Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

La marche avec mystery

Operation sausage

Tainted love

A bit of rough

The Stiff Dylans gig

Exploding knickers

Jas must die

      My dad has become Rolf Harris

      The snogging report

      I use it to keep my balls still

      Pyjama party

      The sex god has landed

       Georgia’s Glossary

      Sunday August 23rd

      My Bedroom

      Raining

      10:00 a.m.

      Dad had Uncle Eddie round so naturally they had to come and nose around and see what I was up to. If Uncle Eddie (who is bald as a coot – too coots, in fact) says to me one more time, “Should bald heads be buttered?” I may kill myself. He doesn’t seem to realise that I no longer wear romper-suits. I feel like yelling at him. “I am fourteen years old, Uncle Eddie! I am bursting with womanhood, I wear a bra! OK, it’s a bit on the loose side and does ride up round my neck if I run for the bus... but the womanly potential is there, you bald coot!”

      Talking of breasts, I’m worried that I may end up like the rest of the women in my family, with just the one bust, like a sort of shelf affair. Mum can balance things on hers when her hands are full – at parties, and so on, she can have a sandwich and drink and save a snack for later by putting it on her shelf. It’s very unattractive. I would like a proper amount of breastiness but not go too far with it, like Melanie Griffiths, for instance. I got the most awful shock in the showers after hockey last term. Her bra looks like two shopping bags. I suspect she is a bit unbalanced hormonally. She certainly is when she tries to run for the ball. I thought she’d run right through the fence with the momentum of her “bosoomers” as Jas so amusingly calls them.

      Still in my room

      Still raining

      Still Sunday

      11:30 a.m.

      I don’t see why I can’t have a lock on my bedroom door. I have no privacy: it’s like Noel’s House Party in my room. Every time I suggest anything around this place people start shaking their heads and tutting. It’s like living in a house full of chickens dressed in frocks and trousers. Or a house full of those nodding dogs, or a house full of... anyway... I can’t have a lock on my door is the short and short of it.

      “Why not?” I asked Mum reasonably (catching her in one of the rare minutes when she’s not at Italian evening class or at another party).

      “Because you might have an accident and we couldn’t get in,” she said.

      “An accident like what?” I persisted.

      “Well... you might faint,” she said.

      Then Dad joined in, “You might set fire to your bed and be overcome with fumes.”

      What is the matter with people? I know why they don’t want me to have a lock on my door, it’s because it would be a first sign of my path to adulthood and they can’t bear the idea of that because it would mean they might have to get on with their own lives and leave me alone.

      Still Sunday

      11:35 a.m.

      There are six things very wrong with my life:

      1. I have one of those under-the-skin spots that will never come to a head but lurk in a red way for the next two years.

      2. It is on my nose.

      3. I have a three-year-old sister who may have peed somewhere in my room.

      4. In fourteen days the summer hols will be over and then it will be back to Stalag 14 and Oberführer Frau Simpson and her bunch of sadistic “teachers”.

      5. I am very ugly and need to go into an ugly home.

      6. I went to a party dressed as a stuffed olive.

      11:40 a.m.

      OK, that’s it. I’m turning over a new leaf. I found an article in Mum’s Cosmo about how to be happy if you are very unhappy (which I am). The article is called “Emotional confidence”. What you have to do is Recall... Experience... and HEAL. So you think of a painful incident and you remember all the ghastly detail of it... this is the Recall bit, then you experience the emotions and acknowledge them and then you JUST LET IT GO.

      2:00 p.m.

      Uncle Eddie has gone, thank the Lord. He actually asked me if I’d like to ride in the sidecar on his motorbike. Are all adults from Planet Xenon? What should I have said? “Yes, certainly, Uncle Eddie, I would like to go in your pre-war sidecar and with a bit of luck all of my friends will see me with some mad, bald bloke and that will be the end of my life. Thank you.”

      4:00 p.m.

      Jas came round. She said it took her ages to get out of her catsuit after the fancy dress party. I wasn’t very interested but I asked her why out of politeness.

      She said, “Well, the boy behind the counter in the hire shop was really good-looking.”

      “Yes, so?”

      “Well, so I lied about my size – I got a size ten catsuit instead of twelve.”

      She showed me the