The Donut Diaries (3 page)

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I don’t suppose there’s really any such thing as a laughing-gas bomb, but there definitely should be, because soldiers can’t fight when they’re laughing, so you could easily machine-gun them if you were evil, or just capture them if you’re in a good mood.

Friday 8 September

AS I EXPECT
they will feature quite a lot in this diary, I suppose I had better give you the low-down on my family.

I’ll start with Mum, who you’ve already met. Mum’s a bit of a Tasmanian devil, in the sense of always being in that crazy spinning motion. But also in the sense of occasionally tearing your head off. She has some kind of a job in some kind of an office where she’s in charge of selling some kind of stuff to some other people who
then
do something with it.

Sorry if that’s a bit vague, but it really isn’t that interesting, and I’ve never bothered looking into it much. But she works hard and most of the things in our house are there because she bought them. She’s dead thin and has blonde hair, although she has to go to the hairdresser once a month to get it blonderized.

My dad has a more interesting job, although like the Einstein dude said, it’s all relative. He does the sort of writing work that proper writers don’t want to do. So, he’s responsible for the stuff they put on cereal packets, telling you how great you’re gonna feel if only you cram enough Krispy Oatballs or Bally Oatkrisps or Oaty Krispballs into your mouth.

His coolest job (remember what I said earlier about relativity?) is writing the descriptions of the
aircraft
for model aeroplane kits. So, if you really want to know about obscure Italian fighter aircraft of the Second World War, he’s your go-to guy.

And right there you’ve got another problem, meaning where it is you’d have to go to see your go-to guy. The thing is that my dad spends an awful lot of his time in the toilet. In and on. It’s kind of his office. He takes his laptop in there and types out his descriptions of Krispy Oatballs or the nimble Fiat G55 fighter. We sometimes see him at breakfast and dinner, but that’s about it. In fact, he’s been known to eat his meals in the loo as well which, if you ask me, takes the grossness to a whole new level. Hey, I’ve just had an idea – we should call his laptop his cr—Oh, never mind.

I can’t really remember when this all started. He just began to spend longer and longer in there. We hardly even think about it any more. Even my
friends
, when they come round, know to shout, ‘Hi, Mr Milligan,’ vaguely at the toilet door.

To complete the pack we have Ruby and Ella, my big sisters. Kind of funny the way ‘Ruby and Ella’ sounds a lot like ‘Rubella’, which is like a really nasty disease. And the strange thing is that even though they’re annoying in completely different ways they are
exactly
as annoying as each other.

Ruby is all blonde hair and bling. Almost everything she owns is pink, varied only by the odd splash of nice, calming canary yellow.
¹
She has pink things that you wouldn’t even dream were ever made in pink. Pink shoes. A pink umbrella. A pink DSi.

I mean, why would you do that to a perfectly decent portable gaming system?

There should be some kind of organization to stop that sort of thing. You could call it the RSPOMTPTSNBMP (the Royal Society for the Prevention Of Making Things Pink That Should Never Be Made Pink). And if you’re thinking that all this pink means that Ruby is nice and fluffy, you’d be wrong. She’s as nice and fluffy as a pit bull. A pit bull with toothache. A Nazi pit bull with toothache.

If Ruby is a pink attack dog, Ella is what you’d get if Darth Vader and Countess Dracula had a baby. Everything about her is black, from her boots to her hair. Even her lipstick and nail polish are glossy black. Except her skin, which of course is as white as a ping-pong ball because she tries to avoid exposure to daylight, for obvious reasons, i.e. bursting into flames. She doesn’t say much, not to us anyway, but she hisses
sometimes
, like a cat. She spends most of her time hanging out down at the graveyard with the Goths and emos and other Creatures of the Night. It’s like she believes that
Twilight
is true, you know, like some TV documentary, and not just a stupid teenage girly fantasy.

Of course, Ruby and Ella don’t get on, which is lucky for me because if they’re not fighting each other, they’re picking on me.

So, yeah, a freaky family.

Anyway, it’s tea time now, and my mum is calling me down. And boy, I’m looking forward to it. Friday is fish and chips night. Funny, though – can’t smell the usual warm fishy-chippy smell.

In fact I can smell something else … vaguely fishy, but somehow not right …?

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I’m being sarcastic, in case you hadn’t realized.

Saturday 9 September

SO, THE HORROR
begins.

Here’s the story of last night’s dinner.

Like I said, Friday is fish and chips night in our house.

Well, it
was
.

So I walked downstairs with that smell – the smell of something that was not fish and chips – getting stronger all the time. Not a rotten smell, but not a nice one either. A smell that could only be described as boiled stuff!!!!

In the kitchen Mum smiled. ‘New take on fish and chips,’ she said.

It was boiled fish with boiled potatoes and boiled peas.

‘Zero fat!’ Mum announced proudly.

I thought I was going to cry. ‘But it’s fish and chips night …’

‘Well, if you weren’t such a lard-arse, then we could have proper food,’ squeaked Ruby.

‘That’s enough of that,’ said Mum. ‘Dermot is on a diet, and we’re all helping him by eating the same food. Now dig in, everyone.’

So we started eating. You couldn’t say it was disgusting, because it didn’t taste of anything. In fact, it was more extreme than that – it sort of sucked flavour out of your mouth. It was anti-food.

Pudding was an apple.

I’d sunk so low that I actually quite enjoyed the apple. Yep, things were
that
bad. Luckily I’d planned ahead and bought a couple of donuts from Mr Alexis. I ate one, and was going to dive into number two, but then I thought better of it and put it back in my underpants drawer, where I kept my darkest secrets and spare donuts.

So,
DONUT COUNT
(for Friday):

Anyway, that was yesterday.

Today is my last Saturday of freedom before I start at big school.

Aaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhh!

NOTE TO SELF: ON NO ACCOUNT EVER AGAIN REFER TO SECONDARY SCHOOL AS ‘BIG SCHOOL’: IT MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE A BABY
.

My dad had a talk with me in the afternoon.

‘You know your mum only wants what’s best for you,’ he said.

I shrugged.

‘She’s got … reasons … for being like she is. About you and food, I mean.’

I shrugged again.

‘All I’m saying is, you know … do your best.’

Another shrug. My shrugging muscles were getting quite tired.

‘And the truth is, you could do with, you know …’

‘I know.’

‘And I promised your mum I’d help with this,
and
not give you treats and stuff.’

Back to the shrugging.

‘But I suppose there might be some, ah, special circumstances or some fiasco when … er, the rules might be allowed to slip. As long as, basically, you’re trying.’

‘OK, Dad.’

We had a quick hug and then he went off again, which was a relief.

Dinner was pasta with tomato sauce. It was all right, actually.

DONUT COUNT:

Sunday 10 September

THE HORROR CONTINUES
.

Here’s the story.

Sunday is normally the second best food day, after Friday’s fish and chips. It’s always a roast chicken or something like that. Most days my dad does the cooking because he’s always at home while my mum’s at work. He’s not rubbish at cooking, as long as he sticks to frying things, or doing
exactly
what Mum tells him. But Sunday lunch is Mum’s time to cook, and she’s good.

Anyway, I came in from spending the morning hanging out at Jim’s.

The timing was crucial.

Too early and I’d have to set the table.

Too late and the lunch would be cold, and Mum would give me the Evil Eye.

So I waltzed in, expecting that lovely smell of roast chicken to be filling up the house. Instead there was a different smell. A rotten smell. A smell that could only be described as VEGETABLES!!!!

I went into the kitchen. They were all waiting for me again: Mum, Ruby and Ella, even Dad. Each had a bowl in front of them. It was truly terrifying.

Horrific though the ‘food’ appeared, it wasn’t a patch on the faces round the table. Dad wore the expression of someone who’d reached for
the
bog roll, only to find a bare cardboard tube. Ruby gave me a glare of concentrated pink hatred. Ella made some kind of mystical sign with her fingers. It was probably a gypsy curse, which meant that me and my offspring down to the tenth generation were going to be blighted with warts and really bad athlete’s foot.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘The new regime,’ said Dad, in a voice drained of all emotion. ‘It’s really kicked in, big style.’

I stared down at my plate. It looked like a swamp monster stabbed through the heart with a carrot.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I ate lunch at Jim’s.’

‘Really? What did you have?’

‘What …?’ My mind went blank. They were all staring at me. ‘Er, boiled …’ Boiled what?

‘Cheese.’

Cheese!
Why on earth did I say cheese?

‘Boiled cheese?’

‘Yes, er, his family’s from Norway. They eat boiled cheese there. It’s delicious.’

‘Jim’s family is from Leeds, as you know very well. Now sit down and eat your
potage de spinach à la carrot
before I lose my temper.’

The rest of the meal passed by in total silence. However, anyone able to read minds would have heard a deafening roar made up of ‘I HATE YOU’ repeated over and over, coming from the dreaded Rubella.

I tried to put some of the ‘food’ into my mouth. It tasted as awful as it looked. It was as if I’d followed a camel around with my mouth open.

The one bit of good luck was that my dad got a piece of carrot shrapnel stuck in his throat. Everyone had a go at whacking him on the back, which created enough of a distraction for me to grab a handful of green gunk and cram it into my sock. After dinner I limped carefully up to my room, took my sock off, tied a knot in the top of it and threw it into our next-door neighbour’s garden as a treat for the foxes.

Luckily I had a couple of donuts stashed in my underpants drawer, so I didn’t starve. They were a bit old and stale, but they sure felt good in my mouth after all that green filth. The rest of the day was taken up with me panicking about the new school, mixed up
with
calmer periods when I just sat in my room quietly dreading it. Ruby and Ella took it in turns to wind me up about what would happen to me. Dad came up later and tried to reassure me, but most of what he said was actually worse than Rubella’s wind-ups.