The Donut Diaries (14 page)

This was all accompanied by the usual laughter, jeering, insults, etc. Quite a few kids came over and banged on the side of the metal bin as if it were a giant drum.

The bell went for the end of break and the kids all went in. When it had all died down Renfrew brought my trousers over to me and I put them on inside the bin.

For the rest of the day I was wet, stinky, depressed and surrounded by a quarantine zone that not even my friends dared to pass through.

To add insult to injury, I got a right old telling-off from Mum about the state of my uniform when I got in. I exchanged a look with Dad, who came briefly out of the toilet. I think he understood what had happened. I guess in his time he was probably dumped in the bin more than once.

Couldn’t get any donuts today, even though it was my Hour of Greatest Need. My money must have fallen out in the bottom of the giant bin.

DONUT COUNT:

Saturday 7 October

AFTER YESTERDAY I
needed a good day, and I had one. Went swimming again with Dad. We didn’t take the girls this time. We’ve decided it should be a guy thing we do together. It’s good exercise for me and it gets him out of the toilet.

We had sushi again afterwards, and because the girls weren’t there we could talk about proper boy stuff without them pulling faces like they were being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, although sometimes I think that Ella
would
quite like to have lived in the days of torture chambers, dungeons, thumb-screws etc. etc.

So what we talked about was whether it was better to have machine guns or cannons on a fighter plane. Naturally enough, our case study was the Battle of Britain and whether the eight machine guns of the Hurricanes and Spitfires were better than the two 20mm cannons and four machine guns on the Messerschmitt BF 109. It was actually quite a close call. A single cannon shell could blow a Spitfire out of the sky, whereas the British planes needed to really hammer the evil Nazis with their machine guns to shoot them down. However, my dad said that the British pilots weren’t that well trained and the machine guns sort of sprayed out bullets in a wide
pattern
, which meant that they had a much better chance of hitting the target. It was a different matter when it came to shooting down bombers, such as the Heinkel He 111, Dornier Do 17 and Junkers Ju 88. Cannons would then have been very useful indeed.

So, that’s the good bit of the conversation we had. And then my dad said something a bit strange.

‘Dermot,’ he said, looking at me.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m glad we’ve had this talk now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because in a year, maybe two, you won’t want to talk about this sort of thing. Not with me, anyway.’

‘Dad, of course I will! I love talking about guns and planes.’

‘No, listen to me, Dermot. You’ll be thinking about different stuff then. You know, girls and things …’

‘Dad!’

‘No, let me finish. I don’t mind. In fact, I’ll be pleased. It’s natural. It’s good. I’m just saying that these moments are important. I want us to remember them.’

‘But you still like talking about this kind of thing, Dad.’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I never grew up properly. Maybe …’

‘Shut up, Dad,’ I said, and gave him a hug,
which
was a bit awkward because there was all the sushi mess on the table.

It was all pretty embarrassing, but sort of nice as well.

Been giving much thought to Doc Morlock’s poo sample. Think I may have hit on something …

DONUT COUNT:

Sunday 8 October

RUBY’S SUCH A
selfish cow. There’s this pink plastic beaker that she’s had since she was two or something. She used to have her milk out of it, then her juice, now probably pink gin or whatever it is that thirteen-year-old girls drink. It is shaped roughly like a bear. It has pictures of teddy bears on the outside. The teddy bears are having, as you’ve probably guessed, a picnic. As part of the picnic, the younger bears are drinking. If you look carefully you can see that
they
are drinking out of little pink beakers. The little pink beakers have pictures on them. Pictures of bears drinking out of beakers. Which in turn have pictures of bears drinking out of beakers. If you spend too long thinking about it you go mad. Which maybe explains why Ruby is like she is …

Anyway, this beaker always used to fascinate and horrify me, sort of sucking me into its world of bears-within-bears. So, when I was looking for something a bit
bigger
to use for collecting the sample for Doc Morlock I thought, well …

The trouble was that I was knocking on the toilet door, telling Dad to hurry up, when Ruby came by and saw what I was carrying.

‘What are you doing with Beaky?’ she yelled.

‘Nothing,’ I replied, obviously.

‘Then why are you holding him? Why are you taking him into the toilet? What the heck are you planning?’

Before I had the chance to answer she snatched at the thing. I didn’t just want to give in to her, so we had a bit of a wrestling match, which she was winning because she’s bigger than me and girls fight dirty - biting, gouging, scratching, hair-pulling, etc. etc. Then Dad came out of the toilet and Mum came up the stairs, and I had to explain what was going on. I probably should have lied about it, said that I was just using the bear to get a drink of water, but in the end I lost my temper and yelled out, ‘I was going to dump in your Beaky!’

So that’s why I’m up here now, alone, with no donuts.

And I still haven’t solved the Great Poo Problem. And time is running out.

DONUT COUNT:

Monday 9 October

MR WELLS ANNOUNCED TODAY
that Year Seven are going on a day trip to Chimpsters Zoo next week, as a treat before half term. Mr Wells was probably expecting a big cheer. What he got was a sort of groan.

Chimpsters isn’t the world’s greatest zoo. It doesn’t have any decent rides, just a little train that puffs its way around, plus a climbing frame and some tyres for swings. The animals aren’t that amazing either. They have some scabby-looking
lions
, some scabbier-looking hyenas, a couple of zebras, a camel or two, a pygmy hippo, some meerkats and quite a few other insignificant things I can’t remember the names of.

It’s most famous for its colony of chimpanzees, after which the place got named. But even with the chimps there’s a problem. The boss chimp, a big bruiser called Samson, has a particularly dirty habit which can make going to look at the chimps a messy business. I found out about Samson’s nasty habit a couple of years ago when our family visited. I don’t want to say exactly what Samson’s dirty habit is right now, but let’s just say that Ruby had to go straight home to shower, and Dad burned her pink dress in the garden.

At break I told Renfrew about this.

‘She was probably staring at him in the eye,’ he said. ‘They don’t like that. Especially the
big
males. It’s a threat in Chimp language. You might as well go up to them and say, “Anyone fancy a fight?”’

Spam joined in. ‘I saw a clip on YouTube of a kid getting his arm ripped off by a chimp at some zoo in Germany. They sewed it back on again afterwards, so it all ended happily, except that in all the excitement they sewed it on the wrong way round so now he can’t clap properly. But I reckon that’s probably worth it for the brilliant story you’d get out of it.’

‘B-b-b-b-b-b-b-h-h-h-h-h-h-h,’ said Corky, and I think I know what he meant.

Doc Morlock tomorrow, so no donuts today.

DONUT COUNT:

Tuesday 10 October

THE THING ABOUT
falling from a great height is that you never know when you reach the bottom because when you do you’re just a splat of strawberry jam that can’t know anything.

Today was poo day.

At least I’d worked out a way of getting a sample.

In the end I used one of my dad’s old spectacle cases. He’s got loads of them because he keeps losing his glasses, and every time he
buys
a new pair he gets a swanky new case. I won’t go into details. I don’t mean the details of how Dad keeps losing his glasses. I mean, the details of how I got the poo into the glasses case. Because, frankly, that would be gross. Just accept the fact that where once there was an empty glasses case, now there was a glasses case with a poo in it.