by Hayley Long
Whoops.
To be fair though, Beca Bowen was worse than me.
Goose’s eyes flashed. ‘He’s not a nerd. He’s just a bit different.’ And then her cheeks flushed even redder than a blood-soaked strawberry Starburst wrapped up in a Chinese flag, and she added, ‘Honestly, grow up! You two are being helluva childish.’
The driver made a sharp turn past the flickering fairy lights on the castle wall and everyone on the top deck sprang up from their seats. Goose and I pushed our way down the stairs and, once the bus had finally come to a halt, spilt out into the dark and drizzle. I shouted bye to Beca and waved as she crossed the street to join her friends in the burger bar on the corner. Goose didn’t shout goodbye or wave. In fact, she’d already begun marching off in the direction of Maxi Style5 with her hands firmly in her pockets and a look of blatant aggravation fixed on her face.
I hurried after her. ‘You’re not seriously narked off because we were laughing at that Tim bloke, are you?’
‘No,’ said Goose.
‘Doesn’t seem like it,’ I said.
Goose’s eyes narrowed and so did her lips. Then she said, ‘I just think you and Beca were being totally tight, that’s all.’ After another narrow-lipped pause, she added, ‘And you of all people should know that it’s not nice to laugh at someone just for being a bit different.’
The second that she said this, my face went boiling hot. I think my lips and eyes went a bit narrow as well. Anyone walking towards us would have seen this:
For a moment, I was annoyed with Goose because she had deliberately referred to something that I don’t think should ever be casually referred to. Namely, how a few months ago, I got into really bad trouble with the police over some stolen shoes and then went so completely bananas that I had to see a doctor at the hospital. It was a very difficult time for me. When I was eventually well enough to go back to school, one or two people were quite horrible about it and called me names like nut-nut and schizo. One or two of them still do.
We walked on in silence for a bit and I started biting my thumbnail and thinking about how I’d laughed my bra off at the idea that Goose might come out in a nerd rash through working with somebody like that Tim bloke. To be honest, it didn’t seem half as funny now that I didn’t have Beca Bowen to laugh about it with me. Actually, it didn’t seem funny at all.
‘Point taken,’ I muttered.
Goose shrugged. And then she smiled ever so slightly and said, ‘It’s OK. To be fair, I thought he was a bit nerdy too when I first met him. Honestly, Lottie, some of the jumpers he wears are horrendous. But he’s all right, you know. I actually really like him.’
I stopped dead and stared at her. Before I could put my words through a Stupid Filter, I said, ‘Oh my God, Goose! You fancy him?’
Goose stopped walking too and looked furious. ‘YUCK! SHUT UP! I don’t mean I like him like that! GET REAL!’ And then she pulled a face something like the one I’d pulled on the bus and said, ‘YOU ARE SO TOTALLY RIDONKULOUS SOMETIMES!’
‘Ridonkulous?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Goose. ‘TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RIDICULOUSLY RIDONKULOUS!’ And then, to show me just how ridiculously ridonkulous I’d been, she pretended to chuck up into an invisible bucket. And when she’d finally finished blowing those air chunks, we both burst out laughing and hurried on towards Maxi Style to check out their wet-look shiny leggings.
DILemmas aND CONuNDrums
When I got up this morning, my mum told me to write a Christmas list. She also told me that, in an hour or so from now, she’s going to take me out to lunch and treat me to whatever I fancy from the menu. I said, ‘Wow, take it easy, Mother! I might start to develop a brattitude.’ And then I asked, ‘What’s the big occasion?’
My mum said, ‘There isn’t any big occasion. I’m feeling spontaneous. I can treat my little girl to lunch if I want to, can’t I?’ Then she pulled a stupid face at me and said, ‘And, Lottie, you’ve had a brattitude for a while but when I’m wearing my brat shades, I don’t notice it so much.’ And then she took her sunglasses out of the kitchen drawer and put them on, even though we were indoors and it was the middle of winter.
‘You are SO childish,’ I said.
My mum pulled another stupid face and said in a stupid voice, ‘Do I care though?’ and then she started tickling me and wouldn’t stop until I threatened to call The Jeremy Kyle Show.
It didn’t stop her from annoying me though. By some weird trick of fate, the ‘I Am What I Am’ song started playing on the radio and my mum turned up the volume as high as it would go and began to sing along in a voice so ridonkulously loud that the neighbours could probably hear. The whole situation gave me such a severe case of cringe-flu that, for a second, I forgot where I was and thought I must be in a cringe-flu isolation ward at Cringetown General Hospital.
My mum is massively embarrassing sometimes.
She’s also in a massively good mood at the moment. She doesn’t even seem particularly bothered by the fact that horrible Detective Sergeant Giles keeps phoning her up at home when she isn’t even supposed to be worrying her head about work. Nothing is getting her down. Her trip to the pub last night must have really done her some good. I can’t help noticing that she’s even started wearing a glamorous new shade of lipstick. It makes her look really nice and less like a fusty old policewoman.
Which is all well and good but I’ve still got some important issues to address.
Like my Christmas list.
The trouble is that, right now, I’m finding it really hard to stay focused on all that happy stuff Because this time of year just brings me too many dilemmas. I’ve looked up the word conundrum in my dictionary. It says this:
conu’ndrum (noun) puzzle; difficult question
Goose’s geeky friend was right. Christmas is a conundrum. Don’t get me wrong – it’s pure point-blank priceless quality, but it does throw up some very difficult and puzzling questions. Even deep-thinking philosophers like myself don’t always have all the answers. I’m going to try and deal with them one at a time.
1.What do I really want to be given this year?
I’ve thought about this long and hard. Here is my wish list. To be honest, I’ve got more chance of being elected as the next prime minister of Japan than I have of finding a TV or a laptop under our Christmas tree. My mum doesn’t like the idea of me having a telly in my bedroom and she says that I don’t actually need a laptop. But strictly speaking, apart from the false eyelashes, the leg warmers and the orang-utan adoption pack, I suppose I don’t really need anything.
2.What am I going to give other people?
The only person I’ve asked so far is my mum. She said she’d like the latest CD by Susan Boyle. I did my utmost then to steer her in the direction of the Kings of Leon or Lady Gaga but she wasn’t having any of it. She said she quite liked Lady Gaga but she much preferred Susan Boyle’s voice and appearance. I am now placed in a very awkward position. What if the person in the shop thinks I’m buying SuBo for myself???
3. How am I going to give them anything at all when I don’t actually have any money?
This is sad but tragically true. Since I quit my last Saturday job of sweeping up stray human hairs in a hairdressing salon, the only income I have is the occasional bit of pocket money from my mum or dad whenever they take pity on me.6 I don’t like accepting their charity but, because I’m in no position to be proud and because they are my parents, I accept it anyway. Sometimes, when she’s home, even my sister Ruthie gives me pocket money and she’s a poverty-stricken student who survives on a diet consisting entirely of baked beans and bumper bags of jelly babies. I have no problem about taking money from her though because, if I didn’t, she’d only waste her entire allowance on beer. Because this is what university students do.
4. As a follower of the philosophy of René Descartes, should I even bother to celebrate Christmas anyway? After all, the only thing that I can be truly certain of is my own existence.
> It’s not easy being a philosopher. There’s a lot of thinking involved. I definitely think that we philosophers think more than most ordinary people think. But what’s interesting is that if I added up all the time I’ve spent thinking about these first four conundrums, it still wouldn’t come close to equalling the hours that I’ve spent worrying about the fifth and final one.
5. Who will I be spending Christmas Day with this year?
This might not seem like a tricky question to anybody else but it is to me and it’s been niggling away at my brain for quite some time. The niggle started during an otherwise pleasant conversation in which Gareth asked me if I’d go to the end-of-term disco with him. It’s just under a fortnight away and on the very last day of school. Everyone will be going. Even Candy Craddock in Year 10 – and she’s got a mega-phobia of strobe lights. I love them though. And dry ice machines. I’d given Gareth a kiss and said, ‘I certainly will, big boy,’ and he’d looked all chuffed and added, ‘Oh, and before I forget, my mum wants to know if you’ll come and have your tea with us on Christmas Eve.’ This time, instead of kissing him and calling him big boy, I got a bit flustered and started examining my split ends.
It’s not that I don’t want to have tea at his house. I do.
But the awkward truth is that I actually have no idea where I’ll be on December 24th of this year. Or the 25th. Or the 26th. And this makes it very difficult for me to prearrange my personal life. It’s OK for my older sister, Ruthie, because her life is much more straightforward than mine. Ruthie thinks that my dad’s new wife, Sally, is a crusty hedge-pig. My dad and Sally know this and never invite her up to stay. But I get on OK with everyone and this just makes my life ridonkulously complicated. I’m a bit like the baton in a relay race. My mum gets to hold on to me for one Christmas and then the following year I’m passed up to Wrexham to spend Christmas with my dad and Sally and my little brother, Caradoc. And each year, I’ve been passed backwards and forwards like this since I was nine years old.
But now I’m not sure whose turn it is to carry the baton. Last year, Caradoc caught chickenpox and my dad phoned and cancelled my visit. I had to take my train ticket back to the railway station and they gave me a great big whopping refund because it’s hideously expensive to go all the way from Cardiff to where my dad lives. After all, it’s equivalent to the entire length of Wales. My dad let me keep the money so I went into town and bought myself some hot-pink hair-straighteners.7 But I’d still have preferred to see my dad. And now it’s practically a year later and my mum is talking about all the things we might do over the holidays and Gareth has asked me to tea on Christmas Eve and Goose has invited me over to her house to watch Glee again and
I just don’t know what to say.
Because I can’t make any concrete plans as I’m sort of expecting my dad to invite me up north to spend the holidays with him. It’s definitely his turn. And I know that he will invite me sooner or later.
He just hasn’t yet.
Even Winnie can’t help me with this one and Winnie is the Wisest Chinchilla in the Whole of Wales.
He’s also extremely ancient and looks like a big scruffy snowball.
When I discuss my problems with Winnie, he makes a cute little chirping noise, twitches his ears a bit and falls asleep.
Winnie belongs to me even though he sleeps in Ruthie’s room. He used to sleep in my room but he has this habit of bouncing around all night and keeping me awake so, every evening, I relocate him down the hall. Ruthie is at university and hardly ever at home so she’s not exactly in any position to complain.
I know it sounds weird but I often talk to Winnie and tell him my problems. Blake, my counsellor, says that it’s perfectly normal to discuss important things with a pet and that pets are often the best counsellors of all. I agree. I know that Winnie listens to me because he has wise little eyes which watch me closely whenever I speak to him. And, considering that he’s only a chinchilla, he’s actually a remarkably good listener. I’d even say that he’s as good at listening as Blake is – and Blake has probably had professional training. To be fair though, Blake is much better than Winnie at giving advice. Because Winnie can’t speak. Obviously.
My mum can though. And she’s just called up the stairs to tell me that it’s time for us to go and get some lunch. Which means that the only conundrum I’m facing right now is what the hicketty-heck I’m going to eat. And that’s not a very perplexing conundrum at all.
hOw I LearNeD that there’s NO suCh thlNG as a free LuNCh
In school, I am forced to take Religious Education lessons. I don’t understand why because I, personally, am not a particularly religious human person. I wouldn’t say that I was an atheist though because atheists don’t believe in God at all. And I do. I think. Otherwise, how could anyone as outrageously handsome as Robert Pattinson ever have been put on this earth for me to look at? 8
But then again, belief in something as abstract as God conflicts with my basic philosophical principles. I asked my RE teacher, Mr Davies, about this only today and he actually gave me a helpful answer. I said, ‘How can I believe in God when the only thing I can be absolutely certain of is my own existence?’
Mr Davies looked a bit surprised because he’d just been telling me to put my pickled onion crisps away and he pushed his glasses up his nose so that he could see me better. Then he rubbed his beard and said, ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because Descartes said it,’ I said.
Mr Davies looked even more surprised and then he said, ‘Come again?’
I said, ‘René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, believed that we should question everything except the unquestionable. And the only unquestionable factor in all of this is that we are asking questions. And therefore we have a brain. And therefore we exist.’ I sat back in my chair and felt a crisp crunch underneath me, and then added, ‘But how do we know that God does?’
While I was saying all of this, I’d become aware that all of the other kids in my class were staring at me as if they’d just overheard me chatting in fluent French with the great philosopher himself. It made me smirk. I couldn’t help it. I was feeling as tasty as a chocolate bar, to be honest.
Putting his two index fingers to his pursed lips, Mr Davies looked at me thoughtfully and then he said, ‘I’m an RE man by trade, Lottie, so I tend to side with the more spiritual philosophers. Have you ever heard of Sir Francis Bacon?’
Instantly I stopped smirking and had to admit that, no, I hadn’t.
Mr Davies scratched his ear and said, ‘A very interesting man. Very. And a very clever man. Some people actually believe that it was Bacon who wrote the plays we associate today with the name of William Shakespeare. Yes they do. Hmmm? But the reason I’m bringing Bacon to the ideas table now, Lottie, is because he once said, If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.’ And then Mr Davies put his index fingers back on his lips, nodded his head vigorously and said, ‘Think about that! Hmmm? Think about that!’
I thought about it but I didn’t get it. To be honest, I was still trying to work out where the ideas table was. I rubbed my chin, pursed my lips and scratched my ear and finally said, ‘So?’
Mr Davies pointed at me and, in a hushed voice, he said, ‘You . . . are . . . unique! Think about that, Lottie. Hmmm? Hmmm? There is nobody else quite like you on this entire planet.’ And then he looked around at the rest of the class and said, ‘Every . . . single . . . one of you . . . is a totally . . . individual . . . and extraordinary . . . creation. Hmmm? Can we really be certain that God doesn’t exist? Can we? Hmmm? Could anything as mundane and ordinary as mortal man really be solely responsible for populating the world with six . . . billion . . . walking . . . works . . . of art? Hmmm? Hmmm?’
Beca Bowen, who sits at the back of the class deliberately close to where there is a plug socket, put down her hair-straighteners and said, ‘Yeah but, Davo, there’s st
ill no hard evidence, is there?’
Mr Davies shrugged and waggled his hands in the air and said, ‘True, true . . . There will always be doubts. And I admit that a certain leap of faith is needed on this one but, then again, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, is there? Hmmm? The world would be a very dull place otherwise, don’t you think?’
And then he turned back to me and added, ‘And what do you think, Lottie? Surely the fact that you exist is proof positive of some superior being, isn’t it? Hmmm?’
I was a bit embarrassed then so I did my very best attempt to impersonate Shrek and grunted, ‘How the hicketty-heck should I know?’ Secretly though, I was dead chuffed. Whichever way you look at it, Mr Davies had definitely paid me a very nice compliment. I’d never thought of myself as a walking work of art before.
And then Mr Davies carried on with the lesson and in it he talked about people who’d had near-death experiences and who had claimed to have seen bright white lights and dead relatives and their whole lives flashing in front of them at super high speeds, and then he made us write a list of the ten best moments we’d each experienced in our own lives and I chose the time that I got an A* for my English coursework and the time Goose and me just sat thinking in my wardrobe and the time in the summer when Gareth asked me to go out with him and, after that, I got stuck because I couldn’t actually think of any more. And then he asked us to think of a time that stuck out in our minds for all the wrong reasons and that was really easy because I’ve just lived through one of the worst weekends of my life. And the ironic thing is that it all started at the Hippo Eater Happy Pub.
The Hippo Eater Happy Pubis agigantic bar and restaurant tucked neatly under the flyover on the very southern edge of Whitchurch village. No matter what the time of day or which day of the week it is, it’s always incredibly busy and sometimes, when the population of Northern Cardiff is particularly hungry, the queue of people waiting for a table stretches right through the double front doors and spills out on to the big gravel car park. It was just like this on Saturday when my mum and I swung into one of the few remaining parking spots. There was no need for us to queue though because my mum had planned ahead and booked a table. Thinking back on it, I should have realized that this was the first telltale sign that my mum was not being spontaneous at all and was definitely and deliberately and deviously up to something.
