Diary of a Chav (11 page)

My mother answered the door, then she shouted up the stairs, “Shiiiiiiiiraz! Come down here RIGHT NOW!” I walked downstairs shoving my hands into my pockets. I thought I might throw up.

“You ain’t got Uma bloody Brunton-Fletcher up there with you, have you?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“See?” my mum said to the policeman. She looked at me. “The police are looking for Uma again. That Clinton headcase has told them she’ll be round here with you ’cos you’re her mate. But you don’t have nothing to do with Uma, do you?”

“No,” I said. I’m sure I looked like I was lying ’cos I was sweating like mad. I went back upstairs and got under the duvet and pulled it over my head.

I am officially retiring from being a superchav. I don’t think there is much of a future in it.

But what now?

JUNE

MONDAY 2ND JUNE

Got up at 6
AM
today to catch the minibus to Tilak Foods for my work experience. Tilak Foods is in an industrial park in the middle of nowhere. I waited on the corner of Civic Close at 7
AM
with a group of older women who were mostly Sikhs with long saris on under their parkas. There were also some Eastern European women in stonewash denim jackets and ski pants and neon sweatshirts, plus some Somalian ladies too. There wasn’t anyone my age on the bus at first, but after a few pick-ups a younger girl got on called Mercedes and we had to wait a minute while she finished her Slim. I felt quite scared on the bus ’cos I didn’t know anyone and no one talked to me. Without Carrie or Uma or Kezia I felt totally small and alone.

The Tilak factory is well big. As big as Mayflower Hockey Field used to be before it got sold. Tilak’s is freezing cold inside. Especially near the fridges and freezers. There’s a really pukey weird smell all the time, but it’s not of bhajis or pakoras, it just smells like old chip fat. A bit like when Nan first got her deep-fat fryer and didn’t change the lard in it for a year. Minging.

I went up to the office and a woman called Mrs. Reman met me and she said, “You sixteen yet?” and I said, “Nah, fifteen,” and she tutted and gave me a bag full of clothes and told me to get changed. I had to wear a big pair of white wellies, a hair-net over my hair, a dark red hat and a massive baggy dark red boiler suit with white plastic buttons up the front. I looked in the toilet mirror and couldn’t believe how much of a dog I looked. I put some lipgloss on to try and bootilicious myself up but when I got outside Mrs. Reman said, “Strictly no makeup,” and made me wipe it off with a rough paper towel. Even bloody Mr. Bamblebury the headmaster has given up on lipgloss.

The factory is proper noisy, you have to say everything twice. Today they were making lamb kofta balls. Basically, there’s a big huge MASSIVE pan of mashed-up lamb gunk with a blade inside stirring it up and the mixture spits out a tube in the bottom into little balls. Then they go through an oven and then they plop out of the other end. My job today was observing the koftas being packed. You put six koftas in a box. Then six in another box. Then six in another box. Then when you’ve done six boxes they go into a much bigger box and you pull a lever and the box gets taped and sent off to get a label.

I watched this all day long. I must have seen nine hundred billion bloody koftas. The lady I was watching with today was called Mrs. Santosh Sandu. She was dead nice. Santosh says Tuesdays are much more exciting ’cos they make onion bhajis.

TUESDAY 3RD JUNE

They make bhaji pretty much the same as you do kofta. Today was really boring. I counted to six all day. At 3
PM
Santosh let me pull the lever “for a treat.”

WEDNESDAY 4TH JUNE

Six in a box. One-two-three-four-five-six. Repeat six times. One-two-three-four-five-six. Pull the lever. One-two-three-four-five-six. I kept waking up in the night last night muttering and kicking and counting to six. Then I got out of bed sleepwalking to look for that bloody metal pole they use to stick up the chute and unblock the pakoras. Cava-Sue had to put me back into bed, then she sat on the side of my bunk for a while and held my hand just like she did when I was a little girl and I had bad dreams.

I think Tilak Foods is doing my head in.

THURSDAY 5TH JUNE

HOW CAN IT BE ONLY THURSDAY? HOW!!!! I nearly chucked a sickie today but Cava-Sue stopped me. I spoke to Carrie on my lunchbreak. She is having a right old giggle at her work experience. Somehow she’s working for her dad in the offices at Draper Hydration!! This is completely against the rules. Like I said, Mr. Brightwell from the careers office is proper useless. For the first three days she just watched
Legally Blonde I
and
II
on her dad’s new MacBook Pro and tested out the whirlpool baths. I could do with a whirlpool bath. I smell like one big giant lamb kofta. Murphy says I stink like I should come with sauce and salad.

FRIDAY 6TH JUNE

Santosh and all the other ladies were in a happier mood today ’cos they got paid. I found out that the pay at Tilak’s is £5.50 an hour. That is almost £11,800 a year. I asked Santosh how much that was a week and she said £188.97 after income tax and national insurance. I asked her what that was and she laughed and said, “If you don’t know I envy you.”

£188.97? That sounds like quite a lot. I told my mother and she said, “Yeah, but you’d be giving me at least £50 a week for your lodgings, I’m not having two of you BLOODSUCKERS bleeding me dry.” Then Cava-Sue gave Mum a filthy look and then they started swearing at each other about money and Cava-Sue getting “above herself.” They were getting on so well this week too.

SATURDAY 7TH JUNE

Me and Carrie went to the Cinema today to see
Oh My Gosh I Love Him!!
starring the Olsen Twins. It was Barney Draper’s treat to cheer Carrie up after a long week at work. A LONG WEEK AT WORK? HA HA HA! Excuse me while I die laughing. Carrie admitted that on Friday her and her mother went to Cheeky’s Vertical Tanning and Collette Brown did them both a special Extra-Brown Ten-Minute Onyx Spray-Tan. Carrie is now almost as brown as Mrs. Obdulu who makes the bhajis at Tilak Foods AND MRS. OBDULU IS FROM THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO.

Oh My Gosh I Love Him!!
was really crap. Carrie thought it was amazing. She said it “totally, like, showed what it’s like to open your heart to someone.” I thought I was going to vom up when she said that. And not just ’cos I’d eaten about £4.47 worth of gummies.

MONDAY 9TH JUNE

Week Two at Tilak’s. OH MY GOD I PROPER HATE IT HERE. I hate the way you have to be here exactly at 8
AM
and not one minute later or you’re in trouble and you can’t even go for a wee or look at a text message or change your tampon without getting permission off two people and ticking it off on a clipboard. I hate the way you can’t wear lipgloss or earrings to make you look less like a munter. I hate that there is nothing to think about all day long except the bhajis and the pakoras and whether the chute is blocked, and I hate the way everyone is quite sad all the time and complaining about the money and bitching about Mr. Tilak and Mrs. Reman in the office who they blame for everything. And I hate how the Sikh women think the Polish women are snobby and want their jobs for their Polish friends, and the Somalian women are quite depressed and one of them called Farah Garaad bursts into tears a lot ’cos she misses her sons and wants them to come here to England from Mogadishu but they can’t because they’re in a war. I’ve sort of made friends with Mercedes, who is about twenty-six, but her sense of humor is well mucky and she keeps asking me if I am a virgin and accusing me of being a lezzer.

I stared at the clock from the moment I got there today and I swear it took SIX TIMES as long to go round to 4
PM
. I MISS MAYFLOWER ACADEMY.

TUESDAY 10TH JUNE

At lunch today I sat at the vending machine with Mercedes. She asked me if I was coming back to Tilak’s for a job next year and I said, “Maybe. But just for a bit until I’m old enough to do
Big Brother.
” Mercedes laughed then and said that she wants to do
Big Brother
too. Mercedes says she always takes a sickie each year to go to the big audition in Victoria Dock in London, but there’s always about five thousand folk there and you stand in the rain all day and she never gets past the first set of questions, which is totally unfair as she’s got a lot to offer and would bring all sorts of “controversialitiness” to the house. Even I know that’s not a word.

Mercedes says she’s been at Tilak Foods eight years. Mercedes says it is the most money that she can earn with no GCSEs or anything. She’s always skint. Mercedes still lives with her mum. I must have looked a bit sad then ’cos she said, “’Ere Shiraz, don’t stress too much about
Big Brother.
They’re always looking for people for TV shows!” Mercedes says she’s applied next for a show called
Fast-Track Family Feud
on ITV2 where you all sit on a stage in front of an audience and discuss your family problems. I asked her if her family was having a feud and she said, “Well not right now but probably soon ’cos my sister is a right dirty trollop.”

THURSDAY 12TH JUNE

Oh god. At Tilak’s today I was feeling proper baffled by what I AM GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE ’cos believe me THIS IS NOT IT when all of a sudden Mrs. Obdulu started making a weird sound and so did Farah Garaad and when I looked around, Adrianna, one of the Polish women, had her hands over her mouth and her face was quite green. “It’s a rat! A rat!” Farah was shouting and everyone started screaming and jumping up on chairs.

Then Mrs. Obdulu shouted, “Not on the floor, you silly women — in the bhaji!!” and we all crowded up to the chute where the bhajis were plopping out and Mrs. Obdulu held up one and it had A LITTLE FOOT STICKING OUT and as we looked closer you could see all the little bhaji balls were full of blood and guts and bits of snout and hair.

“Oh not again!” said Mercedes, then she ran to the rubbish bin and threw up.

“Oh lord!” shouted Mrs. Obdulu. “Someone has left the trap open last night and another rat has fallen into the pan!” And all of a sudden I began to feel really really sick. My eyes felt misty and I turned around and started to stagger across the factory floor and as far away from the chute as I could go. Then I stumbled out of the factory door and into the road and then I just went a bit mad and began to run down through the industrial park and on to the main road and then I just kept on going and I thought I AM NEVER EVER GOING BACK THERE EVER AGAIN and I didn’t even know where the hell I was and I just kept running and people were tooting their horns and shouting stuff at me from vans ’cos I looked like such a nutter in my wellies and hat.

Then suddenly a car pulled up beside me and I ignored it and kept on going and then a bloke’s voice shouted, “Oi! Shiraz! Is that you, innit?” but I ignored him and then the voice said, “Shiraz! It’s me innit!” and when I turned around it was a banana-yellow Golf and in the driver’s seat was Wesley Barrington Bains II!

I stopped and my mouth fell open.

“Shiraz! What’s wrong?” he shouted.

I couldn’t speak.

“Do you want a lift home?” he said.

I nodded.

“Come on, get in,” he said.

I got in the car and it felt warm and safe and it smelled of magic tree air fresheners and then I started to cry and Wesley held my hand.

I told Wesley about the mashed-up rat. He took me to Burger King drive-thru and bought me a hot coffee with sugar in it ’cos he said it was good for shock then he drove me home to Thundersley Road.

I know he’s with Dee-Dee now but I am so happy that I have him as a friend.

10
PM
— Wesley must have rang Carrie on the way home ’cos she turned up with a box of Quality Street chocolates. We sat on my bed and listened to
Hip Hop Divas.
Carrie says the world of work is a right old pain up the ass and she’s thinking of staying on in Mayflower Sixth Form. I know what she means.

THURSDAY 19TH JUNE

This is TOP SECRET but I am really happy to be back at Mayflower with Carrie and Luther and Kezia and Sean Burton and everyone. I was even pleased to see Ms. Bracket. “So how was the factory?” she asked when I walked into English.

“Totally wack,” I said.

And she laughed and said, “Well let’s do our best to keep you out of there, eh, Miss Wood?”

And I shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

I gave in my English homework today. The task was to write about a sad situation through the eyes of someone else and demonstrate “empathy.” I wrote about a day-in-the-life of a Somalian woman who lives in Ilford who misses her sons in Mogadishu and has to pull dead rats’ feet out of the bhaji mix all day.

MONDAY 23RD JUNE

Ms. Bracket said my homework was “very gritty and moving” and “showed a lot of empathy.” I didn’t even try that hard either. Ms. Bracket gave me an A–. But I’m keeping that on a strictly need-to-know basis.

Only this diary needs to know.

JULY

TUESDAY 1ST JULY

I was eating a bowl of Coco-Chocko Clusters and watching a GM TV exclusive about Peter Andre’s new dog kennel when Mum made a funny “Ooh” sound. She was reading a card the postman had just brought.

“What?” I said.

“Very exciting news,” she said, then she lit up a Lucky Strike and got out her bright pink lipstick and began drawing on her mouth like she always does before work. “We have been cordially invited,” Mum said in her best la-di-dah voice, “to the Draper Hydration Summer Barbecue on July the twentieth.”

“Who has?” said Cava-Sue, who was reading a play and eating toast made from that disgusting birdseed bread that she buys herself these days.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wood plus children,” said Mum.

“What Draper barbecue?” I said, crossly. Carrie ALWAYS forgets to tell me stuff these days, she is so annoying. I bet Bezzie Kelleher knows.

“Am I invited?” said Murphy, excavating his nose.

“All the Wood children are invited,” said my mum, then she started to laugh. “’Ere Shiraz, aren’t Maria Draper’s bashes a bit snooty? All fancy cocktails and that Japanese raw fish stuff?”