Painting the Beauty Queens Orange - extract

JANUARY 1ST 1976 – THURSDAY1

Happy New Year! I hope I’m using the exclamation mark properly. Mrs Hall showed us how to use them before we broke up, and we all started using them all over the place, especially in the pen friend letters we all wrote to our international friends (that’s what Mrs H calls them) apparently we’re supposed to make ‘international relations’ because now we’re established in the Common Market we have to know all about our European neighbours. Grandad says it’s all a load of rubbish, he didn’t fight against the Germans to go shopping with them in some sort of market, and Carol says when she went to the Costa Brava the Germans took all the best bits of beach. And they stole the sun loungers. She said they got better treatment abroad because their money’s worth more than ours. I haven’t been to Spain yet, I must be the only girl in Standard 4 who hasn’t been on a plane, I haven’t done anything. I haven’t even been to hospital, never even broken a finger, I nearly went last year when they thought I had that shadow thing on my lung but all they did was take an x ray and give me that foul medicine. They went on and on about my coughing, you’d think I was doing it deliberately. It wasn’t my fault I had that bronchitis thing and couldn’t breathe properly, you’d think I enjoyed all that coughing.2

Didn’t stop them going out did it? Didn’t notice any of them coming home early to check on their youngest child’s fragile health did it? Oh no! (there you go Mrs H, be proud of me, think I’ve used it properly. She said we should use it to express and emotion or state of interjection. Well I think that’s what she said but Gary Taylor pinched my ruler and I had to kick him so I missed exactly what she said. Lucky I’ve got what mum calls a phenomenal memory and can remember just about everything, well she says all sorts of rubbish, I think it’s a gift. She’s only jealous, she can just about remember how to clean the house, well that’s about all she ever does, clean, cook, iron, it’s so boring, why doesn’t she have a career?) 3

I want this to be a proper diary, not just got up, had dinner, fed the dog, watched The Goodies, went to bed, read another William book, ate chocolate and fell asleep. More like Ann Frank’s type of diary, but then again I’m not locked up in some sort of annex in Amsterdam am I? I don’t have to hide from the Nazis. My uncle Stand told Aunty Flo off once when they were watching the Great Escape because she said she thought their uniforms looked smarter than the British and American ones. Don’t find that bit of history very interesting, it’s not as if it’s that long ago or real history because Grandad remembers it. I’m fed up of all those John Wayne films, honestly you’d think he’d won the war himself but my brother said he heard John Wayne didn’t even join the army, he stayed in America and made films about winning the war rather than actually doing it. Dad shouted at him and said if that’s all that arty farty college taught him then he’d be better off working in Manweb. That led to more shouting and then they went on to politics, and I’m sure I heard the word namby pamby Liberals in there somewhere.4

We did politics in school when we had the last election, I wanted to be the red team but we ended up being the Liberals with their yukky yellow. The Liberals are a waste of time, they never win, all we get is swaps between the Labour lot or the Conservatives and Mike Yarwood. He’s always doing impressions of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson, he does one with a posh voice and shaky shoulders and the other with a mac and a pipe, I can’t really tell which is which. But he’s gone now, Ted Heath, not Mike Yarwood, and they’ve got a woman and Mike Yarwood can’t do Mrs Thatcher. They all said it was funny a woman leading a party, but I suppose if she can organise Mr Thatcher she can organise a party. Bet she doesn’t cook his tea most of the time though. 5

The twins’ table ended up with red, surprise surprise, they’re always Mr Gerraty’s favourites. He lets Jeffrey and Angela have whatever they like because he can draw and she’s good at sport and throws overarm like a boy. I can just about hit the ball in rounders but I can’t slog it like she can. I hate playing against her but at least I’m still much better than she is in tests and I could do that italic writing stuff before she could. Funny how she won the prize for that field trip project we all did, wasn’t it. No prizes for guessing who the judge was. I came second and won a pound Smiths voucher, what can you really buy with that? In the end I bought a book on horses because I couldn’t find anything else, they didn’t have any decent history books or any William ones either. Our Smiths is useless, it really is. I had to get dad to order my italic pen (the Osmiroid one with interchangeable nibs) but he forgot I was left-handed and had to take it back. I had to wait even longer and I hate being behind with anything in class, me and Daniel Whittaker are still top boy and girl, we compete against each other. Mrs Hall likes healthy competition, she says we’re the future and must work hard to achieve our new world. Not quite sure what she means there.6

As this is a new diary (present from Aunty Mo) I suppose I should make my New Year’s Resolutions. So: (we learnt colons as well, Mrs H is very thorough, well dad says she is, mum would rather watch Crossroads) 7

1. I will stop biting the skin around my fingernails. Phoebe says it’s ugly and no boy will like a girl whose fingers bleed or one who has a great lump on her middle finger from holding a pen too tight. (Or one with frizzy red hair and glasses either)8

2. I will try to watch less telly. Mum says I’ve got square eyes, but what else is there to do on a Saturday morning apart from sit and watch Tiswas in my nightie? I don’t want to go shopping with them and someone has to pay the milkman. At least I don’t like Crossroads.9

3. Read more books on Ancient Egypt. Aunty Vera at the library lets me have extra tickets seeing as we’re somehow related but I still manage to finish them before the two weeks. I’ve read all the Williams they have and I’m far too old for Enid Blyton, even if Carol still sneaks in a Malory Towers in the bath, and she’s working.10

4. I will try not to cry so much when my foul brother and sister start on me. They hate me because I’m the youngest, have red hair and wear glasses. Carol says I was really blessed but I don’t think she means it.11

5. I will try to reduce my chocolate consumption. Just about finished my selection boxes, I had to move them away from under the bed because Carol had helped herself to the Mars I was saving till last, so I ate her Flake and Revels. She had more boxes of choc this year, so I ate all the orange and coffee creams from both layers. I like pulling the chocolate off and rolling the middle bits about in my mouth, it coats your teeth with a gooey taste. I do that with some Revels as well, they’re yummy. 12

Carol says I’ll get fat if I eat all the chocolate they give me and if I want to be a size ten like her and not a bunter I should stop. My brother calls me Fatty, like he can talk. I weigh 5 and a half stone, that’s hardly fat. At least I’m not a greasy haired pastry faced drunk. I’m determined to get more O Levels than he did, he only got two A grades, and they thought he’d do better than that. His A levels weren’t exactly great either, he failed his Geography – failed (yes!!!) I’d rather die than fail a test. I’d rather die than get less than 90%. Barristers have to get the highest grades because they have to be clever, but they get to wear those wigs and cloaks like on Crown Court. Grandad showed me a book he was reading about a barrister called Norman Birkett, a famous war trial barrister. I practised standing like him for ages but I didn’t have a wig, I had to use a mop head, Carol caught me and said I looked like Dougal from the Magic Roundabout. I really do hate her sometimes.13