by Grace Dent
Me and Dad never said to each other but we both knew who it was from. It was from someone who cared.
MONDAY 23RD FEBRUARY
It’s funny ’cos I was just thinking today about that “Increase the Peace” campaign and thinking, y’know maybe it was a big waste of time and maybe Josh was right, folks did do it just to put something good on their uni application forms after all. Because it’s been five months now since we did our assembly and gave the speeches and showed the videos and made all the posters and leaflets and set up the drop-in center where young kids could talk to older kids about school problems, but it doesn’t feel like anything really changed at all.
Mayflower Academy still has a bad name in the news for after-school fighting and some kids are still carrying knives and everyone still gets excited chatting about the time the gunshot went off at Clinton Brunton-Fletcher. And kids are still getting their phones and wallets jacked by other kids on the bus home and forming little gangs and going to get their own back—and still announcing that their street is a no-go area to kids from just two streets away then hitting each other with baseball bats and bike chains if they trespass.
And Delano’s big brother Janelle and his mates were eventually arrested for another different shooting and put in juvie so, yes, that meant they couldn’t come to Mayflower anymore looking for Clinton… But all that did was make Delano in Year Ten feel more like a one hundred percent rudeboy ’cos his brother was like a fallen soldier locked up for defending his endz, blah blah blah blah blah BLAH.
I said all this today to Ms. Bracket when she called me into her office and she listened really carefully to it all and then she said, “Are you a bit down, Shiraz? You’re very negative.”
So I says, “Well, no, not negative, Ms. B, more realistic.”
And she looked at me and nodded and said, “Well, we all have our own truth, I suppose.” Then she thought for a bit and said, “Are you not enjoying studying?”
And I sighed and said, “Well, yeah, I’m enjoying it… but it’s not like I’m enjoying it so much that I want to keep on doing it for another four whole years.”
Ms. Bracket nodded slowly and said, “So what would you rather be doing?”
So I said, “Following my dreams and being free!”
Ms. Bracket said she understood about that and that’s why she went on a gap year to Israel and worked picking grapes on a kibbutz before she went to uni, ’cos she wanted to get stuff out of her system and experience life. I stared at her for a bit then, sitting behind her desk in her smart suit with tons of files on her desk and her phone ringing off the hook, trying to imagine her seventeen years old and completely free. I couldn’t.
“Anyway,” said Ms. Bracket. “I disagree with you about the ‘Increase the Peace’ campaign. I think you did some brilliant work. The Year Sevens and Year Eights gave us some amazing feedback. They totally engaged with your message.”
“Mmm,” I said.
“So that’s why I want you to step it up a gear,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, we’re having the official opening of the new Sixth Form block in April and all the national TV news crews will be there as we’re having a VIP guest to unveil the plaque. So Mr. Bamblebury and I thought you and your ‘Increase the Peace’ team could put together a few hours of entertainment. Maybe use the new music room equipment? Speeches? A little play?”
“Who is the VIP guest?!” I said.
“Oh, no one to really worry about,” she said.
“Who?” I said.
“It’s His Royal Highness, Prince Charles,” she said.
“Crapping hell,” I said.
“Pardon?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
MARCH
SUNDAY 1ST MARCH
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hanoi Rocks
Hey Shiz!!! It’s Cava-Sue!!! So so so so sorry I’ve not been any good at the whole write/text/blog/whatever thing but we are just so lost in this amazing experience that I’ve totally forgotten myself. Plus the Internet connection is so crap over here. I’m typing this in an Internet café beside the Cu Chu tunnels an hour from Ho Chi Minh City.
Well, I say Internet café, basically I’m sitting in someone’s kitchen using a laptop and an old woman with no teeth is trying to sell me and Lewis noodles and chicken feet for 5 billion dong. Not great.
We’ve spent the last week in the Mekong Delta just bumbling about looking at temples and meeting real-life Vietnamese folk and going on bus and boat rides. We’re heading back now to Ho Chi Minh City to see a doctor as Lewis has infected bedbug bites on his arse. I keep feeling spewy in the mornings. Think we’re sick. Don’t tell Mum!!!
Hope you’re OK, Shiraz? Hope Joshua is treating you well? Are you studying hard? Send me some gossip soon! Cava-Sue xx
THURSDAY 5TH MARCH
Oh my days, I made the HUGE mistake today of telling my mother about HRH Prince Charles visiting Mayflower School. I have never seen her so happy EVER. Honestly, never ever. Not even when I told her how Maria Draper had one of them colonic irrigations and it went a bit wrong after she went through to the supermarket wearing cream trousers. Not even as happy as then.
I always forget how much my mother loves royalty. She once made me and Cava-Sue stand for four and a half hours outside Poundland in Ilford Mall just to push daffodils in Princess Anne’s face. Mum loves Prince Charles even more.
“Ooh Crivens!” she was saying, “Is Charlie coming! I love Charlie! And is he bringing Camilla too? And will you get to speak to him? And what will you say!? Will it be in the newspapers! Will you get a photograph of you and Charlie standing together for the wall, Shiraz? Oh my God, I can’t believe this. I’ve gotta call your Aunty Glo and tell her. She will die!”
Mum then got on the phone with Glo and by the time she’d talked the whole thing up it sounded like Charles was coming just to see ME in particular as he was bringing the Queen’s special sword and I was in line for some type of knighthood. Mum also agreed with Glo that they’d take the day off work and come down and wave Union Jacks. Oh. My. Days.
You’d think that a bunch of folks with funny teeth and flappy ears who don’t work for a living and are always getting drunk would get on Mum’s nerves. When it was the Brunton-Fletchers doing it she kept a log-book of complaints and tried to get them moved to Hastings on an ASBO. But with the Royal Family it’s different.
WEDNESDAY 11TH MARCH
OK, I’ll come clean: I’ve been dragging my feet over this whole Increase-the-Peace-Prince-Charles-thing. I’ve been seriously busy with studying and seeing Josh. And if you want me to be properly frank I’ve got no bloody idea where to even start bringing the worlds of royalty and anti-gangster rap together for a national media audience type-thingy. In fact, I’m proper scared. Not that I’ll admit that, ’cos I do a pretty good job around Mayflower of acting totally nails.
So anyway, I get to school today and I’m well shocked to find my Joshua has stuck up posters all around the Sixth Form saying:
INCREASE THE PEACE—ROYAL EXTRAVAGANZA—MEETING TODAY—1PM AV ROOM
And I’m thinking, ’Ere, that’s weird ’cos when I mentioned this to Joshua last week he just made all sorts of sarcastic comments about chav rap and how the Royals should all be taken round the back of the palace and shot for scrounging our money. Then Josh said he’d already done one “Help the ASBOs” campaign and he was too busy.
But here he is today in the AV room, suddenly holding a meeting that I don’t even know about, like it’s all his project! So I say, “Josh, you never said you were organizing a meeting!” So Josh says, “Oh, babycakes, yes I did. You need to get your ears checked out.” And I say, “No Josh, you DEFINITELY said you were too busy!” And Josh says, in front of everyone, “Shiz, seriously, book an appointment with the doctor. Those bling-bling hoops you used to wear from Ilford market
have affected your eardrums!” Then everyone in the AV room burst out laughing and I tried to join in too, ’cos I didn’t want him to see I was hurt. I don’t even wear those hoops no more. Or my locket. Or my bracelet. Or any gold at all. Just ’cos Josh is the best-looking boy in the whole school he thinks he can say anything he wants to anyone, even to his girlfriend. I know he doesn’t mean it though, he’s just showboating. He’s proper lovely when we’re on our own.
Anyway, as soon as Sean, Luther, and Nabila and everyone arrive, Josh starts talking.
“Right everyone,” he says, “So basically, we’ve got Prince Charles coming to the school to present a plaque, y’know, yada, yada, whatever,” he says. “And there’s going to be loads of national media here. So we’ve got to put on a bit of a show, or whatever,” he says, sounding quite bored, “So I’m thinking, let’s get some of the rudes in Year Ten to jump about a bit and do some of their shouting, sorry, I mean ‘rapping,’ then we can maybe show Prince Charles the mixing desk, then some of the other chavster kids who use the music room can do some of their tracks, then we can unveil the plaque…”
Everyone sort of nodded and mumbled in agreement.
“And I’m thinking,” says Josh a lot more forcefully now. “That I’ll help Prince Charles unveil the plaque. And I’ll give a little speech about how my, I mean sorry, our ‘Increase the Peace’ campaign has turned the school’s fortunes around and how we’ve collected loads of money. And how hard we’ve worked to set a good example to the younger kids and keep them in school and overcome their backgrounds, y’know, blah blah blah, that sort of thing. Agreed?!”
No one tried to argue with Josh, they all just sort of nodded. Suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said in the library at Christmas about doing stuff to look good on university application forms.
“So, Shiraz?” he says. But I’m proper miles away now thinking, how can someone so handsome and funny be sometimes such a FAKER and I’m thinking about my mother saying about how Josh would need two faces and a slithering tail to be a politician. Then Josh says “SHIRAZ!” again and I say, “Sorry, what?!” Then he says, “So can you and Carrie find some Year Nines and Tens who can rap or dance or something? It doesn’t matter who really…”
So I say, “Well, I think if we’re going to do something for Prince Charles, we should do it properly!” Then Josh just sighs and goes, “Whatever.” So I say, “So I’m thinking we need to ask someone to help us this time who we never asked last time. Someone who really knows about street-culture and all that type of stuff. We need to ask Uma to get involved.”
“Uma Brunton-Fletcher?!” said Joshua.
“Uma Brunton-Fletcher,” I said. “’Cos at least she knows what she’s talking about. I think we need this whole thing to sound, y’know, like we mean it? Like we’re being sincere. Like we’re not FAKERS.”
Josh just ignored the word faker. Like I wasn’t meaning him.
I asked Uma. She is properly over the moon. She’s already started making plans. Joshua says we can all do what we bloody want, but he’s definitely helping Prince Charles unveil the plaque. End of.
FRIDAY 13TH MARCH
Well Friday the 13th was certainly proper unlucky for Carrie Draper today. She’s had an official warning from Mayflower Sixth Form about her attendance. Mr. Bamblebury has written to Barney and said that unless Carrie gets doctor’s notes to cover the “myriad of unfortunate allergies, infections, and trans-viral airbound superbugs she has suffered from this term,” then they will NOT put her in for her AS-Level exams.
Barney Draper has gone mental! He even tried to stop her seeing Saf, but then Carrie shouted at him that this was just typical of him using that to stop her dating Saf as he is SUCH A BLOODY RACIST!!! Then Barney, who isn’t a racist at all, totally caved in and let her out. Carrie says she don’t give a crap about Sixth Form. Carrie says that if Barney gives her his business she’s going to flog it and start up her own beauty school just like Tabitha Tennant.
I don’t think she was joking.
SUNDAY 15TH MARCH
Nan and Clement have booked Romford Registry Office on the first Saturday in July for their wedding! I am going to be a bridesmaid! And our Murphy is going to be best man! Murphy and Clement have formed quite a bond recently over their love of sitting about eating cakes and watching films about war. Clement has even learned to get to Level 3 of Decapitation Nation on PS2. And that’s not bad for an old geezer with rheumatoid arthritis in one wrist.
WEDNESDAY 18TH MARCH
Well, tonight was properly mental. I’ve got so much to think about now. My head is going to explode. So basically, we’re doing the “Increase the Peace” Prince Charles presentation on Thursday 9th April—which leaves us, like, three weeks to get it all together and none of us have done anything ’cos we were going to do it last weekend but we all went to a shubz instead in Chadwell Heath ’cos this girl Martika who used to go to Mayflower was celebrating her eighteenth birthday and she had this proper amazing party in her garage and kids came from all over Essex and it all got well messy.
Basically, I lost Joshua completely and Carrie had a fight with Saf and Sean met a boy from the Isle of Dogs and Nabila drank a Breezer and wore false eyelashes with her hijab which is strictly forbidden by Allah and we were all dancing and being stupid and it was a proper amazing night. But the end result is that we’ve done nothing about Prince Charles whatsoever. Sorry Charlie.
So we’re all round at Josh’s house tonight for an “Increase the Peace” meeting, sitting in his big living-room/dining-room area which is all pure white walls and polished bare floorboards with a massive oak dining table and bookshelves full of books and vases with one single tropical flower sticking out of them and copies of posh furniture magazines lying about on a posh coffee table that doesn’t look like it ever had a cup of coffee on it in its life.
Me and Josh and Luther and Sean and Nabila are all sitting round the oak table talking about how behind we are with schoolwork and Josh is moaning on about how he’s never going to get into Oxford if his marks aren’t good, he’s going to have to go somewhere crap like Durham or Edinburgh. Then his mother appears wearing a navy blue apron over navy trousers and her hair in a weird turban thing, giving us all the evils, which I can never tell if she really means or whether her face is just naturally stuck like she’s just smelled a bad fart.
And I don’t bother saying hello to her this time as I’ve tried loads of times and I always get the same reaction, no matter how much I try to not wear my gold or not wear my scrunchie or not wear my hoodie, she still treats me like I’m NOT A REAL BLOODY PERSON at all and always starts talking about Josh’s good friends in North West London who I’ve still never met and then she always starts talking about her friend Jocasta’s daughter Claudia who is “asking after Josh again.” So to be quite honest, I’m not bothering with Mrs. Fallow, I’m more interested at this moment in Josh’s neck ’cos now I can see him in the direct sunlight sitting with his back to the patio doors I can see there is a mark on his neck that LOOKS JUST LIKE A HICKEY. And I haven’t given my Josh a lovebite. ’Cos as I say, he went missing at Martika’s shubz and I’ve not seen him much since then at all.
And I want to kick off and leave but just then the doorbell rings and I go and look out of the bay windows and it’s Uma. And Uma is looking one hundred percent how Uma likes to look and she’s not compromising for anyone, certainly not Mrs. snooty Fallow.
Uma’s got on footless leopard-print tights and a denim mini-skirt with black snakeskin pumps and a skin-tight white cropped T-shirt which shows her belly-button ring. She’s got on an electric pink hoodie, two sets of big gold hoops and her gold clown pendant. She’s wearing her gold charm bracelet and carrying a massive white fake Mulberry handbag from Ilford market. Uma is standing in the front garden by Josh’s mother’s row of recycling boxes, finishing off a Marlboro Red, and as Josh gets to the door, she shouts, “Zeus! Come on!” and Zeus comes trotting in behind her doing his
best devil dog impression ever. For some reason, I want to cheer, because the thing I love about Uma is she ALWAYS keeps it real.
Well, it all starts going off then, ’cos Uma strides in and Zeus pads in after her and she shouts, “Sit down, Zeus!” which Zeus does ’cos he’s actually properly trained ever since Uma’s little brother shoplifted Dog Whisperer on DVD for Uma’s Christmas pressie. So Uma’s been doing the whole command/reward thing and Zeus has been learning it. Well, Uma sits down and gets out her laptop from the massive handbag and clicks a bit and logs into Josh’s WiFi broadband and starts showing us all the MySpaces and Facebooks of kids at Mayflower who make music already and she’s talking proper fast about e-mails she’s sent and who she’s heard back from. And we’re sitting there, proper amazed at how much she’s achieved.
Then Uma starts saying that what we need is some people who are a bit more professional to help out, y’know, like local rap artists who have a big name on the local pirate radio stations like the Crowley Park Brapboys and the Rinse and Go Fraternity? Maybe folks like that could do a little collaboration with the Year Sevens and Eights? Then Uma says that she’s having no luck getting in touch with them but didn’t Carrie and Shiraz’s ex-boyfriends Bezzie Kelleher and Wesley Barrington Bains II used to know all these people really well? In fact, didn’t they used to lay down tracks with them when they were in the G-Mayes Detonators? It’s people like that we need to really help out, she says.
