Hunky Dory. Jean Ure

      Molly, Polly, Dolly, Roly, and Jack. They are mostly white with brown splodges except for Roly, who has a black patch over one eye, and they are all mad and busy, just like Mum. They bark a lot and run around and jump on things. They also dig holes in the garden and play tug with people’s knickers and underpants and bury chew sticks under cushions so that when you sit down you go “Ow! Ouch!” and wonder what is sticking into you. They are what Dad calls “dogs with attitude”.

      I have just thought of something else to add to my list and that is friends. I have two of them. Well, I have lots of people I am friendly with, but only two that are best mates. They are:

      Rosemary Jones, who is my Uncle Clive’s step daughter, which is why we have the same surname. I usually call her the Herb, as she hates the name Rosemary. In return, she calls me DJ, or Deeje.

      She is kind of shortish and stubbyish, with blonde hair which she wears in spikes. Even though she is a girl, we get on really well. She does sometimes giggle, but not in an embarrassing kind of way, and she never does that screechy thing that lots of girls do, like when one of the Russells jumps up and scrapes her leg or puts great dollops of mud all over her. Most girls would go shrieeeek! Ow! Look what it’s done! but not the Herb. She doesn’t mind getting muddy. She doesn’t mind her legs being scraped. She doesn’t mind getting rained on or falling off her bike and banging her head. For a girl, she is all right. She lives just round the corner, and as we go to the same school and are even in the same year (though not in the

      same class) we see each other pretty much all the time.

      My other best mate is Aaron. Aaron Chandler. I have known him for ever. He is a small, knobbly kind of person. Knobbly knees, knobbly wrists. His face is covered in freckles and he has bright orange hair the colour of carrots. Carrots is what I used to call him, back in Juniors, until he said to me one day that he didn’t think I should, as it “wasn’t politically correct”, so after that I didn’t do it any more. I couldn’t really see what was wrong with it, like I couldn’t see that calling someone Carrots was insulting or anything, I mean what’s wrong with carrots? But he is my friend and I didn’t want to upset him.

      Me and Aaron not only go to the same school but are in the same class. We hang out with Calum Bickerstaff and Joe Icard, but Joe and Calum live way over the other side of town so out of school we don’t meet up that often. It’s usually just Aaron and me—and the Herb. The Herb’s like an honorary boy; she joins us most of the time. Aaron reckons she’s OK.

      Actually, I’m a bit worried about Aaron. He wasn’t in school today, which was how Amy Wilkerson got to park herself next to me. If Aaron had been there, she wouldn’t have dared. I just hope he’s back tomorrow! I can’t cope with this; it’s all too much. I don’t want another messed up page in my geography book!

      Why can’t all girls be like the Herb?

       Two

       Thursday

       LIKES AND DISLIKES

       Name your favourite

      Food Maggot pie and chips

      Drink Wet sick

      Colour Puke greenS

      ong Mr Smelly Goes to Town

      TV programme Secrets of a Sewage Farm

      Band Flaming Flamingos

      The Microdot gave me this questionnaire. She said she was doing tests, and I had to fill it in. So I filled it in, and she screamed at me.

      “This is just stupid!”

      Actually, I thought it was quite funny, but the Microdot has no sense of humour. She screeched, “I suppose you think you’re being clever?”

      I guess I might have smirked a bit. Not exactly meaning to; more like a sort of nervous tic. It does my head in when she screeches. Trouble is, once she starts she can’t seem to stop. She just rages on and on. She screeched at me that it wasn’t clever, it was stupid.

      “There isn’t any such programme as Secrets of a Sewage Farm, and if it was it would be disgusting!”

      I said, “Pardon me, that is just your interpretation.”

      “What about maggot pie? Are you trying to tell me that’s not disgusting? And what’s this stupid Flamingo thing? I’ve never heard of a band called that. You just made it up!”

      I said, “How do you know? You don’t know the name of every band there’s ever been.”

      Witheringly she said that nobody would call a band anything that stupid. “It’s just about the stupidest name I ever heard!”

      I told her that that was the fifth time she’d used the word stupid. I said, “You ought to get a bit more vocabulary.”

      She screeched, “Yes, and you ought to get a life! You know what this shows, don’t you?” She snatched up the questionnaire and waved it at me. “It shows that you’re repressed.”

      I said, “Yeah?” I don’t think she even knows what the word means.

      She said, “Yeah! It shows you’re too scared to reveal your true self…you have to hide behind being stupid.”

      “That makes the sixth time,” I said.

      “Sixth time what?”

      “Sixth time you’ve used that word.”

      “That’s cos it’s the only one that describes you!”

      All because I treated her silly little questionnaire as a joke. I bet even if I’d taken it seriously she’d still have said it showed there was something weird about me. She’s always saying I’m weird. She told me the other day I was like a human hermit crab.

      “Skulking in your shell!”

      If I’m like a hermit crab, she’s like a hornet, all angry and buzzing. Zzz, zzz, zzz! You’re stupid, you’re weird!

      I’m not like a hermit crab; I don’t skulk. She just can’t bear it when other people don’t share her interests. Shopping, and shrieking, and giggling. I reckon she ought to learn to be a bit more tolerant.

      Now she’s threatening to give me more of her idiotic tests. She gets them out of girly mags. Ten Ways to Tell if a Boy’s Interested in You. (Like any boy ever would be, the way she carries on.) Check your Popularity. Check your Street Cred. It’s all rubbish! She’d better not try any of them on me. She tried one on Dad the other day. Something about hair. What your Latest Hair Style reveals about You. Dad practically hasn’t got any hair. Will said, “What it reveals is that Dad is going bald.” She didn’t have a go at him. She didn’t accuse him of being stupid. It’s just me she’s got it in for. Her and her tests!

      If she gives me that one about Check your Popularity I shall refuse to answer it. I don’t see why, just because she’s my sister, she should be allowed to humiliate me.

       Friday

      Aaron came back to school today; he said he’d been off with earache. I told him what had happened with Amy Wilkerson, parking herself next to me and breathing over me. He drew in his breath and said, “I’d keep an eye on her, if I were you. Gobbles boys up for breakfast, that one. Obviously fancies you. It’s what they do, they come and breathe over you, and touch you…did she touch you?”

      I