and having crap parents who actually do stuff. Not just bake tarts or DIY like everyone else’s parents. Not good old boring stuff. My mum goes off and paints and my dad goes off exploring to find endangered things. He collects molluscs mostly but I think last time he found a rare hairy potato. He’s like a cross between David Bellamy and… a Labrador. That is not a proper dad in anyone’s language.
That’s a Labradad.
Hee. I think that might very nearly be a joke.
I’m going to put it into my performance art notebook that I will be keeping.
I’ve got a special new notebook with a black glossy cover and some plums on the front of it.
It’s really arty, and er… fruity.
I’ve already made my first entry.
It says:
Winter of Love.
I’ll just add my “Labradad” idea.
Labradad. A portrait of a dad who is half pipe smoking bloke and half Labrador. He’s confused between the two worlds. Between pipes and sticks. I’m thinking an improvised dance piece. Perhaps the Labradad fetching sticks. Or pipes?
Or ducks?
Hmmmmm.
I love my parents but they’re not normal. Or around much. But they have let me come back to Dother Hall – even though I’m not allowed to board.
It was great staying with Cousin Georgia. It was brilliant on the boy front as well.
She got her Ace Gang round to teach me “wisdomosity” and also “snogging techniques”. We all tucked up in her bed, which was cosy.
Georgia said, “Have a jammy dodger and give us the goss snogwise.”
All the gang were wearing false beards to help me get into the mood.
So… I told her about going to the cinema in Skipley with some boys from Woolfe Academy. I told her about my first kiss. With floppy Ben. And how it was like having a little bat trapped in my mouth.
Her Ace Gang looked at me. Then Georgia said, “Are you a fool with just a hint of an idiot thrown in?”
Then they gave me their wisdomosity about boys. And snogging.
Gosh, Georgia knows a lot.
About varying pressure of the lips, what to do with your tongue, (don’t waggle it about like a fool), the scoring system for snogging, (Number 1 to Number 10, I can’t remember all of them but I do remember Number 4 is “a kiss lasting over three minutes without a break”. You need a mate for that one, so that they can time it for you.).
Honestly. I couldn’t believe it.
I’m dying to try out my new skills.
The amount she knew, she must have spent most of her time doing snogging research.
I said that to her and she said, “I did, my strange gangly coussy. But I have put aside snogging to teach you the ways of boydom. I do it because I luuurve you. But not in a lezzie way.”
Which is good.
I think.
What is a “lezzie way”?
I think it’s to do with girl snogging.
But I didn’t ask.
Oh chuggy-chug-chug. Come on, train!!!
I wonder what time the rest of the Tree Sisters will arrive tomorrow? I can ask Honey about the lezzie thing, she will know.
Oh, here we are at the train station. Hurrah!!! There’s its sign swinging in the biting gale force wind. Just as I remember:
Skipley Home of the West Riding Otter.
Hang on a minute, some Northern vandal has painted a “b” and a “y” over the otter bit. So now it reads:
I have just got off the showbiz express and now I am getting on the bus of hope. Which will transport me to… The Theatre of Dreams.
I can see the bus driver through the closed door, sitting in the driver’s seat. I recognise him from last term. I wonder if he recognises me?
As I hauled my bag on board up the steps he put the pipe to one side of his mouth and shouted, “Stop messing about and get on if you’re getting on, merry legs. It’s bloody parky with that door open.”
I said, “Why did you call me merry legs?”
He said, “Because you’re lanky and your legs are all over the shop.”
I paid my fare and he said, “Come back to prat around like a fool at Dither Hall again, have you?”
Before I could say, “It’s Dother Hall, actual—” he accelerated off so violently that I shot down to the end of the bus and almost ended up in a small child’s pushchair. Luckily there wasn’t a small child in it, just a pig.
The woman with the pushchair said, “Mind my pig.”
I am huddled up well away from her, but I think I can still smell pig poo.
We bumped along the road to Heckmondwhite. The driver is careering along sounding his horn whenever there is anything in his way on the road. Pedestrians. Bicyclists. A cow pat. But he slowed down behind a lollipop lady who was walking home. With her sign. She tried to let him pass but he cheerily waved her on and drove slowly behind her. Then for no reason when we got to a sharp corner he revved up and blasted his horn and she fell into a hedge. He was laughing so much I thought he might swallow his pipe.
I couldn’t help being excited. This is like a postcard of a winter scene in Yorkshire. There is even some snow on the top of Grimbottom Peak. And I shivered as I thought about Fang up there. Raising his fictitious children as fictitious puppies.
We arrived at the bus stop in Heckmondwhite just as it was getting dark. In my Dother Hall brochure it says, “Heckmondwhite has its own ‘zany’ cosmopolitan atmosphere.”
I don’t know that most people would call a village green and a post office and a pub called The Blind Pig “zany”. Unless you counted the knitted flags over the village hall.
I bet the Dobbins, my substitute parents, have got something to do with that.
Maybe I should just nip quickly over to the pub and see my fun-sized friend Ruby and my four-legged mate Matilda, her bulldog? I could give her the lipstick I’ve bought her. Not Matilda, Ruby. Dogs don’t wear make-up. But what they do wear is the little ballet tutu I have got for her from ‘Pets Party’ shop. I hope it will go round her waist. She is quite porky in the middle.
And anyway, even if Rubes was out I could leave the presents with her older brother Alex. Alex the dream boy. Alex with his long limbs and his longish thick chestnut hair. And his two eyes. And his back and front… and everything. And we could chat about performing arts. He’s gone off to Liverpool to do rep there and I could chat about my performance plans. Maybe discuss my Labradad idea.
Maybe not. I don’t want him to think of me as a bloke with a pipe fetching sticks.
Yes, I could pop to see Ruby. And whilst I was popping about maybe Alex her very gorgeous brother would pop up and that would be poptastic and I could say, “What a surprise, Alex, I was just popping by to…”
“Lullah! Lullah, yoo-hoo, it’s me!!!! And the twins!!!”
Dibdobs. In her Brown Owl uniform, coming towards me. No, not just coming towards me. Skipping towards me.
The twins were wearing knitted yellow knickerbockers.
I