Читать книгу The Tutti-frutti Collection - Jean Ure, Stephen Lee, Jean Ure - Страница 19

Today I ate a plate of cold sick with dubious-looking objects floating in it. I had this vision of one of the cooks throwing up in the kitchen and someone running at her with a basin yelling, “Don’t waste anything, don’t waste anything! Recycle!” Skinny Melon says I am disgusting but I just happen to have this very vivid sort of imagination.

Skinny came back with me for tea after school and it was so embarrassing, I didn’t know where to put myself. Slimey Roland was there, all covered in mud from digging this stupid pond he keeps on about. He looked such a sight! I could have died when he came and sat down with us at the table. I was so ashamed of him. And then he started making these awful jokes, the way he does, like, “What do you call two spiders who’ve just got married? Newly Webs!” and “What’s full of sandwiches and hides in a bell tower? The Lunch Pack of Notre Dame!” I mean, they’re just not funny. I don’t think they are.

Skinny was really brilliant and kept groaning and giggling and making like she was amused. She was only doing it out of pity for me, I could tell. It was nice of her, but then he started to think he was some kind of big comedy star and just went on and on till I wanted to scream. Skinny actually choked at one point and I thought she was going to suffocate, she went so red. I expect the reason she choked was he was being so ex-cru-cia-ting.

I apologised to her afterwards. I said, “He’s really grungy, isn’t he?” I thought we could have a nice hate-Slimey session but Skinny wouldn’t play. She has this thing about fathers, which is because hers went and died when she was really young so that she never properly knew him and as a result she thinks even a dad like Slime is better than no dad at all. I told her that a) he wasn’t my dad. I already had a dad, thank you very much. Just because he isn’t living with us doesn’t make him not my dad any more and b) she’d change her mind quickly enough if Slimey Roland married her mum and went to live in her house.

I said, “Imagine listening to those yucky jokes every day!” Skinny said that she would be quite happy listening to yucky jokes. She agreed that they were yucky but said she thought that Slime was “an ace joke-teller”. I said “Oh, do you?” and she said, yes, she did, so I said, “Well, I don’t. I think he’s pathetic.” I said, “He’s a wimp and a weed and he sniffles.” To which Skinny retorted, “So what?” She then had the nerve to tell me that I wasn’t being fair.