Louise Rennison_Georgia Nicolson 09 (12 page)

She said, “Well…that's done. I've told him. I said I was having a bit of space and that he should have a bit of space. And he said OK. Which is a bit weird. What do you think he meant by OK?”

I said, “I think he meant OK. Now, where is the bit that clicks into the buckle?”

“Anyway, whatever he means, I'm quite looking forward to a bit of freedom. You know, trying out my entrancing skills and so on. What is the special entrancing walk thingy?”

I showed her the hip hip wiggle wiggle hip hip thing. And also did a bit of flicky hair.

two minutes later

She managed the hip hip wiggle wiggle thing but when she tried to incorporate flicky hair at the same time, she banged into a wall.

ten minutes later

We carried Angus out to the driveway in the washing up bowl. We tried to lift the cat basket up, but
the bottom just fell out and Angus was yowling like a cat who has just crashed to the floor out of its basket.

Both of us were wearing gardening gloves. I'd like to say that Angus was really looking forward to his little outing and in his catty way appreciated what we were doing for him, but the spitting and pooing would suggest otherwise.

I said to Jas as we shoved him down the drive in the pusher, “You have to be cruel to be kind. Some things in life are not pleasant, but they have to be done. For instance, German. And maths. And, well, school. I can't believe the holidays have gone so quickly and we are being forced back into the torture chamber of life.”

Jas said, “I'm quite looking forward to it now. We're doing
Romeo and Juliet
in English. I wonder if I will get a part like I did in last year's production. You know, I really felt that I got into the Lady M part. It took quite a lot out of me.”

I said, “It took quite a lot out of me.”

But she had gone off into Jasland. Is it likely that she will be cast as Juliet? Because that is what she is thinking. Who ever heard of a Juliet with a stupid flicky fringe and an obsession with owls. Billy Shakespeare didn't write “Hark! What
owl through yonder window breaks?”

Angus is nicely strapped into the pushchair. I have put a little blankin' over him and tucked a couple of sausages under his armpit so he can reach it for a nibble.

As we wheeled Angus out of our gate Mr. and Mrs. Next Door were coming back from walkies with the Prat brothers. They are looking unusually unusual today as they have matching pink collars. And the poodles look ridiculous, too!!! Hahahaha, did you see what I did there? I implied that Mr. and Mrs. Next Door were wearing matching pink—oh, never mind.

Mr. Next Door looked at us wheeling Angus along and said, “He's not dead then?”

And he didn't say it in a pleased way.

Naomi followed us for a while doing that mad high-pitched thing that nutcase Burmese cats do. But then when she reached the end of the road the big black Manky cat was lurking around by the dustbins and she caught his eye. Angus went ballisticisimus when he saw Manky and tried to bite through his straps…I started pushing the pushchair really quickly. Naomi is an appalling tart, she just lay down in the road and started
squiggling around on her back, letting her womanly parts run wild and free.

How disgusting. I said to Jas, “Put your hand over Angus's eyes.”

Jas said, “Er, no, because I'm not mad and I don't want it bitten off.”

It's awful, really. Poor crippled Angus seeing his woman offering herself to other (and manky) men.

I started jogging along with the pushchair but I hadn't got my specially reinforced sports nunga-nunga holder on, so I had to stop as there was a bit of a danger of uncontrollable bounce basooma wise.

four minutes later

We ambled along toward the park. It was quite a nice day. I put a sunbonnet on Angus because there are some baldy patches on his head where the stitches are and he might get sunburn. I thought he looked quite cute but he didn't and was trying to biff me with his big paw.

When he was under his blankin' and with his hat over his face, you couldn't really tell he was a cat. I said to Jas, “It would be quite funny if people
actually thought he was a baby. Then they might bend down to say, ‘Aaaahhh,' and see his mad furry face staring out at them. And that would be a hoot and a half.”

Jas said, “Yeah, groovy.”

But she didn't mean it because I could tell she was practicing doing wiggle wiggle hip hip flicky hair flicky hair. Fall off pavement, etc.

In the end, Angus was making so much racket and the bonnet had fallen down over his eyes, so I took it off. I told Jas she could wear it to keep her fringe in check but she didn't want to. She is quite literally a fun-free zone.

I said to Jas, “I bet you that the teachers are actually looking forward to going back to Stalag 14. Because they have no lives. I bet Slim already has her knickers laid out ready to go. Hawkeye will be practicing shouting.”

Jas said, “Oh, I meant to tell you something. Tom told me goss about Robbie and Wet Lindsay.”

“Jas, I told you not to do any earwigging
vis-à-vis
Droopy Knickers.”

“I didn't do earwigging. Tom just brought it up. Apparently Wet Lindsay goes round to Tom's mum and dad's all the time. Even when neither of the
boys are there. She just goes and hangs out with the parents. How sad is that? And they really get on well. So Tom asked Robbie what was going on, was she like the official girlfriend, etc., and Robbie said, and I quote, ‘Well, it's nice to have someone who is sort of ordinary around and who really likes me.' Oh, and he also said that she bakes him cakes.”

I just looked at Jas. “What sort of person bakes cakes for boys?”

Jas said, “Well, I made a lemon drizzle cake for Tom when we went camping and—”

“OK, let me put this another way, what sort of twit besides your good self makes cakes for boys? It is tremendously sad and odd. It doesn't say one word about cake baking in my ‘How to make any twit fall in love with you' book and it says some pretty bloody strange things, I can tell you.”

Of course for no apparent reason Jas hit No. 8 on the having the hump scale. (No. 8 is of course the quarter humpty, one of Jas's specialities…and is the combination walking on ahead, head tossing, cold shoulderosity and pretend deafnosity, but no obvious violence.)

I said, “Jazzy, don't be silly, I bet Tom luuurved
your drizzley cake, it's just odd for Wet Lindsay to do it, isn't it? She's not exactly a domestic, is she? It's not like her to do anything for anyone else, is it? Is it, little pally? I bet even Tommy wommy said that it was a bit odd, didn't he?”

Jas didn't want to say, but she couldn't help it. She said, “Well, actually he did say he thought that she was like a bit insincere and that she was trapping Robbie by being nice.”

Hmmm. That has made me feel a bit guilty about Robbie. If he was on the rebound because I had eschewed him with a firm hand, I had sort of made him go back out with the octopussy prat of the century. It was bad enough having him cry in front of me, but for him to then be driven into her no-forehead world was awful. I wouldn't want him to be with Lindsay because of me. Maybe I would have to save him from her somehow.

twelve minutes later

We were wheeling Angus along in the park singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” quite loudly to cheer Angus up. He was yowling along to the chorus (I like to think) when round the corner of the loos came Dave the Laugh and Emma, and
Tom and a friend of Emma's called Nancy. They were laughing together.

Dave saw us first and he came over and bent down to look at Angus.

“Wow, you dancer! Attaboy. You're de man!!!”

He said it in a sort of admiring way and I felt really proud of Angus. He had come back from the edge of the heavenly cat basket in the sky like super-cat. And it was nice to see Dave. He looked very cool in a class shirt and he looked up and winked at me—then spoiled the moment by saying, “Emma, come and have a look at Angus, he is the kiddie.”

Emma came trolling across all girlie.

“Ooooh, isn't he cute.”

I should have warned her not to put her face too near Angus but, well, that is the law of nature. It's only cat spit, after all, you would have thought that it was viper juice, the way she carried on. She went scampering off into the ladies' loos and Nancy went with her.

Jas had not said a word since she saw Tom. She had gone very, very red, even for her, that is how red she was.

Tom said, “I just bumped into Dave and the girls at the snooker hall—”

Jas said, “Tom, what you do is really your business. Come on, Gee, we don't want to keep the gang waiting.”

And she actually said to Tom, “S'laters. Maybe bell you sometime.”

Has she finally snapped?

I followed after her with the pushchair, leaving Tom and Dave looking at us.

When we got round the corner, Jas burst into tears.

“How can he just go and get off with some other girl, just like that? It's only half an hour since I said he could be free.”

I said, “Well, it says in my ‘How to make any twit fall in love with you' book that boys don't like feeling bad, so they get another girl really quickly.”

Jas said, “That's awful, what's the point of seeing anyone then or caring about boys at all?”

I said, “Well, there is some good news.”

She said, “What?”

“Well, it says that they get another girl really quickly and it is usually disaster. And they remain frozen emotionally for the rest of their lives, so that's good, isn't it?”

But she didn't cheer up as such.

saturday september 3rd

9:00 a.m.

Jas phoned.

She said, “Tom came round and said that there was nothing going on with Nancy. He just bumped into them and they had a bit of a kick around with the other lads in the park and the girls watched. And, anyway, Nancy has got a boyfriend. She is just like Emma's best mate.”

I said, “What did you say?”

“Well, I remembered, you know, about the glaciosity and so on. And I said, ‘I suppose that when you are having space you can't always ask what someone is doing and so on but we can be friendly to each other.'”

I was amazed. I said, “Jas, my little matey, that is almost quite good tactics. You are not only displaying glaciosity, you are also incidentally displaying maturiosity as well.
Muchos buenos,
as our Pizza-a-gogo friends might say.”

Then she spoiled it.

“I miss him, though.”

I said, “Go cuddle your owls and be brave.”

She said, “Am I allowed to snog him if he comes round?”

I said, “No, he has to go off and then ping back. You can't do the pinging first, it is not in the book.”

tuesday september 6th

Six days to Stalag 14. God help us one and all. But on the bright side the Luuurve God comes back in eight days!!!! I am keeping up my grooming and plucking so that I do not have to do it all in one go. I am ruthless with any stray hairs. Also I am a lurker-free zone. I just wish I could find some tan stuff that makes my legs not so paley. But not orange like last time. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because we will be back in stockings for school.

4:00 p.m.

Angus went for his first walk today. I put him on top of the dividing wall so that he could see the Prat poodles. They usually give him
joie de vivre
and so on. His tail is still all bandaged up but his stitches come out next week and he is eating A LOT.

I popped him up there but he seemed still a bit wobbly on his old cat pins. He wobbled up and down once or twice and then crashed off over the wall into Mr. and Mrs. Next Door's garden. I clam
bered up and looked down, and he was lying in the cabbage patch. He did that silent
miaowing
thing and then got to his paws again. He started walking and then careered off into a bush. Then he got up again, walked for a few paces and crashed into the lawn mower. Oh noooo, perhaps he really did have brain damage.

I leapt down into Next Door's garden to rescue my little pally. The Next Doors were out, so the coast was clear apart from the heavily permed guardey dogs, Snowey and Whitey. They were chained to their kennel probably to stop them larking about and getting their stupid fur all muddy. And they were yapping like billio.

I said in a Liverpool accent, “Calm down, calm down,” and picked up Angus. He didn't like being picked up and struggled around. As a treat I took him quite near the Prat brothers and he gave them both a big swipe with his paw around the snout.

I took him out through the gate because I didn't think I could manage the wall and Angus the madcat.

Ooooooh, please don't let him be a backward cat. I didn't want him to play with colored string for the rest of his life. I told Mum what had happened
and she said why didn't I ring the vet, Dr. Beardey.

What if he said that Angus was like a turnip cat? Would I look after him even if he was dim and didn't know how to fight anymore? And started liking the Prat brothers?

five minutes later

Yes, I would. I loved him and I would look after him no matter what happened. He was my furry soul pal.

wednesday september 7th

Amazingly Dad was quite sympathetic
vis-à-vis
Angus being an idiot cat and said he would drive me to the vet's when he got back from “work.”

5:30 p.m.

We had an appointment with the vet. He looked all beardey and serious when I told him about Angus crashing about and maybe being backward. He looked in Angus's ears and eyes and so on. Then he put him up on his table and let him walk about. Angus took two steps and then immediately fell off the table. He tried to leap up onto it again and missed and crash landed into my lap. Which he then fell off.