The Donut Diaries (8 page)

Then Dad did something unheard of. He paused the movie.

‘The thing is, son, when you’re an adult, sometimes you look around and you think, is that it? Have I already had all the good things and, from now on, is it only this? Because I didn’t actually have that many good things, and it doesn’t seem fair.’

I didn’t really know what to say to that. And then, as if by magic, I sort of
did
know what to say next.

‘Sometimes, Dad, when I get a box of donuts, I eat them without really paying attention to them. So I sort of waste them. All I get is the calories and the fat and the sugar, but not the fun. And then I look down and the donuts are all gone. And that’s pretty depressing. But then it hits me: if I want to, tomorrow I can just go out and get some more donuts. Because there are still, you know, donuts out there, just waiting for you.’

My dad nodded and hit the ‘play’ button. And then, about five minutes later, he started to laugh and he threw a nibbled quadrant of pizza crust at me, and then I laughed too, and pretty soon we were laughing so hard we were spraying out pizza crumbs and cola and beer.

We were still laughing when the girls came in. They all had black lines on their cheeks from
where
their eye make-up stuff had run because of all the crying they’d been doing in their soppy film. So I reckoned that, in this particular war between boys and girls, we’d won 10–0.

All that talk of donuts had given me a craving for the real thing but a) I didn’t have any, and b) I was quite full of pizza, and c) I had a funny feeling that something was coming – something that might need to be confronted with a stomach full of donut, so I’d better save up my allowance.

1
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you should just watch
The Great Escape
, because it’s the third most brilliant film in the history of the world.

LIKE I SAID
, I’d known it was coming for a while, but some ancient instinct for self-preservation kept it from the forefront of my mind. ‘It’ was Doc Morlock, the nutritionist who’d made my life hell last term by banning donuts (or trying to) and generally being mean – not to mention her possession of a mouth like a cat’s bum and a vulture neck and scaly claws instead of hands.

Her main thing was poo. Yep, she was a world
expert
. She could tell from your poo exactly what was wrong with you and what you should do to put it right – e.g. stop eating donuts, or do more exercise or whatever. Well, the thing is, she’d been given her own TV series on a rubbish satellite channel. It was called
Whose Poohs.
¹
On
Whose Poohs
, various minor celebrities would come on with samples of their poo, and Doc Morlock would have to work out which poo belonged to which celebrity.

It was definitely the most useless programme in the history of broadcasting.

And we had tickets to be in the studio audience.

We had tickets partly because I was Doc
Morlock’s
favourite ex-patient, as she had ‘saved’ me from my donut addiction. Or so she thought. I’d played a rather brilliant trick on her by substituting some healthy, vegetable-rich poo produced by a grumpy chimp called Samson for my own sugary, donut-flavoured poo. We were also going because my mum and Doc Morlock were now friends, which is a bit like the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939 that we did in history, except that my mum isn’t really as evil as Hitler or Stalin, even if Doc Morlock is. Anyway, the pact meant that my mum could get as many tickets as she wanted, which isn’t really surprising considering how terrible the show was.

So there we all were: me, Mum, Dad, Ruby. Ella said that she was too sick to come, which was both a massive, obvious lie and also the complete and utter truth, as she is, actually, sick.
(I
mean the kind of sick that you say with a groan, as in ‘You’re sick, man,’ and not the sick that means quite cool, as in ‘That’s a sick game.’ Or, for that matter, the kind of sick that means you’re dying of bubonic plague, or your finger’s just dropped off because you’ve got leprosy.)

We had to be in our seats half an hour before the recording started, which was pretty boring. Then we had a guy who came on and told us some jokes that were so lame not even a schoolteacher would have bothered with them. His job, my dad told me, was to get us warmed up so we all sounded like we were enjoying ourselves when the actual programme started.

I suppose it was kind of interesting seeing how programmes got made. There were lots of people running around wearing headphones and carrying clipboards. There were lights, and
there
were microphones, and there were video monitors. There were just two cameras, which even I knew was a bit cheap and rubbish.

And then a sad-looking man did a sort of countdown with his fingers and we all had to clap.

Then Doc Morlock came out with a terrifying smile contorting her narrow lips. Despite the fact that she was all glammed up, in a posh frock and make-up as thick as school rice pudding, she looked more than ever like the Grand High Witch.

‘And I know you’ll all be as excited as I am when I welcome my guests today,’ she said.

Then a man who’d once come third on
Big Brother
came out, followed by a woman who’d once snogged someone famous, and finally by an actor who’d been a heartthrob back in the
1970s
, but who couldn’t smile because he’d had so many facelifts his belly button was now where his mouth had once been. Where his mouth was, I didn’t like to think …

Mum and Ruby both seemed to be enjoying themselves. I glanced over at Dad, and at the same moment he looked at me. A rare moment of understanding passed between us. We’d both stared into the Pit, and seen the demons and monsters and devils writhing there.

I can hardly bring myself to recount what happened next. Basically, the three ‘celebrities’ had given Doc Morlock their ‘samples’ earlier on. Then she talked about them, pointing out the good and bad sides of their poos. It was a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. One was too hard, one was too soft, and one was just right.

Doc Morlock didn’t stop at analysing the diets that had resulted in the three poos. She described one as being ‘a typical Aquarius stool’. So it seemed that even poos had star signs. And she thought that one of the poos (the very hard one that looked like a burned cocktail sausage) was clearly indicative of a recent bereavement, or possibly divorce. I started thinking about poos getting married. I sort of hoped that they got married to other poos, or else someone was going to be very unhappy on their wedding night.

Anyway, the climax came, and Doc Morlock wrote down which poo belonged to which celebrity and put it in a sealed envelope. Then the studio audience got to vote as well, using the little buttons on the arms of our chairs. Mum and Ruby got all excited about it and discussed
their
choice as if it was the most important thing since the first humans climbed out of the trees. Dad, I noticed, used his voting finger to pick his nose. I decided to register my disapproval by randomly pressing buttons, thereby hoping to bring the system crashing down.

It didn’t work.

The divorced poo belonged to the old actor. The sloppy one belonged to the girl who’d kissed someone famous, and the just right one belonged to the
Big Brother
guy. He was given a cheque for a thousand pounds to donate to his favourite charity, which he said was dedicated to giving sustainably produced organic bobble hats to mad people in Ecuador.

Doc Morlock got all the poos right, but I expect it was rigged. One person from the studio audience who’d got all three right was randomly
selected
by computer and won a prize, which turned out to be the three celebrity poos.

When we got home, Dad put the lights on in the living room, and suddenly we saw a tangle of spindly black-clad arms and legs springing apart. It was Ella and Crow. They’d definitely been snogging.

It was the most disgusting thing I’d seen all night. Including the poos.

I told my friend Jim all about it today (it’s Sunday). Jim doesn’t go to my school, so I only ever see him at weekends. He didn’t believe a word of it. He said he knew that there was a lot of poo on the telly, but not real-life poo. So that’s when I showed him the three samples of celebrity poo.

Yep,
I
was the lucky winner.

You’re not going to believe this, but in spite of the IMMENSE provocations of the evening I kept to my target. My enemies should quake before me. Truly I am a boy with a WILL OF STEEL!

1
I think that they put the ‘h’ on to make it less rude, like it was just Winnie-the-Pooh they were talking about, rather than what comes out of your bottom.

NOW THEY’RE CALLING
him the Brown Phantom. Yes, there has been another attack. The third. This time it was left steaming in the middle of the corridor during morning break. I was alone in our form room, desperately trying to finish the geography homework I’d forgotten about. The thing about Hairy Braintree, our geography teacher, is that he never actually reads what you’ve done, but just gives you a mark depending on how much you’ve written. So,
technically
, you could write any old rubbish, as long as it filled up a few pages.

Hence: ‘Ecuador’s biggest import is ethically produced bobble hats for the insane …’ etc. etc.

So it wasn’t that
hard
, but it had to be done, and so I missed most of the excitement.

Spam told me later that
it
was discovered by Miss Bush, the school secretary, and she had to be given counselling so that it didn’t haunt her dreams for ever, which can apparently happen. I imagined her dying years later in a nursing home somewhere, her last moments on earth completely ruined by the giant poo, looming up at her like a king cobra about to strike. Miss Bush wasn’t very nice, but she didn’t deserve
that
. Nobody deserved
that
. Except maybe Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Doc Morlock and my sisters.

By the way, I’m adopting a light-hearted approach to this as a way of hiding the extreme pain and anguish in my soul. I bet you’re thinking, How could the Brown Phantom possibly cause pain and anguish to me? Wasn’t it exactly the sort of thing that would, in fact, add large amounts of happiness to my days? Yes, ordinarily. People pooping around the school was funny. Very funny.