“I’m not a stripper, you sexist oaf!” sighed Cava-Sue.
“Moving on? Er, next call. Line two,” said Reuben. “Megan in Cleetermoor?”
“Hello?” said the woman. “This is the best family feud I’ve seen for ages. You lot are so funny! You’re funnier than that family from Wigan who cut their sister’s hair with a hedge trimmer! Brilliant!”
“Thank you Megan . . . Now line three, Carrie from Goodmayes?” said Reuben. “Carrie, are you there? Carrie?!”
My heart almost stopped. Nah, it couldn’t be.
“Er, all right,” said the girl’s voice. “I . . . erm, well . . . I just had a message for Shiraz Bailey Wood. It’s Carrie Draper here. I just wanted to say, Shiz, that I’m dead proud of you. You’re a proper star. And I’m sorry, right? And we’ll sort it out, right . . .”
My heart nearly burst through my chest with happiness.
“We’re out of time,” said Reuben. “I’ll have to say good —”
“And I just wanted to say . . . ’ere, Shiz, you see that bloke on the front row with the tattoo on his face?”
“Er, yeah?” I said.
“That’s your boyfriend that is!” shouted Carrie. “See you back in Goodmayes, Shizza. Superchav Academy forever!”
I laughed so much that I hardly heard Reuben wrapping the show up ’cos there was no more time. The Wood family all fell out of the studio in a really excellent mood. In fact, backstage Kirsten-who-is-trained didn’t need to give us no more counseling or anything, she said we were just fine as we were.
And that’s what happened on
Fast-Track Family Feud.
As I say, if you don’t believe me go on YouTube and look for yourself. I ain’t no faker.
MONDAY 1ST DECEMBER
One of the best things about being proper famous, like me and Tabitha Tennant from
Big Brother
are, is how just popping to the shops for a pint of milk and a scratchcard can be so much fun. “Shiraz Bailey Wooooood!” folk yell at me in the street in Goodmayes.
“Fast-Track Family Feuuuuuuuud!”
Some kids even film me on their phones! I even signed an autograph in the chicken section of the supermarket. Carrie thinks it is all well jokes. It’s been two weeks since my TV appearance and me and Carrie have already been plotting ways to “increase our profile.” We’re thinking of auditioning for
Pop Idol
as a duo singing the Mariah Carey song “Hero.” Carrie can do all the high notes. I can do all the low notes. We’re going to call ourselves Half Rice/Half Chips.
I’m so glad that me and Carrie are best mates again. We have promised to never ever let stupid boys come between us again. Carrie is TOTALLY over Bezzie now. She says she don’t care about him at all. He sent her a text last week asking if they could have a chat soon so he could “get some closure.” She was all “I’m not bothered, mate. See ya later. Plenty more fish in the sea.”
It’s like having old Carrie back again.
I don’t think about Wesley Barrington Bains II in that mushy way no more. He’s just a mate. I mean, when I heard this week that Wesley and Dee-Dee had split up it’s not like I got my hopes up or anything. I’m keeping it real.
WEDNESDAY 3RD DECEMBER
I am proper excited about Christmas this year! Cava-Sue and my dad went to B&Q today and bought some new decorations for the front of the house. Mum says we should splurge and celebrate the Wood family being back together again. They came back with a six-foot-high multicolored Santa light display. Lewis and Dad are nailing it to the front of the house right now. Cava-Sue says she feels a bit guilty ’cos it’s going to waste loads of electricity, but she couldn’t resist it. Cava-Sue says it’s Christmas so she’s going to worry about her carbon footprint later. I love having her home.
FRIDAY 5TH DECEMBER
Carrie is trying a lot harder at school like me now too. We want to stay on in sixth form if our GCSEs go OK. I still haven’t told my mum.
Me and Carrie ain’t swots or nothing. It’s just that if Half Rice/Half Chips don’t take off we’re definitely going to need a backup career. I think we’ll be OK though. When Carrie does her bit of “Hero” and she shuts her eyes and waves her arms about she looks like a proper diva. We did it in the lunch hall today and almost everyone said we were brilliant, aside from Uma Brunton-Fletcher and Latoya Bell, who said we’re a pair of right silly cows.
SUNDAY 7TH DECEMBER
The Wood Christmas decorations have been officially switched on! They are well good!! First Aunty Glo popped over with her niece to have a look, then Mrs. Khan came too. Then cars began to stop outside the house and take photos. Then at about 7
PM
I went to the front door and there was £2.78 in loose change on the front door mat! People must reckon that we’re collecting for charity! Murphy tried to pocket it but Cava-Sue twisted his arm and took it back. Cava-Sue has made a sign for the front window saying that the Wood family are saving up to buy an alpaca for a Peruvian mountain farmer. I have looked up what an alpaca is on the Internet and it is like a furry buck-toothed goat/sheep thingy. If it comes here first it’s sleeping with Cava-Sue in the top bunk. But I don’t reckon it will be much good with ladders.
MONDAY 8TH DECEMBER
Wesley Barrington Bains II knocked on our door this evening. I was sort of shocked and embarrassed all at once as I was writing my Christmas cards, wearing baggy pajama bottoms and my dad’s old cardigan and no makeup or hoops or nothing.
“Y’all right?” I said, coming to the front door.
“Yeah, not bad innit?” he said.
We looked at each other for a while.
“You split up with Dee-Dee?” I said, like I wasn’t bothered or nothing, just making conversation.
“Yeah, man, it weren’t working out,” he said. “We wanted different stuff and that, innit?”
I folded my arms and leaned against the door frame.
“Like what different stuff?” I said. The giant multicolored Santa was flashing on and off, illuminating both of our faces.
“Well, like . . . she wanted me to go round her house and that, like, all the time and hang out,” said Wesley. “And I didn’t want that, innit.”
“Right,” I said. There was a long silence.
“So what you doin’ round here?” I said.
“Oh I was just passing,” he said. “And, erm, I wanted to give you some, erm, money for them alampakara wotsits you’re collecting for. It’s a good cause, innit.” Wesley put his hand in his trackie pants and brought out £3.
“Cheers,” I said, taking the money and sticking it my pocket. There was a longer silence.
“Well I better be getting off then,” Wesley said. “I’m meeting Bezzie. We’re going to start laying down some tracks.”
“Right, see ya then,” I said.
Wesley wandered down the path.
“’Ere, Wesley,” I said. “Do you even know what an alpaca is?”
Wesley turned around. He thought for a bit.
“It’s a big rabbit, innit?” he said.
I smiled to myself.
“It’s a bit like that,” I said, nodding my head slowly.
Then I was very brave. “’Ere, Wesley,” I said. “Did you come round here for that or for something else?”
Wesley looked a bit embarrassed.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “I wondered, like, if you wanted to come out with me next week or something? Get a pizza or something, innit?”
“Er . . . yeah,” I said, trying not to smile too much like a proper loon. “Yeah! Yeah, I would.”
“Oh, oh right,” he said, looking well relieved. “That’s sweet then, innit. I’ll send you a text or something. Sort something out.” Then he jumped in his car and disappeared into the night, leaving me standing under an illuminated Santa’s sleigh with a big smile on my gob like I’d just had a lucky scratchcard.
I still can’t believe it happened.
THURSDAY 11TH DECEMBER
Ms. Bracket has made me, Carrie, and Luther “student liaison contacts” for the Mayflower Academy 2007 Winter Festival! Basically, this means that we’re helping sort out the Christmas Carol Service on the nineteenth, except this year there will CERTAINLY be no carols and no religious stuff at all ’cos of last year’s “fiasco” with the rude carols and Sonia Cathcart’s dad kicking off and all that brouhaha.
Mr. Bamblebury says that we should try to make it “a celebration of light,” ’cos then it will be a little bit like Jewish Hanukkah and a little bit like Eid, and a little bit like a Pagan celebration, and we can all get together and sing some songs from the
Come and Praise
songbook about robins and have a plastic cup of non-alcoholic mulled wine and THAT CAN’T OFFEND ANYONE CAN IT?!
Mr. Bamblebury looks like he needs a holiday.
No word at all from Wesley. Did I imagine all that?
MONDAY 15TH DECEMBER
Wesley Barrington Bains II texted me tonight! He is taking me for a pizza on Friday night as soon as he gets paid from Argos. IT’S LIKE A PROPER DATE!!!
I’ve never been on a date before. I can’t imagine sitting eating a whole pizza in front of him. What if I get it all over my face? And what will we talk about? And what will I wear? As if I ain’t got enough to think about. I’ve got a Winter Festival to organize. Me, Carrie, Kezia, and Luther spent all lunch hour making fifteen hundred feet of festive paper chains out of old recycling paper to decorate the hall. It’s quite pretty if you squint. I hope it all goes OK.
WEDNESDAY 18TH DECEMBER
Oh my days.
THURSDAY 19TH DECEMBER
There is no way that I can POSSIBLY be to blame for what happened at the Mayflower Academy 2007 Winter Festival. NO WAY. I wasn’t anywhere near it. ON MY LIFE. All I can say, right, is that if the police want to come and take this diary as evidence they totally can ’cos then they’ll see that I was proper innocent and who they want to be looking at is Uma Brunton-Fletcher ’cos she was the one messing about.
So we’re all in the school hall, right, all of Year Nine, Ten and Eleven, all the mums and dads and the teachers, and we’ve sung the song about the robin, and Sean Burton has been on and done his “Poem for Peace,” and then some kids dressed as snowdrops have done their “representation of winter via the power of dance” and everything’s going well and no one’s got punched and we’re all happy. Then all that has to happen is Elliot Marsden from Year Nine has to walk through the crowd with a candle on a plate singing “The Greatest Love Of All” by Whitney Houston, ’cos there’s a line in it about “children being the future” which is sort of true if you think about it, except by the time he got halfway through the crowd, he let out a scream that was most definitely not in the song.
It turned out that as he passed the Year Eleven seats, Uma Brunton-Fletcher has got some hairspray out of her handbag and given his candle a quick squirt. Now in fairness, I reckon all Uma wanted to do was give him a shock and make Latoya laugh, but what happened was the flame shot right out and caught hold of one of the paper chains hanging off the tree, which set fire to another chain, then another, then another, ’cos we’d made like fifteen hundred feet of them.
Then everyone began to scream, then Ms. Bracket shouted, “Don’t panic! Don’t panic. Evacuate the assembly hall! Walk slowly!” And of course everyone didn’t, they just ran for it, pushing each other and shouting. Then Mr. Gilligan got the fire extinguisher and he was squirting the tree like mad but it was still on fire and eventually he gave up and called 911.
Me, Carrie, Luther, Sonia Cathcart, Sean Burton, the Bean twins, Kezia, and Chantalle Strong all stood by the school gates and watched as the flames began to take hold of the assembly hall. We waited for the fire engine and we waited and waited but it didn’t come, and eventually Mr. Bamblebury called 911 again and the fire brigade said they were sorry but they were on their works dinner and they’d assumed it was another Mayflower end-of-term prank so they’d been finishing their Christmas pudding. And by that point the roof of the assembly hall had pretty much gone and the local newspaper and TV crews had arrived, and that’s how we ended up on the front of the
Ilford Bugle
with the headline
YET ANOTHER CHRISTMAS SHAMBLES FOR SUPERCHAV ACADEMY.
This year it was totally not my fault, so in a funny way that is progress.
FRIDAY 20TH DECEMBER
I went to Pizza Partyland in Romford tonight with Wesley Barrington Bains II. He picked me up in his banana-yellow Golf at 7:30
pm.
The entire family stood at the window and waved me off, which was totally embarrassing but made Wesley laugh lots. Wesley thinks my family are proper jokes. I s’pose they have their moments. I thought it might be a bit awkward going out on a date with Wesley ’cos we have been just good friends for a long time, but it wasn’t at all. We had the Ho Ho Ho — Festive Partyland Special which was a turkey-and-stuffing pizza with jalapeños and Christmas-pudding ice cream to follow. We drove the long way home afterwards and sat outside my house for a bit in the car, talking about life and all that. He gave me a kiss. A proper kiss. Properly on the mouth. His lips are lovely and he closes his eyes when he kisses. I am so happy that I keep wanting to be sick.
He is the most beautiful boy in the whole world ever.
THURSDAY 25TH DECEMBER — CHRISTMAS DAY
A lot of people moan about Christmas but I don’t know why ’cos it is proper amazing. Cava-Sue sat up in bed this morning at about 8
AM
and she laughed and shouted, “’Ere Shiraz, Santa’s been! He’s been!” And I thought she was maybe still drunk ’cos she was right tipsy when she climbed the ladder last night, but then I sat up in bed and she was right, there were two bags at the end of our bunks with boxes of chocolate and Top Shop gift cards and some necklaces and gold hoops and stuff! Mum is still swearing down dead it wasn’t her.
I went downstairs and Dad was wandering about in a pair of flashing antlers reminding everyone about how early he had to get up for the turkey, and the dog was begging Quality Street chocolate and Murphy got a new PS2 game called
Death Swamp 3,
and Mum was in her nightie having a go at killing swampbeasts. Me and Cava-Sue peeled some spuds and danced to Radio One, and Murphy never took the mickey once about me and Wesley, and Cava-Sue didn’t pretend to not know any of the “commercial songs,” and Mum never moaned about Cava-Sue being drunk last night, and we all laughed a lot. That’s the good thing about Christmas Day, it’s all about getting along.