Читать книгу Jade Goody: How It All Began - My First Book - Jade Goody - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWhat was it about me? I always wanted to be a good girl, but no matter what I did I somehow ended up on the wrong side of the tracks. When I was at school I dreamed of being head girl. I wanted to get straight As and be told by the teachers that I was going to amount to something. Well, I fucked that up, didn’t I? At my school, when you did well in something you got a letter of merit, but if you did badly you got a demerit.
I must’ve held the record for the most demerits in existence.
Somehow, though, I did manage to blag myself the title of Games Captain, which meant I got to wear the special badge on my uniform. I bribed everyone in my class to vote for me to the point that they had no choice if they wanted any chance of peace and quiet. That badge was my pride and joy. I also had a ‘School Committee’ badge that I wore each day, even though I was never actually on the committee. That one I nicked. But the cream of the crop, the absolute best badge of honour, was the Gold Lion badge. You only got awarded one of those if you reached 1000 merits, and I had about as much hope of that as of Prince Charles knocking on my door and asking me to be his queen. So the only way I could get one was to cheat. To prove you deserved a Gold Lion you had to show the head teacher a certificate saying you’d gained 1000 merits. I asked one of the clever girls in my class if I could have her certificate. Somehow I persuaded her that she could just tell the teacher she’d lost it and ask for another one.
Then I went home and set about my mission: forgery. I must’ve been up most of the night. Mum poked her head round the door and thought I’d been hit over the head and had something wrong with me. What else could explain this sudden desire to do my homework? First I delicately rubbed out the girl’s name, then I put the certificate in my typewriter and spent ages making sure I had the paper lined up right so that I could type my name in its place. Once I was finished I smiled contentedly to myself. It looked just like the real deal.
When I proudly marched into class the next morning and presented my merit certificate to my form tutor it looked so convincing that he couldn’t question me – although he did nearly fall off his chair.
And that was how I got my Gold Lion badge.
I wanted to be a prefect too – not to do anything like telling younger kids off and being all superior, but just to have the badge. Believe it or not, my dream nearly came true when I was on holiday in Marbella recently. Two fellas came up to me as I sat by the pool and said, ‘We think you’re brilliant, girl. And we just wanted to give you this.’ They handed me a case with a badge in it that said ‘Prefect Girl’.
I was so chuffed. ‘I’m a prefect at last!’ I shrieked.
The boys just laughed. ‘No, Jade,’ one of them corrected me. ‘Take it out of the box. It says “Perfect Girl”!’
What a dipstick.
I still loved it, though, and I refused to take it off for the rest of the holiday. I even wore it on my bikini.
There was a teacher at our school that we used to call ‘The Witch’ because she only ever wore one type of shoe. (Kids are so nice, aren’t they?) I was obsessed with looking at her feet every time she came into the classroom. She didn’t seem like any other regular teacher and after a while we became convinced that she had wooden toes. So one lunchtime I decided to find out whether this was true. Me and a couple of my mates made sure we sat opposite her at the dinner table. I pretended to drop something on the floor, then crawled underneath and stabbed her foot with my fork. And she didn’t flinch! I was so excited that I shouted, ‘Oh my God, it’s true!’ and banged my head on the table. For that I got sent to the headmaster. But it was worth it.
At another of my schools there was a supply teacher who had fuzzy grey hair. He used to touch the girls in a not very appropriate way and pat their bums. One time he patted me on the tush and I said, ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ I was having none of it. You may have gathered by now that I became a bit of a ringleader in my teenage years. So when this supply teacher was covering one of my next classes I whispered to everyone not to do any work and they sat there with their arms folded for the entire lesson while I pinged pieces of paper at him. He instantly sent me to the headmistress’s office (I might as well have moved into that place I was there so much) and I had no qualms about reporting to her that he was a pervert. Not long afterwards it was discovered that he’d received complaints at the private school he was teaching at previously. So he got kicked out. See, sometimes it’s actually worth being the mouthy one.
But it was hardly surprising I was the way I was. I didn’t have the most conventional home life. With all the scams my mum was up to it was nothing unusual to go home from school and see a police car outside. We got raided all the time. Most kids would arrive home from school to the sight of their mum hanging out the washing or cooking the dinner. I’d come round the corner with my face in my hands, hoping I wouldn’t see another police car race up with its sirens blaring. I’d get off the bus from school and my heart would sink. What’s she done now? I’d think. Then I’d go into a cold sweat, and panic with the fear that they could take her away from me. I was always worrying. I’d often walk in to see policemen ripping up the carpet and pulling things apart in my bedroom. I’d shout, ‘Put that back! It’s in my room! I’ve just tidied up!’ Still, they never used to find anything – mainly because I’d done a bloody good job of hiding things inside chip packets in the freezer or some other unlikely place.
Trouble and Jade Goody just go hand in hand, it seems. I’ve even nicked hubcaps off cars in the middle of the night! Not for no reason, of course, and not just for fun. Whenever I do something bad it’s usually as a result of someone spurring me on. And in this instance it was my ex-boyfriend Danny (you know the one – coke head, girlfriend basher). He used to have a blue Peugeot 206 and because he lived in a dodgy area he’d often come home and find one of his hubcaps had gone missing or the car had been scratched by kids. So we’d drive out to a Peugeot garage – his idea, not mine, honest! – in the middle of the night to get a replacement one. I was paranoid that there were cameras everywhere and that whoever got caught would have to run really fast – something I decided he was incapable of because he was so fat. So I nominated myself to do it instead of him. Which I did quite successfully on numerous occasions, much to Danny’s delight. (If anyone from Peugeot is reading this, please don’t sue me. It was Danny’s idea and I’ve never ever done it since.)
Another random fact for you: I was actually taught to look after myself by one of the most hardened and notorious gangsters in the country. When I was about 11 I used to do kick boxing in this gym in Greenwich and one of the guys who trained there took a liking to my mum and me. Not in a creepy way – he just seemed to warm to the fact that we both told it like it was and were no nonsense. He trained me to box for months and months and I actually got quite good at it (don’t laugh). After that I never saw him again. But it wasn’t until years later that I found out who he actually was. Mum rang me and said, ‘Remember years ago when you got taught boxing by some big fella called Lenny?’
‘Yeah, vaguely.’
‘Well, he’s died. It was on the news.’
‘Why was it on the news?’
‘Because his name was Lenny McLean – and apparently he was one of the hardest men in Britain!’
Wow. Imagine if he was alive now – I’d never need to worry about having problems ever again!
