How to Survive Summer Camp (12 page)

‘This is ridiculous,’ I said.

I wondered if it could have been Tinkypoo. But he never came near our dormi. It was a mystery.

The plot of
Curse of the Killer Vampire Bats
remained a mystery too. In the end I just wrote,
‘Curse of the Killer
Vampire Bats
is the best film I’ve ever seen. If you see it you will be scared senseless.’ I drew a picture of Bloodsucker grinning wickedly and coloured all round his mouth very red indeed.

It was getting near lunch time but I got started on my
story, copying out Princess Stellarina from my red and black notebook.

‘You’ve got your own notebook, you could have done the magazine in that,’ said Marzipan reproachfully.

‘Yes, but I’ve written out my Stellarina story in it, I’ve used up heaps of pages.’

‘You’re using up heaps of my pages now,’ said Marzipan. ‘What are you copying out?’

‘My Princess Stellarina story. It’s going to be the special Star Story now.’

‘Oh goody goody,’ said Rosemary, tucking Dora into a new bed of clean T-shirt and knickers.

‘You can’t put that story in your magazine,’ said Marzipan. ‘The Brigadier and Miss Hamer-Cotton and Uncle Ron might want to have a read of it. They’ll have a fit. They’ll see you’re making fun of them. Oh, Stella, you can’t!’

‘Yes, I can,’ I said—but when I read the whole story through I started to worry. Perhaps I could cross out the Brigavampire parts. The Brigadier was sort of my friend now. I could leave in the bits about Hag Hateful-Catty—although she
was
the Brigadier’s daughter. Well, at least I could keep the Uncle
Pong parts. Or could I? Uncle Ron kept swearing he’d have me swimming like a little seal by the time I went home. I still couldn’t swim more than two strokes at a time and I kept going under and choking—but when I was nearly crying Uncle Ron ducked under the water and came up blowing bubbles so that I laughed instead.

I sighed now and ripped out my Stellarina story from the magazine. I’d have to think of something else instead.

I
 brooded about my story over lunch and let my meal go cold. It didn’t really matter. The fishfingers were lukewarm to start with and so undercooked that I couldn’t help imagining the cold slimy little things still had tails and fins and beady eyes underneath the breadcrumbs. I prodded them dubiously and reached for my pudding. It was jam tart, a smear of strawberry on great grey paving-stone pastry and the custard had sickened in its jug and developed hard skin and boils.

I made this joke and everyone groaned and stopped eating except James.

‘Honestly, James, how can you eat it?’ I said, staring in horrified fascination as he dipped a fishfinger into custard and ate both with relish.

‘I’m hungry, see,’ said James, his mouth full. ‘But I agree, this tuck is horrible muck. It’s even worse than my school and that’s breaking the rule. That’s just zero zero zero stars in my personal Bad Food Guide. This is zero zero zero
zilch
, I must confide.’

I had a sudden idea.

‘James, you’re interested in food, aren’t you?’

‘You’d be a twit not to notice it,’ said James.

‘Can you do any cooking?’

‘Mmm,’ said James, nodding.

‘You cook?’ said Richard, sniggering. ‘A boy cooking! What a cissy.’

‘Of course I can, it’s a job for a man,’ said James. ‘A chef is a bloke and that’s not a joke.’

‘You wouldn’t like to write a cookery page for my magazine, would you?’ I asked eagerly.

‘I’ll write you a page for a very large wage.’

‘I can’t pay you anything!’

‘Then I won’t do it and you just blew it.’

‘Oh do stop those silly rhymes, they don’t half get on my nerves. Look, I’m not paying any of the others anything so why should I pay you? Please do it, James. Go on. It’d be ever so good.’

I tried flattering him like anything but I couldn’t get round him. I asked Marzipan and some of the other girls if they could do it instead, but none of us knew much about cooking.

Then the next morning I got a present from Mum and Uncle Bill. They were spending the first few days of their honeymoon in Paris and so they sent me a real French can-can dancer doll. She had feathers in her hair and a frilly pink skirt like a lampshade. I lifted up the pink ruffles to see what sort of knickers she was wearing and discovered that she didn’t even have legs, let alone knickers. The space underneath her skirt was filled with a cone of chocolates wrapped in pink foil paper.

I tried one straight away but it was a bit of a disappointment.
It was plain chocolate for a start and the filling was flavoured with liqueur or something that made it taste bitter. I let Marzipan have a nibble and she didn’t like it much either.

But I knew who might like it. I did a little bargaining with James and he eventually agreed to write a cookery page for a fee of five French chocolates.

‘Though it’s not much of a wage. And what sort of cookery page?’ said James, munching.

‘I don’t know. It’s up to you. Do me a recipe for something. Only don’t do it in rhyme, that’s all I ask.’

James went away and wrote me out a recipe for Special Star biscuits. I thought that was a smashing idea but when I read it through I couldn’t understand half of it because it was full of those weird cookery

words that always get me muddled. How can you
cream
butter and sugar? And how do you leave to cool? Does that mean put in fridge? How cool is cool?

James sighed and said I was as thick as a brick but when I gave him two more chocolates he wrote it all out again using ordinary words I could understand.

STAR BISCUITS. A RECIPE FOR COMPLETE IDIOTS

Things you need to make the biscuits:

4 oz butter (just cut one packet in half)

4 oz caster sugar (if you haven’t got scales

to weigh it on then it’s four heaped table

spoons. They’re the great big ones you can’t

get right into your mouth)

8 oz plain flour (measure in same way)

5 oz icing sugar (measure ditto)

1 egg

1 tube of little silver balls for decoration

1 Jiffy lemon

Right. First switch on the oven at 190oc (375F) or gas mark 5. This can heat up nicely while you make the biscuits. Don’t take all day or you’ll be wasting electricity. You take the butter and
the caster sugar first. (Not the icing sugar. Guess what. That is for icing the biscuits.) You shove the butter and caster sugar in a big bowl and beat them around with a wooden spoon. They stick together in lumps and it looks as if it isn’t going to work but carry on mixing them and quite soon they blend together and go all soft and creamy and smooth. Then you add the flour and mix that around too until it all looks the same colour. Then in another bowl crack the egg (just bash it on the side of the bowl and let it slurp out inside the bowl, not outside) and beat it up with a fork until it stops looking disgusting and is a nice frothy yellow. Then add the egg into the bowl of butter, sugar, and flour. It goes all oozy and you have to beat it around quite a bit with the spoon. You can also do it with your hand but if so make sure your hands are clean. No one wants little bits of fluff or grit or worse lurking in their biscuit. When it is all smooth like soft plasticine you get a rolling pin. Roll the nice squidgy mixture on a clean surface on which you’ve sprinkled a little bit of flour. You can sprinkle flour on your rolling pin too. Only a bit, don’t make it look as if it’s snowing.

Then roll it out carefully. You
must
know how to roll, if not you’re too thick to make biscuits, you probably don’t even know how to eat them. When it’s all smooth and as flat as you can get it without it developing holes then use a cutter. Ideally you need a cutter in the shape of a star. If you haven’t got one maybe you could use a round jampot lid and then snip into the circle with scissors turning it into a star. This might make the stars a bit lopsided but have a go. Then you smear a bit of old butter or marge all over a baking tray (great if you can just use the wrapper round the butter). This is to make the tray slippery so the biscuits won’t stick when they’re cooked. Put the star shapes on the greased baking tray. Leave a biscuit-sized gap between each one because they spread out a lot as they cook. Then put them in the oven on one of the little shelves. Not right at the top or they might burn. Make sure you close the door properly. They take about 8–10 minutes to cook. While they are doing this then you’re supposed to wash up. I don’t always. About 8 minutes after you’ve put the biscuits in they start to smell delicious. You can open the oven