‘Luuurve is a many trousered thing…’. Louise Rennison

is still lying on his back on the wall while Naomi licks his face, and now she has started on his bum-oley. How disgusting. Kittyporn first thing in the morning.

      Also, they are both covered in what looks like snot.

      Oh, Blimey O’Reilly’s trousers, it isn’t snot; it’s frogspawn. They have been marauding about in Mr and Mrs Next Door’s new marine conservation area – known to other normal people as a bucket with disgusting tadpoles and slime in it. The Prat brothers, also known as Mr Next Door’s annoying and useless toy poodles, were on marine conservation lifeguard duty. So all Angus had to do was duff them up a bit, round them up into their kennel, and then it was a night of splashing around in the bucket to his heart’s content.

      The Next Doors will go absolutely ballistic; they always do about the least thing. Mr Next Door has been hovering on the edge of a nervy spaz for the last year and this might drive him over the edge and into the rest home. His shorts will probably explode with the tension. Which is no bad thing, unless I happen to be around at the time and am exposed to the sight of his huge bottom looming about.

      I said to Angus, “You are soooo bad, Angus, and in for big trub. That is a fact. Au revoir, dead kitty pal.”

      I’m sure he understands every word I say because he got idly to his feet, stretched, and nudged Naomi off the wall. He treats his girls rough.

      Naomi leaped back on the wall and arched her back and raised her hackles, making that really mad screechy noise that Burmese cats do. She was spitting at Angus and teetering backwards and forwards. Really, really mad.

      Angus was frightened. Not. When she got near enough he biffed her with his paw and she disappeared over the wall again. You had to laugh.

      Not for long, though, because after he had rolled about on the lawn to get rid of the frogspawn he began stalking me.

      Oh no, not today, my furry friend. I am not having him tagging along with me all day causing mayhem and eating anything that moves. I said, “Clear off, Angus, stay there. Sit. Sit.”

      I even threw him a stick to distract him and he ran bounding off after it, but then came back to trail along behind me.

      I started running.

      He started running.

      I hid behind a wall.

      His head loomed over the wall at me.

      In the end, to give him the hint, I threw stones at him – some of them quite big.

      Five minutes later

      This is hopeless. He doesn’t care about having stones thrown at him at all. He is senselessly brave.

      One minute later

      He is trying to catch the stones in his mouth.

      One minute later

      He’s just slightly dazed himself by heading one of them.

      In Jas’s garden

      9:00 a.m.

      No sign of Jas being up and her curtains are drawn. Damny damn damn. She is so lazy, snoozing in Pantsland. I don’t want to arouse any interest in the elderly mad by ringing the bell. Even though Jas’s M and D are on the whole more acceptable than most, in that they provide snacks and Jas’s dad doesn’t speak, they are still technically in the elderly-loon category.

      Three minutes later

      How can I get Jas to get up without ringing the doorbell?

      One minute later

      Oh, here we are! There is a ladder in the shed. I can use my initiative and Girl Guide training (which I haven’t got and never will have) and use the ladder to make a small fire to send smoke signals past her bedroom window. Shut up, brain.

      Five minutes later

      It must be a child’s ladder as it only reaches to just above the lounge window. I would have to have orang-utan arms on stilts to reach Jas’s window. Poo and merde.

      Two minutes later

      As I was looking up wondering how to make my arms grow, something bit my ankle really viciously. Angus was on the ladder with me, looking at me and playfully biting my legs. Ouch, bloody ouch.

      I reached down to strangle him and I was just saying, “You bloody furry freak, I’ll kill you when I get down from here…” when I saw Jas’s dad standing on the garden path with his paper, smoking his unlit pipe. He was looking at me, like I was Norma Normal.

      I said, “Ah yes, I was just… thinking I’d see what your garden looked like from up here. And yep, yep, it looks very, very nice indeed. Full of stuff. Growing and so on.”

      What was I talking about?

      Five minutes later

      Jas’s dad is sensationally nice, or insane, it’s hard to tell. He let Angus carry his newspaper into the house, and didn’t even seem to mind when he ate it.

      In Jas’s bedroom

      I managed to dig Jas out from underneath her owls. How many stuffed owls can one person collect? A LOT is the answer in her case. What is the matter with her? Also, she was vair vair grumpy when I woke her up with a kiss. It was only on her cheek but you would think she had been attacked by hordes of lesbians in cowboy outfits.

      Blimey. She looks very odd in the mornings and her fringe was akimbo to the max. She looked like a startled earwig in jimmy-jams.

      I said, “So, so? What happened?”

      She looked at me and started early-morning fiddling with her fringe. Vair annoying.

      She said, “You just ran off like a fool.”

      I said, “Yes, I know, I was there.”

      “Yes, you say that, but you weren’t there, that is the whole point. And everyone was going, ‘What’s Georgia doing? Has she gone mad?’ and so on.”

      “Jas, if I get you a little cup of tea and a snacklet will you try to be normal and tell me everything that happened? It is a matter of life and death. YOUR life and YOUR death.”

      Ten minutes later

      It’s quite nice and cosy tucked up in bed with Jas and snacksies. Except that I think I have an owl’s beak up my bum-oley.

      Jas was munching and rambling. “Well, first of all, after you had run off like a ninny – by the way, you run in a really weird way in those high heels. You looked like Nauseating P. Green when she’s playing hockey. Her legs go all spazzy and—”

      I hit her with Snowy Owl. She almost choked on her toast.

      I said, “Jas, get on with it, I have only got about fifty more years to live.”

      “Well, first of all, the boys did that boy thing with Robbie.”

      “What boy thing?”

      “You know, slapping each other on the shoulders, shaking hands, and so on.”

      “Yeah.”

      Jas went on, “Robbie was saying hello to a lot of people and Masimo got his jacket on. You were just approaching the park by then; we could still see you. Masimo said to Tom, ‘She asked me about footie results. Then she ran away. Is she normal?’”

      Ohmygiddygod. I said to Jas,