a line through the old days. It’s time the media stopped harking back to the negative,” said Mr. Bamblebury, making reference to the widescale drug use, joy-riding, bullying, and low exam grades which led to a 2004 Ofsted inspection to term the establishment “The worst school in Britain.”

  “It’s important to look ahead, not backward,” said Mr. Bamblebury. “The past two years have seen massive improvements.”

  When asked about last December’s Mayflower Winter Festival, which resulted in the assembly hall being destroyed by fire, Mr. Bamblebury put the phone down and curtailed the interview.

  TUESDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER

  I wandered over to Carrie’s tonight ’cos Carrie’s mum Maria was having a party for Carrie passing her GCSEs. Carrie didn’t do quite as well as me, but she still got three A’s, which is well good ’cos she didn’t do nothing to prepare as far as I could tell.

  Maria wanted to celebrate last week but then Carrie’s dad Barney got this big old contract fitting Jacuzzis all over Chigwell. This geezer called Malik who works in the city had got a ginormous cash bonus through so he’d bought EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY a Jacuzzi for their garden. Barney was over the moon. He’s not been home for days except to sleep. “You gotta make hay when the sun shines!” That’s what Barney Draper always says. “I ain’t gonna keep my little girl in daft shoes and lip gloss sitting about on my ’arris contemplating my navel!” he says.

  I like Carrie’s dad a lot, he’s got all that cash but he ain’t posh or nothing. I mean, he might wear expensive shirts and flash his wallet a bit when he goes down to the dog races at Walthamstow but he ain’t up himself. I like Carrie’s mum, too. She’s a little bit posh, mind. “Posher than she ought to be!” my mother always says.

  My mother’s got beef with Maria ’cos Maria was once a barmaid at the Goodmayes Social and always used to be proper brassic. Then all of a sudden she’s married to this plumber called Barney and Barney’s started up his own little business and they ain’t living in Dovehill Close no more, they’re living in Swansbrook Drive in a duplex and driving a car with a sunroof and instead of collecting one Victorian figurine at a time out of Star magazine, Maria’s got enough cash to buy the whole bloody lot in one go AND put them in their own revolving display cabinet with spotlights THEN place the cabinet beside a tropical fish tank. By the time Maria and Barney were building their own country-style mansion house on the other side of Goodmayes and calling it Draperville and putting up electric gates and doing their special charity Christmas light display, well my mother was so riled she couldn’t say Maria’s name without pulling a face like you would if you took a slurp out of a milk carton then realized the milk had turned to liquid stilton cheese.

  So I’m sitting in the dining room at Draperville tonight and me and Carrie are eating massive pieces of triple chocolate truffle cake that Maria got made by this cake-maker she knows in Epping Forest who makes cakes for celebrities—like folk in EastEnders—for birthdays and all that. She once made the Queen Vic totally out of nougat, sponge, icing sugar, and gumdrops. It was on the front of the Ilford Bugle. Anyway, Carrie’s cake was in the shape of an open book to symbolize all the hard study Carrie had put into passing her GCSEs which sort of made me laugh ’cos what would have REALLY symbolized Carrie passing her GCSEs would be a cake with marzipan figurines of Carrie snoring on her bed with Butterz to Babe in Thirty Days over her face while I read Jane Eyre beside her shouting, “Carrie! Wake up, you lazy cow!”

  “Well, I’d just like to raise a toast to my daughter,” Maria was saying. “I’m so proud of what you’ve done, love. And so proud that you’re carrying on at school to get some A-Levels!”

  “’Ere, and not only A-Levels,” butted in Barney all proud like. “Then off to university to do a business studies degree or something! Before you know it you could be running the whole bloody company! Give your old dad some time off with his newspaper!”

  Maria and Barney both looked quite choked up then.

  “Yeah,” Carrie said, then she gave them both a kiss and we all raised our glasses of Moet and Chambum champagne, which is this well posh stuff that Barney always gets out on special occasions which is well dear but always makes my breath taste like sick.

  “Cheers everybody.” Maria smiled, showing her sparkly white teeth that she’s just had Da Vinci veneers put on.


  “Up yer bums!” shouted Barney, raising his glass.

  Me and Carrie went upstairs afterward and we lay on her bed and watched Yo Momma! on MTV and Carrie pulled out my “straggler” eyebrows and pushed back my cuticles with a hard stick. And let’s just say she weren’t as lively as I’d be if Barney Draper had just said I could have his whole bloody company. Maybe she’s on her period.

  THURSDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER

  Cava-Sue and Lewis have changed their travel plans. They were going to fly to Vietnam on December 1st then stay there for the magical festival of Moonyflunkcock (I reckon that’s what she said, I was earwigging on her cell phone call). Then they’re moving on to Thailand afterward to check out some waterfalls and temples. Cava-Sue says she needs to leave Britain so she can really “challenge her Western world ways of perception.”

  After Thailand they’re going to Australia to meet their mate Pixie ’cos apparently the pubs there are great.

  What’s messed all this up is that Lewis’s mother, Vera, has told them she won’t be able to give them a loan as planned ’cos the profits in her pub ain’t up to much at the moment. Cava-Sue has been ringing around for a credit card but no one wants to give her one. Cava-Sue says they’ll have to put back their departure date to February now.

  My mother says that’ll give Cava-Sue and Lewis time to “travel” to the Ilford job center and “check out the magical festival of cold hard work.” We all laughed for ages when she said that except for Cava-Sue, who burst into tears.

  FRIDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER

  I was walking home from work tonight down Thundersley Road well buzzing ’cos after tomorrow I’ll only be working at Mr. Yolk on Saturdays. Believe me, eight hours a week is too long to spend with Mario. Especially when you’re the bloody negotiator between him and the Great British public who are trying to change bits of his set breakfasts. “No, Shirelle!” he moans at me. “Tell them they NO have mushrooms instead of beans! Set Breakfast C come with beans! I no their slave! They eat what Mr. Yolk serve! Set Breakfast C is perfect combination of item. I not mess about with it!!”

  So anyway, I’m nearly home tonight and I see Clinton Brunton-Fletcher with his red hair shaved coming toward me on the pavement on a BMX that’s well too small for him like it must be jacked off some young kid. He’s not really looking where he’s going, then he spots me and goes “Shizz” and I’m like, “All right, Clint.” And then he blasts off down the road and next I hear Uma’s voice screaming after him, “Cliiiiiiinton! You ain’t leaving me in here with all that stuff!” But there was no point as he was well gone.

  I looked down the road and Uma was standing in her front garden which is looking even more dodgy than ever these days ’cos it now actually has a fridge and sofa in it and the hedge has been burned down.

  “Y’all right, Shizza,” Uma shouted to me.

  “Y’all right, Uma.” I shouted back. I didn’t want to walk down and chat with her but I knew if I didn’t it would get all blown up into some big diss, so I went up and thought I’d keep it well brief. “What you up to?” I said.

  “Aw. Nothing. Just staying in with Zeus and watching telly,” she said. Just then Uma’s Staffy, Zeus, came running out of the house being all big and scary. He’s a big brindle Staffy with a studded collar.

  Uma is actually pretty sometimes when you look at her and forget who she is. She is dead tall with big brown eyes and has sort of prominent teeth that are always white and she’s skinny with long legs and a little waist. She wears quite hoochie clothes though. Skin-tight leggings and crop tops and short mini-skirts. And she goes mental if she thinks someone is disrespecting her which is pretty much always ’cos she is well paranoid. I’ve known Uma since I was in preschool. My mum don’t like Uma at all. When Uma’s stepdad got sent to jail for dealing shed loads of weed last January my mum was overjoyed ’cos she thought the Brunton-Fletchers would get an ASBO and be moved off somewhere else in Essex. “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” Mum said. “They’ve been spoiling this road since the second they landed here.”

  What actually happened was Rose, Uma’s mum, moved up to Durham temporarily to be nearer the jail and took the youngest kids with her and now Uma and Clinton live by themselves with Zeus. People get all uptight about Zeus but I know for a fact he ain’t no devil dog and he sleeps in Uma’s bed every night with her arms wrapped around him like a bloody hot water bottle. He’s like the only family she’s got left. Well, aside from Clinton, but he don’t really count.

  “Want a joint?” said Uma.

  “Nah, I promised Mum I’d make my dad’s tea,” I said, which was a lie. I can’t stand the smell of weed, let alone bloody smoke any.

  “Ah, well, never mind, I’m giving up myself.” She shrugged. “See you on Monday though, innit?”

  “Errrrm, what we doing on Monday?” I said.

  “I’m starting in Sixth Form,” she said.

  I tried my very very best to stop my face saying, “UMA, HOW THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU GOT INTO SIXTH FORM?”—’cos like I say, Uma is proper paranoid anyway and smoking skunk ain’t doing her no favors.

  BUT, HONESTLY, HOW???? HOW!?

  MONDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER

  1AM—OMG I start Sixth Form today.

  3AM—I’m still awake. Can’t sleep at all.

  5AM—Aaaaagh! I’m wide awake again and I can’t bloody get back to sleep as I am bricking it about school. You know something? I don’t think I quite thought this whole thing through. I reckon I just got all swept away with Ms. Bracket and her “master of your own destiny” speech ’cos Ms. Bracket is like Yoda or something. She is well crafty at fooling kids into thinking they are good when they think they ain’t worth nothing and that’s what she did to me. She’s a proper headbend that woman is.

  Maybe my mother is right. At least Mr. Yolk’s was a job and it was bringing in money and I should have been proud of the fact I was supporting myself with no handouts from no one. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I’ll be laughing on the other side of my face when I’m back next week crying to Mr. Yolk wanting all my hours back and he’s given them to some Polish woman who works twice as hard for half as much. I won’t feel so bleeding clever then my mother says.

  5:25AM—I think I am having what Dr. Oz on Oprah would call an “anxiety attack” as I’m proper panicking now and I don’t even know what to wear today and I don’t know what to take with me and I don’t even know what bloody subjects to do when I get there. Cava-Sue said yesterday I should put on something comfortable and take a pen with me and just “enjoy the experience.” Cava-Sue says I’ve got to stop being so bleeding theatrical.

  Me, theatrical? HA HA HA. She was only at college in Ilford half a week and she went all emo and began prancing about in a stripey sweater and a hat with a pom pom and scarf looking like him off of Where’s Waldo?

  I don’t wanna change if I go to Sixth Form. I like being me.

  7:30AM—Have just called Carrie for wardrobe advice. Carrie reckons the dress code today is “smart-casual” or “smart-caj” as she is calling it. Carrie says there is a section on smart-caj in the “Dress to Impress” chapter of her Butterz to Babe book. Carrie says that Tabitha Tennant says that smart-caj means “businesslike with a chilled-out twist, possibly with a nod toward sportswear.”

  EH? What does that mean? That newscaster blouse Mum got me for Aunty Glo’s silver wedding anniversary party with some track pants? My mother’s betting-shop jacket with my Von Dutch cap and carrying along a Ping-Pong paddle?

  8AM—Right. This is what I’m wearing: My best jeans from TopShop. My pink T-shirt with the white swirls on it from Wet Seal. My pink Ellesse trainers, and my white McKenzie hoodie. I’m wearing my hair loose and back in a gold metal headband and my big gold hoops. That’s final. I ain’t changing again. End of.

  8:15AM—Oh and my gold locket that Wesley bought me of course with the pictures of us in it from when we went to see DJ Tim Westwood. I gotta wear it ’cos Wesley’s giving me a lift to school and he
gets the hump a little bit if I don’t ’cos it cost a proper bomb and it was money he could have spent on rims. Gotta go.

  TUESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER

  OH MY DAYS. Yesterday was proper hectic. I’m going to try and write it all down as this will certainly be a well important chapter in the life of Shiraz Bailey Wood when I give my diaries over to the person who writes my autobiography.

  So we got to Mayflower School in the morning and we turfed out Murphy from the backseat for his first day in Year Ten then Wesley held my hand for a bit and he was all like, “Good luck, Shizza, you’ll be fine. Don’t worry, innit.”

  But to be quite honest Wesley looked more worried than me. ’Specially when he saw all these boys going into the new Sixth Form center all bustin’ their proper best clothes like they were going to a shubz not to school at all.

  So Wesley says to me, “Shiraz? Do you, like, know all of these Sixth Form boys and that, innit?”

  And I said like, “Nah. Not really,” ’cos I hardly reconized any faces. For the first time I suddenly realized that Mayflower Sixth Form weren’t just going to be Mayflower School kids that I knew. It was going to be kids coming from all other schools too—like Regis Hill Boys Academy and Walthamstow Grange and Thomas Duke in Leytonstone.

  I felt really sick again then ’cos I think I’d been fooling myself that me and Carrie were going to stride in there and it was going to be like our turf and all people we knew. Now I saw that we were going to be swamped with all these totally new folks and we were going to be new girls too.

  So I kiss Wesley goodbye and I walk into the new Sixth Form Center and there’s this big white room with sofas and beanbags in it that looks like somewhere to hang out between classes and there’s all these kids just standing about reading the Center of Excellence handbook and there’s loads of Year Nines and Year Tens all outside pushing their faces up against the window and staring in at us like we were fish in a tank while teachers kept shouting at them to move away.