NANNY PAM'S JEANS

8am

I’m going on a school trip to Coombe Abbey today. I’m really excited, because my cousin, Leanne, says it’s haunted, and once she saw a ghost eating an egg batch in the café.

We had a letter about the trip that mum found in my school bag this morning; it says: ‘wear outdoor trousers’. Mum asks me, ‘What the hell are outdoor trousers?’

The washing machine is broken, so I don’t have any trousers to wear anyway.

8.20am

The only trousers that we find which we think might be outdoor trousers are the ones Nanny Pam dropped off, for Mum to take to the charity shop. They’re her old jeans. Nanny Pam is quite little and I’m quite tall for my age, so they sort of fit me; they’re just a bit short and very baggy around my thighs, and I have to wear them with a belt done up to the last hole.

We haven’t got much food in the house, so Mum makes a pancake and puts it in a plastic bag for my packed lunch.

9am

I get on the coach, and Zoe from my class says, ‘Are they your mum’s jeans?’ and laughs. I say, ‘They’re my Nan’s actually’, which shuts her up.

I sit at the front of the coach with my teacher, Mrs. Woods. I ask her lots of questions like: Has she ever been to Majorca? Does she know any vegetarians? Has she ever held a lizard?

10pm

We get to Coombe Abbey, and walk round for a bit, while a man called Geoff tells us some stuff about the house. He doesn’t say anything about ghosts!

12pm

We have our lunch on the lawn outside. I get my pancake out which has gone sweaty, but still tastes aright. I eat it under my coat, because Zoe is looking at me.

12.20pm

After we’ve eaten, we’re allowed to play for a bit. Tom and Sam from my class are climbing a tree, and I’m watching.

12.25pm

I decide to climb a really big tree, because I think Tom will like it if he could see how good I am at climbing. I climb as high as I can and shout to Tom, but he’s gone.

 I try and come down but I can’t.

12.26pm

I’m stuck up the tree.

12.27pm

I feel really hot and angry. I think I hope I die up here, so I can become a ghost and haunt anyone from Mount Nod School that dares come to bloody Coombe Abbey ever again.

12.28pm

I start crying; I don’t want to die and be buried in Nanny Pam’s jeans.

12.29pm

I start screaming.

12.30pm

Sam’s Dad, who is helping on the school trip, lifts me out of the tree.

3.00pm

We get back, and its home time. Mrs. Woods goes up to Dad in the playground and tells him how I ran off and got stuck up a tree, and how nobody knew where I was and that anything could have happened.

3.20pm

I’m sat in the car with Dad. He says that this weekend we’re going to the park to learn how to climb a tree and get back down again, after he’s got me some new jeans.

 

BORED

10am

It’s Saturday. Mum and Dad have gone to Carpet Right, and my cousin Leanne has come round to look after us and do Mum’s ironing.

My sister Jenny and brother Josh are playing Hungry Hippos. I’m not playing because Josh is cheating by grabbing all balls and shoving them in his hippos’ mouth.

I’m so bored! I lie upside down on the sofa with my head touching the floor, and talk to Leanne while she does the ironing. I ask her lots of questions like: Is she still going out with Swany Kid? Does she like Lasagne? Does Swany Kid like Lasagne? Has she ever been on a dual carriageway?

She just answers yes or no, until I ask her what Swany Kids real name is. She says it's really Gaz, but he’s been called Swany Kid ever since Tall Paul said his mum looks like a Swan. She always wears a white jacket, has a long neck, and uses a lot of black eye make-up.

10.30am

Leanne’s puts her headphones on. I ring Nanny Pam and ask her what she’s up to. She says she’s going to look at bathrooms in Homebase with Colin. She says I can come, but I say I don’t want to.

The last time I went to Homebase with Nanny Pam we were there three hours, and they wouldn’t even let me go to Pet City next door afterwards, because Colin doesn’t like the snakes.

My cousin Craig says he taught the parrot in Pet City the F-word, but Nanny Pam said that’s a load of rubbish, it can only say the S-word and Hello.

10.45am

I ring my Uncle Mark to ask him what number the Horoscopes are on Teletext. His home number just keeps ringing, so I call the work one in the address book. He tells me that I should write the numbers down, as I can’t keep ringing him at work just to see what crap Mystic Meg has to say.

11.00am

I read my horoscope, which says, a situation at work is getting out of hand, and I’ll have to confront it before I can move on.

 I don’t like it when my horoscope says stuff about jobs and money, because I don’t have a job or any money, but if it’s about love I can think about Tom from school.

12.00pm

I go into the kitchen to make myself some lunch, there’s not much food in the house, so I just make a salt and butter batch. I make one for Leanne too, she says it’s the weirdest batch she’s ever had, and just has a few bites.

3pm

Mum and Dad come back, I tell them that this has been the most boring day of my life. Dad says he’s had the most boring day of his life too, at Carpet Right.

I go upstairs and look out the window for a bit with Jenny. Our next-door neighbor Carol is in her garden, we like to spy on her sometimes to see what she’s up to. Jenny says she saw her digging a big hole in her garden a few weeks ago.

4pm

Dad tells us to come downstairs. He has set up a game of Gladiators in the living room. Dad’s Wolf, Josh is Shadow, Mum’s John Anderson and Jenny and Me are the Contenders. We play until Josh falls asleep on the Travelator, which is a duvet on the stairs.

EASTER

 

5am 

It’s Easter. Jenny and me have woken up extra early because we are so excited.

We’re watching Dad’s Die Hard Two video, eating chocolate and playing a game called Smash An Egg On Your Stupid Head. We take it in turns to put a pan on our head, then drop Easter Eggs from the top of the stairs onto each other so they smash.

11am

Grandad has come round with his new wife Candy. Mum and Dad are still in bed so I tell Grandad and Candy to wait on the sofa. I make them a cup of tea, but have to use the hot tap because the kettles broken.

 Grandad says it’s the worst cuppa he has ever had, and I’d have to learn how to make a decent one if I ever want a husband. Jenny says it’s a good job we don’t ever want to get married, Grandad tells her not to be cheeky.

Grandad gives us a Father Christmas shaped Easter Egg each, Candy says they’re still in date.

11.20am

Mum comes downstairs and I go into the kitchen to help her make another cup of tea for Grandad. I tell her what Grandad said to me about getting a husband. She says ‘if I want a sexist arse of a husband like Grandad, then I should learn to make a good cup of tea, otherwise don’t bother’.

11.30am

Grandad asks Mum if she likes Candy’s new hair, mum says ‘yes it’s very different’. Grandad asks Mum what type of fish Candy’s hair is. Mum says she doesn’t know what he’s on about. Grandad says ‘it’s a Red Mullet’ and laughs on his own for a while.

12pm

The phone rings on the table next to Grandad and I answer it. It’s Nanny Pam. She says she’s coming round in a bit, to give us our Easter eggs. I’m worried because Nanny Pam and Grandad don’t like each other any more.

Grandad asks me 'if that was Pamela?’ I say it was. He says ‘when she comes round, tell her she owes me at least fifty quid for selling all my stuff at the car boot sale. Some of that crap was priceless’.

 Candy says she wants to leave because she has to get home to record Look Who’s Talking off the telly.

 

1pm

Grandad and Candy have left. Nanny Pam has come round with more Easter Eggs. She gives me Easter eggs from her and Colin, and a Cadburys Cream Egg with 50p sellotaped to it off my Aunty Irene. Aunty Irene isn’t my real aunty she’s just one of Nanny Pam’s friends from the fag counter in Tesco’s.

1.30pm

Nanny Pam has a coffee and asks me about Grandad and Candy. She asks if Candy wears nice clothes. I say Candy’s clothes are ok, but that her hair is a type of fish, a Red Mullet, which makes Nanny Pam laugh a lot.

I tell Nanny Pam that she owes Grandad at least fifty quid. She says he owes her the last twenty years of her life back, and the silver service set he nicked when he ran off with bootleg Barbie. 

4pm

Nanny Pam has gone. Me, Jenny and Dad, are sat on the sofa eating our Father Christmas Easter Eggs and watching Father Of The Bride. I tell Dad that I think this has been the best Easter of my life.

ROXY'S HOUSE

3.30pm

Every other Thursday, Nanny Pam can’t pick us up from school, because she has a shift on the fag counter in Tesco’s. This means my friend Roxy’s Nan, Maggie, has to pick us up.

Maggie waits outside of school in her car and beeps the horn until we get in. The car smells like cigarettes, fir tree air freshener and digestive biscuits. She’s playing her Robson and Jerome tape, which I hate, Dad says Robson and Jerome are one of the reasons he’s thinking of leaving the country.

Maggie tells Jenny and me that we didn’t look both ways when we crossed the road to get to her car, and she’ll have to tell Mum, because it’s a safety risk. I’m sat in the front and Maggie makes me hold her cigarette, while she starts the car. I waft the smoke away with my book about the Vikings.   

4pm

We get back to Roxy’s house and go upstairs to her bedroom. Roxy says she lives with her Nan because her mum doesn’t have a settee or anything to sit on and she stays up too late.

We play with Roxy’s toys for a bit. All of Roxy’s Barbies have shaved heads and tattoos that she has drawn on with felt tips. Roxy says she wants to play Blind Date with naked Barbies who are alcoholics.

I go and see her hamsters, Bill and Ted, and she takes them out for me.  When we’re called for tea Roxy shuts the hamsters in a tiny drawer by her bed, because she wants them to have babies.

5pm

I’m worried when I see dinner because it’s a burger with chips and beans. Mum says we can’t eat burgers because of Mad Cow disease. I remind Jenny after she has had a bite, and we both say we’re not eating it. Maggie says we’re ungrateful, and that in the war she had to eat her pet rabbit Floppsy, with two mouldy potatoes and her own tears, and it was the best meal she ever had.

Maggie sits with us and makes us eat some chips, while she has a cigarette and drinks a Slimfast.

5.45pm

I say I’m going to the toilet, but I go to Roxy’s room and put the hamsters back in their cage.

6pm

Mum comes and picks us up. On the way home, I tell her about Maggie trying to kill us. Mum says we were right to not eat the burger, but we should have just chopped it up and hidden it under the beans.

She asks us if we crossed the road properly. I say we did, but Maggie couldn’t see because her car was so full of smoke it was like Stars In Their Eyes. Jenny says ‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Skeletor’, because that’s what we call Maggie.

THE TALENT SHOW

11am

I am on holiday in Majorca. Mum and Dad are going to the beach on their own today, and they are leaving Jenny, Josh and me at Squids Club.

Squids Club is a big shed by the swimming pool, where all the kids who are on holiday get left by their parents. I don’t like it, because it is basically the same as wet break at school. You get some weird broken toys out, and the Holiday Reps make you sing songs about finding a peanut or losing a meatball, that last the whole morning.

12pm

The rep, Rachel, lets us go in the pool, because a drunk person was sick in the club shed last night, and Nico, the pool man, is cleaning it up.

Jenny and me are playing a game called: ‘Who Can Look The Most Dead?’ We hold our breath and float face down in the pool. Jenny gets out of the pool and comes back in with her t-shirt on. She says that this will make it look like she fell in and drowned on her way to get an ice-cream. Jenny wins, because Rachel runs over to see if she’s ok, and we get told off for giving her a scare.

1pm

We’re allowed back in the club shed, which stinks of bleach and sick. Rachel tells us that there is going to be a talent show this afternoon, and Nico is going to be the judge.

We are put into groups, Me, Jenny and Josh are with two boys from a place called Liverpool. Jenny thinks we should do a magic show, but I want to do a play about the Tudors. I tell Jenny that everyone will do magic shows and we should do something different.

2pm

We decide to act out a Tudor beheading and have started rehearsing outside. Jenny is worried, because everyone else in the Club Shed is singing Spice Girls songs, or dancing.

I’m Anne Boleyn, the Liverpool boys are the guards and Jenny is the executioner. Josh doesn’t understand acting, so he is going to squirt everyone with a Super-Soaker, when I fake my head being chopped off.

3pm

Rachel comes over to watch our rehearsal. Afterwards, she asks if we’re sure we don’t want to sing a song, and tells us she has ‘Saturday Night’ on tape, which she could teach us the dance to. 

4pm

Mum and Dad are back from the beach and are sat in the audience, outside the Club Shed. It is the hottest day of the holiday, and Mum is using a battery powered mini fan I bought from the beach shop.

After two lots of Wannabe and a magic show, it’s our turn. I give my best performance ever. I’m really loud, and when I put my head in my t-shirt, I walk around like a zombie for a bit then collapse, which I didn’t do in rehearsal, but it worked.

When we finish everyone is quiet for a while, then Nico cheers and some people start clapping.

5pm

We only get third place, but I'm happy because Nico said I should win an Oscar, and Mum says she’s completely speechless. 

Dad buys us a big ice cream with sparklers to celebrate.