Posh and Prejudice

by Grace Dent

  I don’t know if I’ll give a speech about that ’cos I’m scared my face might give away that Sixth Form is actually proper hard. In fact it’s just like normal school but ten times harder with the added stress of finding a smart-caj outfit every morning.

  Carrie has wangled her way into playing Saf’s girlfriend in the skit. Luther, Joshua, and Sean are playing the part of a street gang who give Saf a well bad diss in Ilford Mall Burger King by saying something ’bout his mum. The skit is about whether Saf responds or just walks away and ignores them and “increases the peace.” I’m the play’s director.

  The problem I see is that Luther isn’t very scary at all (he’s more cuddly ’cos all that weed he smokes gives him munchies so he’s gotten quite fat), and Joshua talks like a proper posh boy and Sean is insisting on playing his part as a gangster wearing navy mascara and a silver bomber jacket with glitter Kylie Minogue patches. Oh bloody hell.

  Luther’s gang is totally wack. My nan and Clement could beat them up.

  The whole thing would be bare jokes if I wasn’t in charge of it all. We’re performing to Year Seven on Monday! I hope I get squashed by a bus before then so I won’t have to do it.

  MONDAY 13TH OCTOBER

  Today we did our first “Increase the Peace” assembly for Year Sevens.

  I had been PROPER DREADING it all weekend. So much so that when Wesley took me to Fat Freddy’s Foodstop at Romford Plaza this Saturday night I could hardly eat my buffalo wings or nothing and I didn’t even smile when the waitresses were juggling stuff and tap dancing between courses which is the best thing about Fat Freddy’s Foodstop (well, so Wesley reckons).

  “It ain’t just a restaurant, it’s like seeing a show or something, innit,” Wesley always says when we go. To be honest, I don’t really like it. I just feel a bit sorry for the folks who work there. At least Mario just lets me serve fried egg rolls with my gob shut and I don’t have to do two bloody verses of “Genie in a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera to get my tip. Wesley got a bit huffy when I told him that. He gets a bit huffy with me a lot these days.

  “You weren’t even watching them proper!” Wesley said. “You’re always miles away these days, innit!” This made me a bit cross.

  I felt like shouting, “Well maybe if you’d spent two hours after school watching Sean Burton running round in a neon crop-top and mascara carrying a bread knife shouting stuff like, ‘Ooooh, take that bruv! Ya just got merked!’ while Saf rolled about on the floor laughing not looking dead at all and Carrie painted her nails and read US Weekly, well YOU’D WANT TO BE MILES AWAY TOO!” But I didn’t say that I just shrugged and said I was sorry.

  Anyway, after all that, our assembly sort of went OK. Well more than “sort of.” Mr. Bamblebury reckoned it was “a roaring success.” Basically, we turn up in the hall at 9:30AM today and the Year Seven kids all arrived at once and started sitting on the floor with their legs crossed looking proper excited. The Year Sevens are well tiny and quite sweet. I don’t ever remember me and Carrie being so small and cute-looking but we must have been I suppose.

  We turned all the lights off and it was totally dark and silent aside from the odd fart and giggle, then we put on the Wootbouy video for them all to watch. They all watched it proper quietly without saying a single word to each other and by the bit where it got all heavy with the blood and folks dying and stuff I looked at the front row and some little girls were almost crying and the boys looked proper scared.

  Then we put the lights back on and we did our little play and everyone—Saf, Luther, Joshua, Sean, and Carrie—all tried proper hard to do it well and no one forgot their lines and none of the little kids seemed to notice how flouncy Sean is or that Joshua sounds posh like Prince Harry or that Luther would be more dangerous as a gang member if he ditched the knife and just sat on people and squashed them with his big bum instead.

  Then Joshua stood up and said a little speech about how amazing Sixth Form is and all the little girls in the room just stared at his face and wide shoulders with their mouths wide open listening to every word like they were proper madly in love and then he got them to shout “LET’S ALL INCREASE THE PEACE!” all at the same time together and he asked if they would ever get involved with gangs and violence and they all shouted “NOOOOOOOO!” and he asked whether they’d try to stay on in Sixth Form and they all said “YESSSSSSS!” then they all left to go to class and Mr. Bamblebury looked proper happy and said he was “over the moon with this very valuable work.”

  So I got home tonight and I felt sort of happy for a bit then I put on the news and it said that some kid over in Streatham had been stabbed to death after school tonight by four other kids on the number 45 bus in what was being described by police as a “post-school scuffle.”

  I sat for a bit and cuddled Penny and I thought about how mental everything is in this world and felt a bit sad ’cos in the grand scheme of things me and Joshua and Carrie and the gang probably hadn’t increased much peace at all.

  WEDNESDAY 15TH OCTOBER

  I went to bingo tonight with Nan and Clement. It’s funny going places with them ’cos they are proper old and think about everything in a different way than young people do. They don’t ever get too stressed about nothing like guns or knives or gangs or respect or homework grades or how Martin Luther changed the face of organized religion in the 14th century or whether or not Shakespeare meant to portray Henry IV as lazy or whether no one has left them any MySpace messages or what sort of lipstick Tabitha Tennant is wearing or how fat or thin they look in their sensible cardigans. They never think about nothing like that. It must be quite good fun being old.

  All they’re into is bingo, bowling, crosswords, nice cups of tea, and having a laugh. “Ain’t nothing in this life much worth shooting each other over,” my nan said when I told her about the “Increase the Peace” campaign.

  “No, that’s not true,” said Clement sounding proper serious, “I’d shoot a man clean between the ears if he tried to keep me from one of your sponge cakes.” Then Clement winked at Nan and they both laughed proper loud like kids and Nan poked Clement for teasing her and he poked her back just like you’d do if you fancied each other a bit which I’m sure they don’t. Nan won £50 in bingo and they put her name on the big screen and gave her a cheer so it was well exciting.

  It took my mind a bit off today’s assembly we did for Years Eight and Nine. I mean, it went OK and everything, but it just wasn’t the same as the one we did for Year Seven. It was as if the Year Eights and Nines weren’t properly listening. They were just there ’cos they had to be. And when Joshua got them to shout out the stuff at the end they did it sort of half-heartedly and some of them never answered at all.

  “I think you gave them so many ideas to think about you stunned them into silence!” said Mr. Bamblebury afterward.

  Mmm. Yeah.

  FRIDAY 17TH OCTOBER

  OH MY GOSH. Today was proper humiliating. My face is still red just writing this. So today we did our “Increase the Peace” assembly for the Year Tens and Elevens. Well, actually just Year Tens as hardly no Year Elevens showed up as they were all doing homework or were just skiving or they didn’t know it was happening or were pretending not to know or couldn’t be arsed. BRILLIANT.

  So me, Carrie, Saf, Sean, Joshua, Nabila, Luther, and all the rest of us are waiting in the hall and the Year Tens start arriving, mooching in slowly with folded arms and scowls on their faces like they don’t want to be there one little bit. Right away some lairy girls wearing mini-skirts start shouting stuff out at us and trying to come over and mess with our projector and some of the boys are asking what “all this crap” is about, then laugh at us when we explain. I felt proper angry then and wanted to kick off but Joshua put his arm around my waist and told me to chill. For some reason, I did what he said. My heart felt all fluttery when he touched me, but it was probably just nerves.

  Then Murphy comes in with Tariq and some other really tall boys and I waved at him and the little
shit pretended not to know me!!! Then a couple of boys in the back row started having a fight and Ms. Bracket had to split them up and tell everyone really sternly to CALM DOWN NOW. Then, just as we were about to begin, Mr. Bamblebury stormed in with about seven really tall, scary-looking boys who had half-grown mustaches and hoodies and baseball caps and nothing like proper uniforms on and he shouted, “Right, you sit near the front! You should hear this so LISTEN UP GOOD!”

  Right away I figured that one of them was Meatman and another one was Delano and I dunno who the rest were but they looked like a right bunch of rudes even though I’m pretty sure there never used to be any rudes in Murphy’s year at all. Just spotty little boys in blazers too big for them who’d never DARE give no one in our year any trouble at all. WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM? When did they all get so ginormous? Meatman sat down on the front row and took one look at all of us and chucked his head back and laughed. Then he folded his arms and glared at Sean and pretended to cough but said “fairy.” Then he sucked his gold teeth in a proper dramatic way like he was showboating and everyone laughed and some people even clapped.

  I felt well sorry for Sean then ’cos his hands were shaking. I felt irate too ’cos what bloody right has anyone got to make anyone feel like that? I mean what if Sean is maybe a bit, well, gay? He ain’t harming no one. Sean’s not the one with the crap tattoo and a mouth like my nan’s bloody cheese-grater. I wanted to shout that at Meatman ’cos he ain’t no big man he’s a bloody overgrown fifteen-year-old child thinking he’s some sort of rude but I thought it might end up like that bit in the Incredible Hulk movie when Hulk starts picking folks up and whirling them round his head shouting, “Hulky angry! Hulky smash!”

  So we put the lights off and put the video on and at first everyone just talked but they shut up once the scenes started where the kids are dealing drugs and riding about in Escalades and Benz Jeeps drinking champagne and getting all up in each other’s faces in nightclub VIP rooms and being all gangster. Meatman and Delano and the rest of the audience seemed to really like this. They were cheering and pretending to fire guns at the screen.

  Then the video moved on to where kids start getting shot and stabbed and the parents start getting involved and kids are crying in apartment stairwells and bodies are on mortuary slabs and police are shoving people in jail cells and it gets proper heavy.

  I looked at the Year Tens and I see that Meatman had got bored now and got his phone out and he’s sending a text and Delano is chatting up some girl near him and everyone had got a bit distracted; even my bloody brother Murphy was talking to Tariq.

  It was like the end scenes were just going right over their heads. They didn’t care at all. They probably see this type of thing every day on MTV, so it weren’t like any big deal to them. Then the lights went on and Ms. Bracket saw us Sixth Formers were a bit flustered so she stepped in and said “So, has anyone got any comments about this video?” and everyone just pretended to be deaf or ignored her.

  Then Meatman said, “I got a comment, Miss. Can we watch the first half again ’cos all the gangster bit was well nang before all the preaching crap started.”

  Then Delano chipped in with, “Man, dat blood was asking to get merked anyway.”

  Then lots of the boys in the front row laughed well loud and fired invisible guns in the air shouting, “Brap Brap Braaaap!”

  I won’t even describe what happened during our play. It is still proper painful in my brain. All I’ll say is the image of Meatman chasing Sean through the assembly hall in a salmon-pink bolero jacket with glitter patches while a group of Year Tens shouted, “Run Fairy Run! Ruuuuuuuuun!” will stay in my head forever.

  MONDAY 20TH OCTOBER

  Meatman has been suspended from Mayflower Academy for two weeks.

  I called Sean today and told him. Sean was in bed watching Season One of The OC on DVD and eating string cheese and feeling proper suicidal.

  Sean says he ain’t never coming out of his house again until he knows he ain’t under threat or nothing. So I says, “Oh, come back Sean, I’ll be your bodyguard. I ain’t scared of Meatman.”

  Then Sean laughed a bit and says, “I know you’re not scared of him, you loon. You’re proper hard as nails you are, princess.”

  Sean says he’ll come back sometime soon but not today ’cos he’s bleaching his hair. I felt happier when he said he was bleaching his hair ’cos no one bothers to spend an hour wrapped in tinfoil just to kill themselves, do they?

  Mr. Bamblebury and Ms. Bracket say we shouldn’t be discouraged by the near riot that broke out in our final “Increase the Peace” assembly. Mr. Bamblebury says, “All great journeys start with a few small steps.”

  So I said, “Well, tell Sean Burton that, Mr. Bamblebury, ’cos he took more than a few small steps, in fact, he was well past the supermarket hiding in a Dumpster when I found him.” Joshua snorted Fanta down his nose when I said that.

  Mr. Bamblebury just pretended to be deaf. He can’t handle me being real. I always keep it real. Joshua says my rap name would be MC Realize.

  WEDNESDAY 22ND OCTOBER

  Carrie and Saf are going out together! They were working after school last night on some geography homework and Saf asked Carrie if he could have a snog and Carrie said yes and she gave him a quick snog but that was all so she reckons, although they are both now banned from the library for a week and the librarian has put a lock on the reserved book room closet.

  Carrie and Saf are well loved-up together. They roll around on the common room sofas, cleaning out each other’s ears with their mouths and pawing each other. Joshua Fallow says it’s like refereeing one long World Wrestling Entertainment Smackdown. Joshua is bare jokes sometimes even though he is quite posh.

  I went and ate my Chicken Chow Mein outside today ’cos of all the squelching. Me and my Wesley are never really like that. Not even when we first got off. We are more like best friends. I mean, it ain’t normal all that squelching, is it?

  FRIDAY 24TH OCTOBER

  Thank flaming God it is Friday. This week has been proper hardcore. I’ve had English homework and films to watch and history books to read and peace to increase and Sean Burton to bodyguard and my head is in a proper spin. I don’t know how I’m supposed to fit so much into one girl’s brain.

  Wesley knows I am proper stressed so he said he’d take me down Romford for happy hour at Pizza Junction, that place where you sit in a booth that’s like a racing car and traffic lights flash on and off and horns honk at your table when your order is ready. It’s quite a laugh, even if all the noise and flashing does sometimes gives me a migraine.

  Wesley and me shared a Sloppy Joe pizza and a hot chocolate fudge cake and Wesley was telling me ’bout this lad Wazzle on his plumbing NVQ who flooded this posh woman in Epping Forest’s bathroom and I was trying to tell Wesley about history where we’re learning about Renaissance architects and how they started building churches ginormously massive in the 14th century to make the people feel like they were properly in the presence of God, but Wesley didn’t really get what I was going on about so I sort of gave up.

  On the way home Wesley said he had something to show me and I thought, “Oh here goes, it’ll be something in a store window.” But it wasn’t at all it was something much bigger than that.

  We drove back to Thundersley Road on the route that goes past Bishop Fledding Industrial Estate where I once did some work experience in a Indian food factory. Round the back of the park there’s a building site with a big sign that says LUXURY HOMES AVAILABLE SOON.

  So Wesley parks the car and puts on some hip-hop and I sat for a bit listening to the words to “Kill You When I’m Dead” by Mazzio and my mind started wandering to Meatman and the Year Tens.

  “’Ere, Wesley, don’t you think this gangster rap stuff is sort of bad for, like, society?” I said. But Wesley just looks at me funny and says, “But we don’t live in America, Shiraz! It ain’t nothing like as bad as this in Essex.” So I shut up about that and asked w
hat it was he wanted to show me then.

  “Look at those condos they’re building, innit,” he said. “I think they’re proper nice.”

  I looked at them and I said, “Well, yeah, they’re gonna be well good when they’re finished, why, what’s so special about them?”

  And Wesley says, “Well, if you think about it, they’re exactly halfway between your mum’s and my mum’s houses, innit?”

  So I says, “Yeah, I suppose.”

  And Wesley says, “Well, the thing is, Shizza, y’know when my dad died he left me a little bit of money, innit? Just a little bit, mind. Well my nan put it in a bank account for me and she’s been adding to it here and there for about eighteen years with bingo wins and that and on my birthdays and… well the thing is, there’s a few grand now and I reckon if I get a job straight after my NVQ, I reckon I might have enough for a down payment on one of them condos, innit.”

  I looked over at the building site which was full of cement mixers and rubble.

  “You wanna live in one of them condos?” I said.

  “Well, not just me,” he says, “Me and you, innit. You’d come and live with me too, wouldn’t you, and help me with the mortgage? In a few years, mind, when you finish all this school stuff and you get a job in Ilford?”

  “I’d move in with you?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I want us to be together forever, innit.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never ever thought seriously of leaving Thundersley Road and if I have it wasn’t to move into a condo five minutes away.