Louise Rennison_Georgia Nicolson 03 Read online

  I said to Mutti, “Have you noticed how exceptionally crap it is here?”

  And she said, “You have to make your own fun in places like this. You have to make things happen. Anyway, you do exaggerate.”

  12:30 a.m.

  Hoot hoot. Scuffle scuffle. Root root. Hey, Mutti is right, it is FANTASTIC fun here!! There’s an all-night party going on right outside my window!!! I would join in, but sadly I am not a badger.

  sunday october 24th

  10:20 a.m.

  Still in Och Aye land. Tartan trousers for as far as the eye can see.

  10:31 a.m.

  How many hours has it been since I saw Robbie now? Hmmm, ninety hours and thirty-six minutes.

  11:00 a.m.

  How many minutes is that?

  11:34 a.m.

  Oh God, I don’t know. I can’t do multiplication very well: it’s too jangly for my brain. I’ve tried to explain this to Miss Stamp, our maths Oberführer (and part-time lesbian). It is not, as she stupidly suggests, that I am too busy writing notes to my mates or polishing my nails to concentrate. It is just that some numbers give me the mental droop.

  Eight, for instance.

  It’s the same in German. As I pointed out to Herr Kamyer, there are too many letters in German words. The German types say goosegott in the morning: how normal is that? In fact, how can you take a language like that seriously? Well, you can’t, which is why I only got sixty percent on my last German exam.

  11:50 a.m.

  I’m just going to lie in bed conserving my strength for a snogging extravaganza when I get home.

  midday

  Mutti came into my room with a tray of sandwiches. I said, “Goosegott in Himmel, Mutti, have you gone mad? Food? For me? No, no, I’ll just have my usual bit of old sausage.”

  She still kept smiling. It was a bit eerie actually. She was all dreamy. Wafting around in a see-through nightie. Good Lord.

  “Are you having a nice time, Gee? It’s gorgeous here, isn’t it?”

  I looked at her ironically.

  She raved on, “It’s fun though, isn’t it?”

  “Mum, it’s the best fun I’ve had since…er…since Libby dropped my makeup into the loo.”

  She tutted, but not even in her usual violent tutting way. Just like, nice tutting.

  Even though I started reading my Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens book she still kept raving on. About how great it was to be a “family” again. I wish she would cover herself up a bit more. Other people’s mothers wear nice elegant old-peoples’ wear, and she just lets her basoomas and so on poke out willy-nilly. And they certainly do poke out willy-nilly. They are GIGANTIC.

  She said, “We thought we might go to the pencil-making factory this afternoon.”

  I didn’t even bother saying anything to that.

  “It will be a laugh.”

  “No, it won’t, when did we last have a laugh as a family? Apart from when Grandad’s false teeth went down that woman’s bra?”

  1:00 p.m.

  The lovebirds went off to the pencil factory. They only got Libby to go with them because she thinks they are going to go see the pencil people. And I do mean pencil people. Not people who make pencils. Pencil people. People who are pencils. She’ll go ballistic when she finds out it’s just some Scottish blokes making pencils.

  Oh, I am SO bored. Hours and hours of wasted snogging opportunities.

  1:20 p.m.

  I’d go out but there is nothing to look at. It just goes trees, trees, water, hill, trees, trees, Jock McTavish, Jock McTavish. What is the point of that?

  On the plus side, I am going out with a SEX GOD!

  1:36 p.m.

  Oh Gott in Himmel! What is the point of going out with a Sex God if no one knows?

  4:00 p.m.

  I wonder if I should phone him.

  4:05 p.m.

  Not to speak to him as such. Just to remind him that I am his girlfriend.

  4:10 p.m.

  No one here knows that I am the secret girlfriend of a Sex God.

  5:00 p.m.

  No one at home knows I am the secret girlfriend of a Sex God.

  5:15 p.m.

  I am like a mirage. In a frock.

  7:00 p.m.

  Forced to go and sit in the pub with the elderly loons to “celebrate.” Libby is being baby-sat by Jock McThick’s parents. I hope they have fastened her nighttime nappy securely; otherwise their cottage will not be a poo-free zone. The pub was full of Ye Olde Scottish People (i.e., loads of loonies like my grandad, only wearing kilts). Yippeee. This is the life (not). I asked Vati for a Tía María on the rocks with just a hint of crème de menthe, but he pretended not to hear me. Typico. On the way home M and D were linked up, singing “Donald, Where’s Your Trousers?” whilst I skulked along behind them. It was incredibly dark, no streetlamps or anything. As we tramped along the “grown-ups” were laughing and crashing about (and in Dad’s case farting) when this awful thing happened.

  I felt something touch my basooma. I thought it was the Old Man of the Loch and I leapt back like a leaping banana. Jock McThick spoke from out of the darkness, “Och, I’m sorry. I couldnae see a thing in the dark. I was just like…you know…feeling my way hame.” And he scuttled off.

  Hame? Why was he calling me Hame? He used to call me Ken.

  11:30 p.m.

  Feeling his way? Feeling his way to where? My other basooma?

  This was disgusting.

  11:45 p.m.

  Molesting my nunga-nungas.

  Nunga-nunga molester.

  11:48 p.m.

  Despite the incredible crapness of my life, my nunga-nungas have made me laugh. Nunga-nungas is what Ellen’s brother and his mates call girls’ basoomas. He says it is because if you pull out a girl’s breast and let it go…it goes nunga-nunga-nunga. He is obviously a touch on the mental side.

  11:50 p.m.

  But quite funny though.

  11:55 p.m.

  Perhaps I could make some nunga-nunga protectors by electrifying my sports bra with a battery type thing. That would give Jock McThick or any other nunga-nunga marauders a shock.

  midnight

  But it would also give me a shock, which is la mouche in the ointment.

  12:10 a.m.

  Angus has rediscovered his Scottish roots. Apparently they are in the middle of some bog because he had bits of horrible slimy stuff in his whiskers. He came into my bed purring and all damp and muddy. He soon got nice and dry by wiping himself on my T-shirt.

  God, he smells disgusting. I think he’s been rolling in fox poo again. He thinks it’s like a sort of really attractive aftershave.

  1:00 a.m.

  It isn’t.

  monday october 25th

  10:10 a.m.

  Why oh why oh why has the SG not called me? Oh hang on, I know why he hasn’t. It’s because we haven’t got a phone in our fantastic cottage. I couldn’t believe it when we first arrived. I said to Mutti, “There has been some mistake. I’m afraid we must go back to civilization immediately. I’ll drive.”

  Dad raved on about “tranquility” and the simple life.

  I said, “Vati, you can be as simple as you like, but I want to talk to my mates.”

  He grumbled on about my constant demands. As I pointed out to him, if he would buy me a mobile phone like everyone else on the planet I wouldn’t have to bother speaking to him at all.

  2:00 p.m.

  I can’t stand much more of this. The rest of my “family” has gone on a forced march. Well, Vati called it “a little walk in the woods.” But I know about his little walks. It will end in tears, but this time they will not be mine. I know exactly what will happen. The Loonleader will be all bossy and “interested” in stuff like cuckoo spit. Then he’ll lose the way and argue with Mutti about the right way home, fall over something and be attacked by sheep. And that will only be the high spots.

 
I pretended I had a headache.

  Vati said to me as I lay in my pretend bed of pain, “You’ve probably given yourself eyestrain looking in that bloody mirror all the time.”

  I said, “If I develop a brain tumor you will be the first person I will come to because of your great kindness and sympathosity.”

  4:20 p.m.

  On the edge of sheer desperadoes. Decided to go for a walk.

  Arrow tried to round me up as I came out of the gate. So to make him happy I let him herd me into a hedge for a bit. Then I set off down the lane. Ho hum. Birds singing, ferrets ferretting, Jock McThicks McThicking around. Good grief. Then I came across a phone box.

  A phone box!!!

  A link to the real world!!! It wasn’t even a tartan phone box!!

  I skipped inside and dialed Jas, my very bestest mate in the universe.

  “Jas, it’s me!!!! God, it’s good to speak to you. What’s been happening???”

  “Er…well…I got this fab new foundation. It’s got gold bits in it that make you…”

  It is like talking to the very, very stupid. (In fact, it IS talking to the very stupid.) I had forgotten how annoying she is. Not for long though. She rambled on, “Tom is thinking about doing Environmental Studies.”

  I nearly said, “Who cares.” But you have to be careful with Jas because she can turn nasty if she thinks you are not interested in her. I tried to think of something to say. “Oh…er…yeah…the environment…er, that’s great, erm, there’s a lot of, er…environment here; in fact, that is all there is.” Then I told her about the Jock McThick fandango. She said, “Erlack a pongoes. Did you encourage him? Maybe you gave out the wrong signals.”

  “Jas, I was not in the nuddy-pants.”

  “Well, I’m just saying, Jock must have thought he could rest his hand on your basooma. Why is that? He has never rested his hand on my basoomas, for instance.”

  “Jas, you are three hundred miles away. You would have to have nunga-nungas the size of France for Jock to be able to rest his hand on them.”

  “Yes, well…I’m just saying, even if I was, you know, in Och Aye land, next to Jock, well, even then, you know…”

  “What are you rambling on about?”

  “I’m just saying, this is not the first time this has happened to you, is it? There was Mark, the Big Gob….”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “You say it just happened. That just out of the blue he put his hand on your basooma. No one else was there so we will never really know for sure.”

  “I didn’t…it was…”

  “Perhaps Jock has heard about your reputation. Perhaps he thinks it’s alright to fondle your basoomas.”

  I hate Jas. I slammed the phone down. I will never be talking to her again. I don’t forget things. Once my mind is made up, that is it. The friendship is finito. I would rather eat one of Libby’s nighttime nappies than talk to Jas again.

  She is an ex–best mate. Dead to me. Deaddy dead dead. Forever.

  4:22 p.m.

  Phoned Jas.

  “Jas, are you suggesting I am an easy fondleree?”

  “I don’t know. I might be.”

  “What do you mean ‘you might be’?”

  “Well, I might be…but I don’t know what a fondleree is.”

  It is like talking to the very, very backward.

  I explained to her as patiently as I could. “Well, it’s like dumping. If you dump someone you are the dumper. And they are the dumpee.”

  “What has that got to do with fond ling?”

  “Jas, concentrate. The verb is ‘to fondle.’ I fondle, you fondle, he, she, it fondles, etc. But I am the recipient of the fondle, so that makes me the fondleree.”

  She wasn’t really concentrating though. She was probably looking at herself in the mirror they have in their hall…imagining she is Claudia Schiffer. Just because some absolute prat told her she looked a bit like Claudia. Yeah. Claudia with a stupid fringe.

  Walked back to Crap Cottage.

  in my room

  6:00 p.m.

  Brilliant. Miles away from civilization and my so-called mate says I am an easy fondleree. Still, she is mad as a badger; everyone knows that.

  9:00 p.m.

  Sitting around in the tartan lounge in Crap Cottage. My breasts are making me a mockery of a sham. They are like two sticky-out beacons attracting all the sadsacks in the universe.

  11:00 p.m.

  Mutti came into my bedroom to get Libby out of my wardrobe. She’s made a sort of nest in there that she says is a treehouse.

  Over the shouting and biting I said to Mutti, “Do you think you could ask Dad if you and he could club together to let me have some money for breast reduction surgery?”

  It took her about a year to stop laughing.

  It’s pointless asking for money. I can’t even get a fiver out of Dad for some decent lip gloss. He would never give me the money. Even if my breasts were so big that I had to have two servants called Carlos and Juan to carry them around for me.

  tuesday october 26th

  10:00 a.m.

  The postman came this morning. He didn’t have any post, he just said, “Good morning to ye. It’s nice to have a good-looking lassie round the place.”

  He was quite groovy-looking. A bit like a young Sean Connery. But with more hair on his head. And quite nice lips.

  10:15 a.m.

  Oh Blimey O’Reilly’s pantaloons, I think I have got general snoggosity syndrome.

  11:00 a.m.

  Maybe Jas is right. I have become an easy fondleree because of my pent-up snogging deprivation.

  Oh Robbie, where are you now? Rescue me from this valley of the loons.

  4:29 p.m.

  Accidentally found myself next to the phone box.

  Uh-oh. Temptation.

  The phone box was saying to me, “Come in and use me. You know you want to.”

  I have been practicing maturiosity by not phoning the Sex God. It seems like a lifetime since he last snogged me. My lips have definitely got snog withdrawal. I found myself trying out kissing techniques on scuba-diving Barbie last night. Which is truly sad. I must pass by the phone box with complete determinosity.

  4:30 p.m.

  Brring brring.

  Please don’t let it be Robbie’s mum or dad. Please don’t let me have to be normal. Oh thank goodness SG answered the phone. Jellyknickers all round.

  He said “Hello” in a Sex Goddy sort of a way.

  Wow!!

  Then he said “Hello” again.

  Wow.

  Then I realized that normally when you phone someone up you are supposed to say something. And that something is NOT “I love you, I love you” or “Ngyunghf.” So I took the bullet by the horns and said, “Hi…Robbie…it’s me. Georgia.” (Very good, I had even said the right name!!!) He sounded like he was really pleased to hear from me. “Gee! How are you, gorgeous?”

  Gorgeous. He, me called, gorgeous. Me, I. Georgia to brain! Georgia to brain! Shut up shut up shut up!!!!!

  He said, “Gee, are you there? Are you having a good time?”

  “Fantastic, if you like being bored beyond the Valley of Boredom and into the Universe of the Very Dull.”

  He laughed. (Hurrah!!!) Oh, it was so dreamy to talk to him. I told him about everything. (Well, apart from being molested by Jock McThick.) He says some talent scouts are coming to see the next Stiff Dylans gig on November 6th at the Buddha Lounge!! My first official outing as an OG (official girlfriend). What shall I wear, what shall I wear? I noticed he hadn’t really said anything for a bit whilst I had been rummaging through my mental wardrobe. He was not le official grand bouche like some people (Jas). I thought I would entertain him with an intelligent story, but all I could think of telling him about was my nunga-nunga protectors idea. Just in the knickers of time I didn’t. Why couldn’t I be normal with him?

  Fortunately he said something. “Look,
Gee, I’m really sorry but I have to go. I could talk to you all day, but I have to go off to a rehearsal. I’m late now.”

  Ho hum. Well I suppose this is the price I must pay for being the GIRLFRIEND OF A SEX GOD POPSTAR!!! YESSS!!!

  He said, in his groovy voice full of gorgeosity, “See you later. I’d like to snog you to within an inch of your life. I’ll phone you when you get back.”

  Ooohhhhhh.

  After he had put the phone down I stroked my T-shirt with the receiver pretending it was him. But then I saw that Jock McTavish was waiting outside the telephone box looking at me, so I had to pretend I was cleaning the receiver.

  5:00 p.m.

  Phew.

  To make Jock go away, I have said I will go to Alldays later. Which I will not. Jock seemed to be lieve me because he said, “Awa the noo hoots akimbo” or something.

  9:00 p.m.

  How soon can I get them to set off for home tomorrow? If we set off at dawn we could be back in Normal Land by about four P.M.

  9:30 p.m.

  I wonder if the ace gang might arrange a surprise welcome home party for me. It’s half term now, so I am no longer an ostracized leper on my own. So ha-di-haha. She who laughs the last laughs, erm, a lot. Slim thought she was banning me for a week but she was banning me for two weeks!!!

  10:00 p.m.

  In “my” bed, with the usual crowd. Libby and the entire contents of her traveling toybox: scuba-diving Barbie, one-eyed Teddy, Pantalitzer, Panda the Punk (Libby shaved his head). The only difference is that to celebrate our holiday in Tartan-a-gogo Libby has replaced Charlie Horse with Jimmy. Jimmy is a haggis with a scarf on. Don’t even ask. Libby made him this afternoon and she “lobes” him.

  I am sleeping in a bed with a stuffed sheep’s stomach. With a scarf on.

  wednesday october 27th

  6:00 a.m.

  Up and packed. I tried to get Mutti and Vati to get up and make an early start, but when I went into their bedroom Vati threw his slipper at me.

  9:00 a.m.

  At last! Escape!!!! Soon I will be back in the arms of my Sex God. At last, at last. Thank the Lord!!! I love you, Jesus, really, really I do. Good-bye Och Aye land!!! I sat in the back of the car daydreaming of my return as OG. But as they say, “Every silver cloud has a dark lining,” because Vati decided to wear his ridiculous souvenir bagpipe hat as we eventually got into the loonmobile. I got down as low as I could in the back of the car so that no one would see me. I wish I could have an inflatable dad, like in that old film Airplane! where there is an inflatable pilot. Still, with a bit of luck I need never see him again when I get my freedom back. Arrow looked all mournfully at Angus when we left. He will miss his furry partner in crime. Angus and Arrow, los dos amigos bonkeros. Angus didn’t even look back. He just shot into the car and started wrestling with the car rug.