PAT MOON

Do Not Read This Book

Cassie came to see me after school with a packet of fruit gums but I couldn't face them so she scoffed the lot. She demonstrated her kissing technique that she's been practising. Not on boys - only on her arm. She showed me three styles: 
(1) pecky
(2) pouty
(3) slobbery

Her only real kissing experience was at Leah's party when we were playing Murder
in the Dark and Colin Bigsby landed her a smacker on the lips. He stank of pickled onions and she was nearly sick. Boys of our age are so infantile.

Wednesday, 23rd June
Back to school. Miss Phipps had a weird mark on her neck. A note went round the class saying miss pipps got a luv byt. It was in Shane Ripley's writing. Miss Phipps found the note and got angry with all of us because of the laughing. She made Shane stay in at breaktime. He was supposed to get the room ready for Art and cover the desks with newspaper which he did all right, but he used all the page three girls. Typical. The usual boys making immature remarks, e.g. Neil sniggering, Cor! This one looks just like Miss, which Miss Phipps heard and got in a very bad mood that we all had to suffer for the rest of the day.
  Cassie came round after school again. She's a bit down because her parents had a HUGE row last night. She thinks it was about her. The painter man in blue overalls called while she was here. He thought he'd accidentally left his screwdriver behind. It was down the side of the washing machine. Then he asked if Mum was around. She hadn't got back from work but I lied that she was upstairs with Nolly. He could be a part-time criminal, casing the joint - you can't trust anyone these days. I've learnt a lot from watching The Bill and Crimewatch. I certainly wouldn't have let him in if Nolly hadn't been home. Cassie says he looks just like an Action Man doll. Her brother Leo has loads of them. Cassie's right - he's got the same bristly black hair and swivelly little eyes. We couldn't stop giggling.
  I think Mum is beginning to see that I was right about not inviting strange men into the house. She was quite rattled when I told her that he'd called at the flat while she was out.
  Mum keeps trying to peek over my shoulder. Always scribbling in that book of yours, she said. What on earth do you find to write about? 
  You'd be surprised, I said.
  I'm going to have to be very careful not to leave this book lying around. Mum can be dead nosy. And she's always popping into my room to borrow things. Which reminds me - she still hasn't given me back my pink skirt, from when she and the other care assistants at Greytiles dressed up as Spice Girls for old Alf Cobbley's hundredth birthday.
  I'm hiding this book in my old Blue Peter jigsaw box, with all my other secret stuff - wish lists, poems, etc. I know for certain that Mum could not resist peeping if she found it. That's how she read my last wish list which I accidentally left on my bed. She said she didn't, but how come she knew I was worried about my chest not growing? I know she read it, because she folded the paper up wrongly when she put it back.
  Cassie and I have decided on trousers not skirts for our new uniform at Fletchley High School next term.

Thursday, 24th June
Miss Phipps wore a scarf round her neck today!
  Mum came home in a really good mood. She'd been to the market and bought a lovely blue dress for herself for only £7.99 and for me a brilliant black top which was only £1.50. I love it!
  She says I might have upset Nolly, because although she won't admit it, she's very nervous of doctors and hospitals. I feel bad about that so I made an excellent SORRY NOLLY! card. I cut out a picture of Sean Connery from the TV Times (he's her number one pin-up) and gave him a speech bubble.

I took it up to her and gave her a big hug and told her she doesn't smell anything like an old ashtray (though she does a bit). She said noone else would make a card like that. I've told her I'm going to help her all I can to cut down smoking, and if she likes I'll go to the doctor with her and hold her hand. She's promised to try. I'm putting Nolly right at the top of my new wish list.

Wish List
1. I wish Nolly would stop smoking.
The SMOKING IS KILLING YOU poster that I stuck to her kitchen door a few weeks ago didn't do the trick. Nolly said it dropped off and got sucked up in the hoover. Ha! As if I'd fall for that. She just does not want to face the facts. I wish I could find ways to make her give up. She is a nicotine addict!
2. I wish that Cassie and I are in the same class at Fletchley High School next term. We've filled in forms saying who we'd like to be with, but teachers can be very cunning. It's just the sort of information they use to make sure friends are not together. We have always been together. Ever since I was three and we met up in the Wendy House at playgroup! She was putting the dolls to bed and I was sorting out the toy plates that Shane Ripley had been using as Frisbees.
We are inseparable.
3. I wish that Mum wins the lottery.
We are always broke. It would be brilliant to have a car and holidays and everything
we dream about, and for Nolly, a luxury caravan at Swanage that she's always wanted.
4. I wish I would stop growing. I am turning into a beanpole.
5. I wish my legs didn't look like sticks of celery.
6. I wish I didn't have to wear glasses.
7. I wish I had some bosoms like Cassie. Well - perhaps not that big. She hates them. That's why she doesn't stand up straight, wears baggy jumpers and folds her arms a lot.
8. I wish that Shane Ripley will not be in the same class as me and Cassie next term at Fletchley High School.

ON MY LAST WISH LIST TWO THINGS CAME TRUE!
One, Graeme's sore paw got better and
two, my nose has not grown any bigger.

Mum's friend Carol is here. She's cut Mum's hair really short and bleached it. It looks a bit punky to me but it suits her. It would look horrendous on me. I'd look like an overgrown loo brush.

Friday, 25th June
8.10.  The bath is full of little hairs where Mum's been shaving her legs. She says she's fed up with looking scruffy so has decided to wear her new blue dress. Most of the time she just wears baggy old T-shirts and jeans. But when she's dressed up with her make-up on, like this morning, she looks amazing.

4.05. Came top in Maths test!

4.30. Cleaned the bath, hoovered and tidied up. Think I might have hoovered up one of Mum's socks. I found my pink skirt under a pile on her chair. It had jelly on it.
  I'm a born sorter and tidy-upper. It's a good job I am because Mum isn't. We go really well together. She says the last thing she feels like when she gets home after looking after all the wrinklies at Greytiles is housework. When I was 'just a wee thing' Mum's nickname for me was My little alien from the planet Neat. My favourite games were sorting out the cutlery drawer and tidying the kitchen cupboards. She doesn't know how I came to be the way I am. She says my dad wasn't like this either.

5.15. Watched a programme on telly about brain surgery. It was really interesting. Made my packed lunch for tomorrow - marmalade sandwiches as nothing else in the cupboard. I am starving. Nothing left except Alphabetti Spaghetti and only 6p in the money jar. Graeme wants to play Sniff and Dig (see G for Games at back of notebook) so I shall sign off.

6.05. Mum came home with some fish and chips - and the Action Man painter! I cannot believe it after all I said about him. He wasn't wearing his overalls. I was dying to tell her about the Maths test but couldn't get a word in edgeways. I know she could tell by the look on my face what I was thinking, because she suddenly started rabbiting on about how she'd noticed him loading his van on her way to the chip shop and thought it'd be a nice way for both of us to say thank you for his help. She made it worse by making a joke that as everything we have is falling apart she thought he might come in useful again. He laughed. Creep.

Do Not Read This Book © Pat Moon 2001. Published by Orchard Books.