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Found on the shores of The West Midlands. The Coventry Conch tells the tale of a young girl's experience growing up in Coventry in the 1990's.

Sunday 6 December 2015

THE CHRISTMAS DISCO

www.hannahslaney.com  

5pm

Mum is helping me get ready for the Christmas disco. I’m wearing a black velvet skirt with an orange velvet crop top and Mum has crimped my hair and sprayed it with glitter.

I’ve borrowed some of Mum’s perfume called Sunflowers. I’m not sure if I smell nice or not, because Jenny says that I smell like Toilet Duck. I think Jenny’s just jealous though. She has to stay in and look at the new Next catalogue with Mum and Nanny Pam all night, because she’s too old to come to the disco.

5.30pm

I have to get a lift with Grandad, because Dad’s car broke down outside Londis last week.

Grandad is late! His car is full of all his usual junk from carboot sales, but this time there’s a load of Christmas stuff too. I have to sit with a Father Christmas doll on my lap that dances and plays Another Rock N’ Roll Christmas when you press it’s belly.

Grandad makes me hold the seat belt in the socket the whole way, because he says it’s buggered, and he keeps singing the same line from a really annoying song about driving home for Christmas.

 ‘Driving home for Christmas...in me car... driving home for Christmas'

When we pull up to the school, I can see Tom from my class standing outside the gate. I hide behind the Father Christmas Doll, which starts singing and dancing again. Tom looks really good. He’s had his haircut; it’s all shaved apart from a fringe, which he’s gelled into points.

Grandad asks me what I’m hiding for, then looks at Tom and say’s, ‘There’s something you should know about boys, sweetheart, we’re only after one thing. You don’t want to end up getting knocked up like your mother did. Now, we like you love, but you and your sister were massive, massive mistakes.

Ok, have fun. I might be able to pick you up later’.

6.00pm

I walk into school. It feels funny seeing it in the dark. In the corridor outside the school hall some of the teachers are selling orange juice and sweets. The teachers are dressed in their normal teacher clothes except they have jeans on. The only grown up who’s made an effort is Mr. Haywood, the Caretaker. He’s wearing a sequin waistcoat, a piano tie and a light up Father Christmas hat.

While I wait for my cousin, Amy, to come and meet me, I have an orange juice to calm my nerves. Amy hates school as much as I do and I had to beg her to come to the disco. I told her how much I wanted Tom to see me in my velvet outfit and that we could practice our dancing.

When Amy gets here I have another orange juice with her and we go into the hall together. The DJ is rubbish. He keeps saying stupid things on his microphone, like: ‘I can’t hear you guys having F F F Fun’. I’m not even sure he’s a real DJ, I think he's Natalie’s dad. The lights look really cool though, and me and Amy try and stamp on the same light as it moves around the room.

The DJ says, ‘Here’s your first slowy of the night L L L Lovebirds’ and starts playing the song from Robin Hood. Me and Amy start singing along really loudly in a cheesy way, but everyone else starts to walk around slowly and boys and girls start dancing with each other. I look around for Tom and he’s dancing with Lisa from our class. My eyes start to sting a bit, so I ask Amy if she wants another drink.

The song lasts ages, I manage to have three orange juices before it’s even finished. When I get home, I’m writing ‘Robin Hood Song’ on the list of things I hate in the back of my diary, it can go under Cheese Strings and Liars.


6.30pm

We drink one more orange juice before we go back into the hall to dance.

After YMCA and Wig Wam Bam, the DJ plays Saturday Night by Whigfield,  everyone gets into lines and starts doing the dance. I start to feel a bit weird but I keep dancing. Half way through my tummy feels horrible, I do the bit where you jump and clap, then I start being sick all over the place. A lot of people don’t see and carry on dancing, then they start slipping in the orange juice sick until it gets everywhere and someone tells a teacher, who evacuates the hall.

7pm

I’m sat on a bench in the hall with Amy, my teacher, Mrs Woods, and a bucket. Everyone else is in the corridor apart from Mr. Haywood, who is cleaning up the sick with a mop; he’s taken his sequin waistcoat off and is whistling along to Last Christmas.  I feel really sad watching Mr. Haywood and start to cry a bit.


7.30pm

Most people have gone home, but I’m still stood outside the school gate waiting for Grandad to pick me up. Tom is waiting by the gate for his mum. I’m not in the mood to try and show off to him, so I just concentrate on smoothing out the velvet on my skirt where the sick was.

Tom asks me why I was sick. I tell him I had too much to drink, which makes it sound like I was drunk, which I think sounds better.

Tom says that it looked really funny when everyone was skidding in the sick. I tell him I saw Mrs. Woods fall over in it (even though I didn’t). Tom laughs and says it was the best bit of the disco. 

7.45pm

Grandad pulls up and shouts out of his car window, ‘She’s not interested in lads who can only afford half a haircut and can’t even give her a lift home.' I get in the car. Tom waves at me and I wave back. I think that Tom can't fancy Lisa that much if he likes me being sick more than dancing with her.


Grandad starts singing again, but I don’t even care. I think that this might be the best night of my life. 










Wednesday 21 October 2015

HALLOWEEN



 5.00pm

Me and Jenny are going Trick or Treating, and Mum is helping me to get ready. I want to be a Vampire Witch Cat, so I’m wearing a black bin bag, fangs and fake blood from Londis, and Mum’s drawing my whiskers on with her eyeliner. Nanny Pam’s lent me some cat ears, from a dressing up box in her bedroom. Jenny’s upstairs making her own outfit, because she said she didn’t need any help.

This is the first time I’ve ever been allowed to go Trick or Treating, but I know what it’s like because I’ve seen it on T.V. loads.

5.30pm

Jenny comes downstairs with a big cheesy grin on her face. She is wearing the bridesmaid dress she wore to Aunty Mandy’s wedding, which she has covered in fake blood and green felt tip. She says she’s going as a dead bridesmaid who drowned on the way to a wedding. Mum says she thinks Jenny looks fantastic, but I think she looks a bit O.T.T, which means over the top.

6.00pm

We knock on our neighbour Irene’s door. Her husband Alan answers and we say, ‘Trick or Treat!’. He says, ‘What’s all this about then?’

 Jenny tells him that he has to give us something like sweets or money. He digs around in his pocket and pulls out a packet of Extra Strong Mints and gives us one each. Then he tells us to beggar off, because Irene’s watching her programmes, and she doesn’t like being disturbed.

6.10pm

We carry on around our block, knocking on all the houses. We get an After Eight, 20p and half a packet of digestive biscuits. Nobody is having a cool party like they do on T.V. There are no pumpkins or cauldrons full of sweets. I don’t really think people in Eastern Green get Trick or Treating.

6.20pm

I step in a dog poo and tell Jenny I want to go home, but she makes us go to the next block, even though we’re not allowed to.

Jenny says that a witch lives in one of the houses on this block, but she can’t remember which one. We knock on a house that has a cactus on a shelf in the porch; Jenny says that’s the sign of a witch.

An old lady opens the door, and we say, ‘Trick or treat!’ she tells us to wait in her living room while she gets the biscuit tin from the kitchen. I forget to take my shoes off, because I’m scared, and get dog poo on her carpet, but she doesn’t notice.

While the old lady is in the kitchen, I ask Jenny if she thinks the she's a witch. Jenny says she’s not sure witch’s watch Home and Away and have a pink curtains.

When the old lady comes back she tells us that it’s nice having some visitors, because she hasn’t seen anyone apart from her carer in three weeks. She gives us a shortbread biscuit each and asks us if we’d like a cup of tea. I tell her we need to go, because we are only aloud out for half an hour.

6.40pm

When we get back to our house, Jenny and me aren’t speaking to each other, because we’ve been arguing about who gets to keep the After Eight. Nanny Pam answers the door and says we both have a face like a slapped arse. I tell her that I hate Eastern Green, I hate Jenny, and I hate Extra Strong Mints!


Nanny Pam swaps our After Eight for 50p and two squashed Cadbury’s Mini Rolls from her handbag. We eat all the stuff we got trick or treating on the sofa and tell ghost stories. Nanny Pam tells us one about the time she thought she saw a ghost in her neighbour Sue’s house, but it was just the Kev, the window cleaner.

Monday 5 October 2015

AMERICA


9.30am

I'm having a day off school, because my class are on a school trip to Coventry Football Stadium and Mum said that I’d get a better education staying at home today.

Nanny Pam has come round to look after me and we are on the sofa watching Super Market Sweep. Nanny Pam shouts at the lady on the T.V. 'Quiches are in the chiller you daft cow!’

9.35am

We can hear a man coughing up a greeney outside the front door. It’s Grandad. 

Grandad has been away in America for a few weeks after he split up with Candy. Mum said Candy was sick of living in Grandad’s static caravan full of his useless old crap.

I'm worried because Nanny Pam and Grandad always argue when they see each other and it makes me feel funny.

Grandad’s wearing cowboy boots, shorts and a shirt with nudey women holding guitars on it.

Nanny Pam laughs her head off when she sees him. He says 'Pammy, I'm a new man. I think you're going to start regretting kicking this cowboy out!'

Nanny Pam laughs even more and says ‘I’m going into the kitchen to make a coffee, when I come back in I want to watch This Morning in peace, without you here’.

9.50am

Grandad sits down, lights a big brown cigarette and starts watching Supermarket Sweep, he shouts at the lady, ‘Go for the electricals, you daft cow!’ 

The cigarette smells horrible, so I put my mouth and nose into my Count Dukula T-shirt.

10.00am

When Supermarket Sweep finishes, Grandad tells me he's not used to such crap telly, or small couches, or tiny houses like this. He says the bog in his hotel was bigger than our living room. Then he gives me a present. It’s a lighter that says: ‘I GOT LUCKY IN LAS VEGAS’ on it.

I ask him lots of questions like:

 Did he go to a Prom? Is the McDonalds the same? Did he have a corn dog? Did he have a telly on the plane?

Grandad says all I need to know is that America is bigger, brighter and better than this shit hole. 

10.05am

Nanny Pam comes back in with a cup of coffee and a Mint Choc Options for me. 

This Morning comes on and Nanny Pam says, ‘Times up Skint Eastwood. Judy’s waxing Richard’s leg in a minute, and I don’t want you ruining it by talking silly bollocks about America’. 

Grandad says, ‘We were like Richard and Judy once’

Nanny Pam says, ‘If you mean I was the long suffering wife of an arrogant arse hole then I suppose we were.’ 

10.30am

I go to my room while Nanny Pam and Grandad argue. I wrap the lighter in half a loo roll and put it in my special shoebox next to my pig ornaments. 

I spy on our next-door neighbour Carol doing her gardening for a bit and think about America. 


Monday 20 July 2015

THE WEDDING: PART TWO



10am

Nanny Pam is curling my hair with her hot rollers in the living room. Aunty Mandy is getting ready upstairs with Mum, and Dad is trying to find a shoe.

Jenny’s really angry that the wedding is back on, and has said she’s not going to smile all day as a peaceful protest. She’s gone out the front to play in her bridesmaid dress. Nanny Pam keeps banging on the window at her, and shouts, ‘No!', every time Jenny picks up her bike.  

I tell Nanny Pam about Mandy crying last night. 

She says, ‘You can either love someone dangerously, or like someone safely, and thankfully Mandy’s chosen the latter.’  

I don’t really understand what she means, but it still makes me feel a bit sad. I forget all about it though, when Nanny Pam lets me put some blusher on.

12pm

Grandad and Candy have come round to take me and Jenny to the church with Mandy. 

He’s tied some ribbon to his car, but it still has all of his junk inside. I have to sit on top of a video player, and Candy has a box of garden ornaments on her lap.

Grandad has given Jenny and me a go of his camcorder. I’m filming Jenny pretending to be kidnapped.

She looks at the camera and says, ‘Help me. They’ve made me wear a dress against my will. And now I have to follow the alien queen up the aisle, where she will become a slave for all eternity.’

Mandy says, ‘Turn that bloody thing off!'

12.30pm:

We get outside the church and Jenny gets into a fight with my cousin Joe, because he laughed at our dresses. Jenny bites Joe on the elbow, and he punches her in the face, which makes her have a really big nosebleed. 

Jenny’s dress is covered in blood, and when Mandy sees her she starts crying again.  I think Jenny likes having blood on her dress; I saw her putting even more blood from her nose on it in the toilet.

3pm

After the church, we drive to the Unicorn Club for the party bit. 

Before we’re allowed to start eating the buffet, we have to listen to Grandad’s speech.

He says ‘Firstly, I’d like to thank myself for being here today, because I could barely afford the petrol, after Pamela took me for all I had when we got divorced….

 

3.20pm

…at first I doubted if Mandy was even mine, because Pamela always had a headache, if you know what I mean. Then, I remembered one hell of a night in Marbella, when Pamela and I had one too many Banana Breeze Cocktails at Maria’s bar….

…she was gorgeous…I could have had her there and then, but then Pamela pulled me off Maria, and dragged me back to the hotel.

3.30pm

…after the divorce she took everything, the car, the silver service set….

3.40pm

…. even the cat bowl, and the cat died fifteen years ago... 

4pm

…well, all that’s left to do is wish the groom good luck. He’s gonna fucking need it with this family.

6pm
The disco has started, and I’m practicing some of my new dance moves with Nanny Pam. We fall over twice, but Nanny Pam just laughs her head off. I tell Nanny Pam that I love her and that Grandad’s speech made me fall asleep.

 She says, ‘Grandad’s why you should be very careful about falling in love’  .

 

Sunday 21 June 2015

THE WEDDING: PART ONE



3.30pm

Dad’s picking us up from school, because he hasn’t got a job anymore. He’s stood at the back of the playground and is dragging his foot along the tarmac to try and get something off his shoe.

I walk up to Dad; he’s really red and angry and is blaming standing in dog crap on Margaret Thatcher. 

We get in car. Dad gets pooh all over his hand when he tries to take his shoe off. He tells Jenny she’ll have to do the gears while he sticks his hand out of the sunroof. Jenny’s used to doing the gears. Sometimes she sits on Dad’s knee and helps drive back from Nanny Pam’s house, when I’m eleven I’ll be allowed to help drive too.

I love it when Dad picks me up from school; he plays his tapes really loud in the car and everyone looks at us. Even though Dad’s got his hand stuck out the sunroof with dog crap on it, I pretend I’m in a music video by resting my arm on the window and looking moody, just in case Tom from my class walks past.

4pm

When we drive up to our house we notice that Grandad’s car is parked outside, Dad says, ‘Bollocks’. Sometimes when we see Grandad’s car parked outside we drive off until he’s gone. Last time, we hid round the back of the Happy Shopper eating crisps until it was safe to go back. This time, Mum’s already let him in, and Dad needs to wash his hand, so there’s no escape.

When we walk in Grandad looks at Dad who’s holding his hand in the air and trying not to touch anything.

Grandad says, ‘Is that shit on your hand, you bloody idiot’.

Jenny whispers to me, ‘Grandads a bloody idiot’.

Dad tells her off for swearing.

Grandad and Candy have come round to talk about my Aunty Mandy’s wedding tomorrow. He says he’s written a speech that will help him get a few things off his chest about this family. Mum has her head in her hands.

5pm

Grandad gets up to leave, Dad shakes his hand and says, ‘Good luck tomorrow, mate’. When he’s gone, Dad tells us he used his dog pooh hand to shake Grandad’s. Me and Jenny laugh our heads off.

7pm

My Aunty Mandy has come round, and Me and Jenny are spying on her and Mum in the kitchen. Mandy’s smoking and crying, and Mum is eating a Penguin.

Mandy says she doesn’t think she can marry a man who eats a McDonalds on a plate with knife and fork, and say’s, ‘Sorry, love’ every time he farts.

Mum asks, ‘What do you call a happy penguin?’

Mandy says, ‘Fuck off, you’re not even listening’  

I whisper to Jenny, ‘A Pen-grin’

9pm

Jenny’s says she’s happy that the wedding might be off, because she hates wearing dresses, and says being a bridesmaid is child labour and against her beliefs.

I tell her that I’m happy too, but I’m not. I really want to be a bridesmaid tomorrow. Nanny Pam has even promised to come round in the morning, and curl my hair with her hot rollers. 

I go into Mum and Dad’s room and cry while looking in the mirror like they do in music videos…

…..To Be Continued




Tuesday 2 June 2015

NEVER SEEN THE SEA


2pm

My teacher Mrs. Woods has sent Alan out of the class, for calling her an arse hole.

2.05pm
When you get sent out of class you’re meant to wait outside and face the wall, but when Mrs. Woods goes to tell Alan to come back in, he’s gone.

I don’t know why Mrs. Woods bothers sending Alan out any more; he just legs it.

2.10pm
Mrs. Woods tells me to go and look for Alan, because I’m the only one he talks to when he’s in one of his moods.

 People don’t really like Alan. He gets quite angry about things, and Natalie said that his mum came into school with a knife once. I don’t mind him though; he hates school even more than I do. And he does funny things like eating pages from his workbook and saying they taste like prawn cocktail crisps.

2.15pm
I look in all the usual spots for Alan. Last time, he was in the craft cupboard sticking glitter and googly eyes to his school jumper.

This time he’s lying on the school field with his top off and his hands behind his head. I walk up to him and ask, ‘Are you coming in Alan?’

He tells me to piss off, but I sit down next to him anyway.

 He says, ‘I’m trying to get a suntan’

I tell him that I got a tan last year on holiday in Majorca, and that I’m not sure you can get one in Coventry, in February.

He tells me that he’s never been on holiday, not even in England. He’s never seen the sea!

2.20pm
I lie down next to Alan; we close our eyes and pretend we’re on a holiday. I tell him the beach is like the sandpit in the Infant’s playground, but much bigger and with less cat shit in it.

He says that he wants to go to the Caribbean, because he saw Mr. Motivator exercising on a beach there on GMTV, and he had a Bounty at his Nan’s once.

2.25pm
I tell Alan that we should go back inside. He stands up and puts his jumper back on, it's covered in red glitter and googly eyes.

We walk back to our classroom together.