We have a system. I’m nice to people and say, ‘I think you’d be great on the show – speak to Holly. She’s the boss.’ Then Holly will say to them very firmly, ‘We aren’t hiring right now. Ask again in a few months.’ She does this in such a way that no one would ever dare ask again. It’s in her eyes, I think.
I still feel anxious, though, anytime anyone wants to be my friend, or invites me over for a playdate. It’s only a matter of time before I get hit with the ‘I’d love to be on the show’.
HOLLY!
BUT OF COURSE THERE ARE ALSO PROS:
I’m starting to get free things. Yes, people send me free stuff in the hope that I’ll talk about it on the radio show.
So far I’ve been sent:
Things are going so well, in fact, that just like an actual proper radio station, we now have adverts. Well, one advert. It’s for Mr Khan, the local newsagent.
He doesn’t pay me in cash, however, as an advertiser normally would. Instead I’m allowed unlimited sweets, as is Holly. Sadly, due to Artie’s very large sweet tooth (shall we say), he’s had to have his offer limited to just one bag a week.
Mr Khan wrote the advert himself and I have to read it out twice during every show, complete with sound effects. He even has a big sign in his shop window that boasts, ‘AS HEARD ON THE SECRET SHED SHOW’.
Here is my first-ever script for my first-ever advertiser:
SFX LARGE EXPLOSIONS
They have gone SWEET C-C-C-C-C-RAZY down at Mr Khan’s!
SFX MORE EXPLOSIONS
This week Haribo Tangfastics are HALF PRICE! Hurry after school tomorrow before Mr Khan runs out!
SFX OF PEOPLE SCREAMING AND RUNNING
Also, why not check out Mr Khan’s wide array of greeting cards for all occasions. Births, birthdays and pet deaths. Yes! You heard us right, a sensitive card for someone special in your life who has lost their beloved pet. The PURR-fect idea!
Find it all at Mr Khan’s Store. Penguin Parade, just opposite the dentist. No more than three schoolchildren allowed at any one time.
SFX MORE EXPLOSIONS
However, one thing hasn’t changed – if anything, it’s got even worse. And that’s my relationship with my headmaster, Mr Harris.
I mean, I get it.
If I was in his shoes I’d hate me. I’d spend every waking hour thinking of new and ingenious ways to make my life hell.
I would never not be out of my mind if I was him.
My headmaster, Mr Harris, carries not just deep emotional scars from the showdown in my back garden, but also a very noticeable physical one. I mean immediately noticeable. Like, you wouldn’t be able to stop looking at it if you were talking to him.
You see, Fish Face is now the only headmaster in the whole wide world with a golden front tooth. He had to have a new tooth to replace the one that to this day is still somewhere in my garden – knocked out with force by the legendary front karate kick of Sensei Terry.
Now, with his new golden tooth, Mr Harris’s face looks even more evil. Like a James Bond baddie. Or maybe a rejected Bond baddie who was turned down for being too scary.
And that’s unpleasant. But not as unpleasant as how Mr Harris must feel about it. I mean, I almost feel sorry for him. Every time he looks in the mirror he sees a reminder of what happened that fateful night in my garden. Marked for life.
Even worse, for months leading up to his manhunt for me, Radio Boy, I had made a laughing stock out of him on my secret radio show. To be fair, he started it. He launched the school’s radio station, Merit Radio, and he should’ve had me on it – I mean, I was the only pupil at the school with radio experience (hospital radio; I was fired, but that’s not the point). Instead, he put his idiot son, Martin Harris, on air and we became sworn enemies in that moment.
So, I mocked him mercilessly for weeks from my garden shed. I used a voice disguiser to mask my voice and real identity. I made up the name ‘Fish Face’ for him on air. He heard it. The school heard it. Everyone heard it. And when he finally tracked me down, Sensei Terry thought he was an intruder and knocked out his front tooth.
So it’s not really that surprising my headmaster hates me.
Which was why I found myself staring once again at my own terrible reflection in the window at school.
‘Do I really have to wear this?’ I asked.
Fish Face grinned, his gold tooth glistening. He was grinning because my evil headmaster was successfully making my school life hell. It was payback. I was on litter duty again at lunchtime and he was making me wear a high-visibility jacket with the words ‘RUBBISH COLLECTOR’ printed on the back in large letters. The ‘COLLECTOR’ bit is microscopically minute. It reads like this:
Oddly enough, I’ve never seen anyone else having to wear this particular design of vest.
‘It’s for health and safety, you see, Spike. I wouldn’t want anything unfortunate to happen to you …’ said Fish Face with fake sincerity as his fishy grin showed all his revolting coffee-stained teeth (and one golden one). Had he even been to a dentist this century?
If he ever did find a dentist unlucky enough to take him on, they’d need the industrial-strength jet washer to get those brown coffee stains off. And they’d need to have their own oxygen supply to protect themselves from his honking bad breath. Mr Harris can wilt flowers with just one small sigh.
No better way to spend your lunch break than wandering around your school in a high-vis jacket with a giant metal claw, picking up rubbish, as I did today. A constant soundtrack of ‘Hey, you missed a bit!’, as kids deliberately dumped sweet wrappers and crisp packets on the ground behind me. Let me say, for the record, it takes an awful lot of precision and skill to pick up a Curly Wurly wrapper with a giant metal claw.
Without realising, though, Mr Harris had actually done me a favour. At least, rubbish-collecting around the school grounds, I didn’t have to listen to his lunchtime show on Merit Radio, which was blasted into every classroom and corridor. There was no escape – even in the toilets.