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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.
