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Not Teletubbies pyjamas, that is le fact.
8:06 a.m.
Denim skirt and a T-shirt?
Yep.
8:12 a.m.
I took a peek out of the front window. No sign of any Sex or Luuurve Gods. The reverse, in fact, because I was alarmed to see Mr Across the Road in his garden in a shortie dressing gown. I hope he is not going to become a homosexualist in his twilight years. Then Mrs Across the Road came out in a massive pair of pyjamas. Was there the suggestion of a small moustache on her upper lip? Maybe that’s what happens in the end when people are married: they change sex. My dad is certainly on the turn, but on the other hand no man alive has developed nunga-nungas like Mum.
8:30 a.m.
Why hasn’t Jas phoned?
You would think that Radio Jas would have been on the airwaves of life wanting to know what happened to me, and also wanting to report what had happened after I left the gig. I suppose I will just have to wait until she wakes up, or the rest of the Ace Gang wakes up to let me know what is going on. I must use the steely discipline for which I am world renowned.
8:35 a.m.
That’s it, I can’t stand it any more.
Crept out of the house. I won’t leave a note because no one will notice I am missing for hours. The last thing I want is a cross-examination from Herr Vati. Or Mum being “interested”.
Outside on the drive
Angus is still lying on his back on the wall while Naomi licks his face, and now she has started on his bum-oley. How disgusting. Kittyporn first thing in the morning.
Also, they are both covered in what looks like snot.
Oh, Blimey O’Reilly’s trousers, it isn’t snot; it’s frogspawn. They have been marauding about in Mr and Mrs Next Door’s new marine conservation area – known to other normal people as a bucket with disgusting tadpoles and slime in it. The Prat brothers, also known as Mr Next Door’s annoying and useless toy poodles, were on marine conservation lifeguard duty. So all Angus had to do was duff them up a bit, round them up into their kennel, and then it was a night of splashing around in the bucket to his heart’s content.
The Next Doors will go absolutely ballistic; they always do about the least thing. Mr Next Door has been hovering on the edge of a nervy spaz for the last year and this might drive him over the edge and into the rest home. His shorts will probably explode with the tension. Which is no bad thing, unless I happen to be around at the time and am exposed to the sight of his huge bottom looming about.
I said to Angus, “You are soooo bad, Angus, and in for big trub. That is a fact. Au revoir, dead kitty pal.”
I’m sure he understands every word I say because he got idly to his feet, stretched, and nudged Naomi off the wall. He treats his girls rough.
Naomi leaped back on the wall and arched her back and raised her hackles, making that really mad screechy noise that Burmese cats do. She was spitting at Angus and teetering backwards and forwards. Really, really mad.
Angus was frightened. Not. When she got near enough he biffed her with his paw and she disappeared over the wall again. You had to laugh.
Not for long, though, because after he had rolled about on the lawn to get rid of the frogspawn he began stalking me.
Oh no, not today, my furry friend. I am not having him tagging along with me all day causing mayhem and eating anything that moves. I said, “Clear off, Angus, stay there. Sit. Sit.”
I even threw him a stick to distract him and he ran bounding off after it, but then came back to trail along behind me.
I started running.
He started running.
I hid behind a wall.
His head loomed over the wall at me.
In the end, to give him the hint, I threw stones at him – some of them quite big.
Five minutes later
This is hopeless. He doesn’t care about having stones thrown at him at all. He is senselessly brave.
One minute later
He is trying to catch the stones in his mouth.
One minute later
He’s just slightly dazed himself by heading one of them.
In Jas’s garden
9:00 a.m.
No sign of Jas being up and her curtains are drawn. Damny damn damn. She is so lazy, snoozing in Pantsland. I don’t want to arouse any interest in the elderly mad by ringing the bell. Even though Jas’s M and D are on the whole more acceptable than most, in that they provide snacks and Jas’s dad doesn’t speak, they are still technically in the elderly-loon category.
Three minutes later
How can I get Jas to get up without ringing the doorbell?
One minute later
Oh, here we are! There is a ladder in the shed. I can use my initiative and Girl Guide training (which I haven’t got and never will have) and use the ladder to make a small fire to send smoke signals past her bedroom window. Shut up, brain.
Five minutes later
It must be a child’s ladder as it only reaches to just above the lounge window. I would have to have orang-utan arms on stilts to reach Jas’s window. Poo and merde.
Two minutes later
As I was looking up wondering how to make my arms grow, something bit my ankle really viciously. Angus was on the ladder with me, looking at me and playfully biting my legs. Ouch, bloody ouch.
I reached down to strangle him and I was just saying, “You bloody furry freak, I’ll kill you when I get down from here…” when I saw Jas’s dad standing on the garden path with his paper, smoking his unlit pipe. He was looking at me, like I was Norma Normal.
I said, “Ah yes, I was just… thinking I’d see what your garden looked like from up here. And yep, yep, it looks very, very nice indeed. Full of stuff. Growing and so on.”
What was I talking about?
Five minutes later
Jas’s dad is sensationally nice, or insane, it’s hard to tell. He let Angus carry his newspaper into the house, and didn’t even seem to mind when he ate it.
In Jas’s bedroom
I managed to dig Jas out from underneath her owls. How many stuffed owls can one person collect? A LOT is the answer in her case. What is the matter with her? Also, she was vair vair grumpy when I woke her up with a kiss. It was only on her cheek but you would think she had been attacked by hordes of lesbians in cowboy outfits.
Blimey. She looks very odd in the mornings and her fringe was akimbo to the max. She looked like a startled earwig in jimmy-jams.
I said, “So, so? What happened?”
She looked at me and started early-morning fiddling with her fringe. Vair annoying.
She said, “You just ran off like a fool.”
I said, “Yes, I know, I was there.”
“Yes, you say that, but you weren’t there, that is the whole point. And everyone was going, ‘What’s Georgia doing? Has she gone mad?’ and so on.”
“Jas, if I get you a little cup of tea and a snacklet will you try to be normal and tell me everything that happened? It is a matter of life and death. YOUR life and YOUR death.”
Ten minutes later
It’s quite nice and cosy tucked up in bed with Jas and snacksies. Except that I think I have an owl’s beak up my bum-oley.
Jas was munching and rambling. “Well, first of all, after you had run off like a ninny – by the way, you run in a really weird way in those high heels. You looked like Nauseating P. Green when she’s playing hockey. Her legs go all spazzy and—”
I hit her with Snowy Owl. She almost choked on her toast.
I said, “Jas, get on with it, I have only got about fifty more years to live.”
“Well, first of all, the boys did that boy thing with Robbie.”
“What boy thing?”
“You know, slapping each other on the shoulders, shaking hands, and so on.”
“Yeah.”
Jas went on, “Robbie was saying hello to a lot of people and Masimo got his jacket on. You were just approaching the park by then; we could still see you. Masimo said to Tom, ‘She asked me about footie results. Then she ran away. Is she normal?’”
Ohmygiddygod. I said to Jas, “What did Tom say?”
“Well, he stood up for you, of course.”
“I love Hunky very much, as you know, Jazzy Spazzy.”
“Yes, he said you were quite often normal. He had seen you being normal once or twice himself. Usually when you were asleep.”
Marvellous.
Apparently after I had run off to “catch my train”, Masimo had gone home with the band, and just after he’d gone Wet Lindsay had come stropping back looking for him. Jas said her no-forehead was all crinkly and mad and her hair extensions were swishing around in a Nervy B. Central way. Then she had seen Robbie and was all over him like a rash and they had gone off together.
What, what???
I said, “Wet Lindsay went off with the Sex God?”
“Well, they did go out together once, didn’t they?”
“Yes, Jas, I know, I was heartbroken. Do you remember?”
“I mean, maybe he still likes her. I don’t know, maybe he has had a secret thing for her. Some people like lanky girls.”
“Jas, shut up now.”
“Well, I am just saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and so on. It’s an ill wind that—”
“Jas, that is not shutting up, that is rambling on and on about rubbish.”
She was chomping away on her Jammy Dodger like Wise Mabel of the Forest. I really, really wanted to shove it down her throat, but I knew it would take another million years to get the end of the story if I did, so I just said, “Jas, you know when you were going on and on about ‘maybe something good will happen’, and I didn’t want to go to the gig in the first place but you persuaded me? Well, did you know that Robbie was going to be there?”
“Well, I sort of thought he might. I knew he was coming home because he rang Tom and said that he had booked his ticket. And that he would be back in time for the gig.”
“But did he say why he was coming home?”
“Erm, no, not exactly, no.”
Oh noooooo. I have left the cake shop of luuurve thinking I have accidentally bought two cakes and found out that I may have only got one cake. And I might have already eaten that. I may in fact be cakeless.
I said to Jas, “We must call an emergency Ace Gang meeting.”
“Well, I thought I might go to the river with Tom and—”
“No, Jas, you thought wrong.”
Park
Midday
Angus is still trailing me around like Inspector Morse in a furry coat (and on all fours).
On the swings
Rosie said, “I hope this is worth it. Sven and me were going to practise artificial respiration on each other in case anyone chokes on the vats of mead at our wedding.”
Even the Ace Gang has no sense of community these days. Jas bleating on about missing Tom, Jools wanting to go hang around Rollo while he played footie, Rosie banging on about Sven – half-reindeer, half-fool – and Ellen… well, Ellen just being Ellen.
Five minutes later
Ellen, Rosie, Jools, Mabs, Jas and me are all swinging on the swings. Not backwards and forwards like normal people enjoying a day in the park, but sideways so that the Blunder Boys can’t see anything. Life is not easy. The Blunder Boys are in the bushes watching us on the swings. They think we don’t know they are there; it’s pathetic. They are so noisy and keep falling over things and fighting with each other.
