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The first rule of forming a band?

Don’t make any band decisions without discussing it with your other band members first.

This ‘being in a band’ thing was proving to be a lot less fun than I’d originally imagined. I know lots of bands have their ‘musical differences’ but we hadn’t even had our first band practice yet and we were already having a full-blown spat in Sadie’s basement.

FYI: because Sadie’s bro is in a ‘serious’ band (if you ask me, ‘serious’ equals a teeny-tiny bit boring, but the band does include Jake Farrell, previous heir to my heart, who plays bass. He makes them all the more bearable) they’ve got a whole studio set-up in their basement.

I know.

Nowhere, I repeat nowhere, on the Tom Tootie Time to-do list does it say ‘argue with newly formed band’.

Why?

Because I wouldn’t have put it on there, that’s why.

But that’s the thing with writing to-do lists, it only has all the stuff you actually need or want to do. I love writing lists, I write them for just about everything, but what writing a list doesn’t do, which is really rather rude and wrong, is prepare you for a nuclear fallout with your be-there buds. Neither does it provide a series of practical, tip-based solutions that will get you out of the aforementioned situation.

Which would be especially helpful when the fallout is All. Your. Fault.

And that’s what it is.

All. My. Fault.

“Lola Love, I cannot believe you told her she could be centre stage…” Bella is not happy. She spits out the word her like it’s giving her a really bad taste in her mouth. “A tambourine player cannot be centre stage. That’s just ridiculous. We’ll be laughed off stage. If we want to be taken seriously, it has to be a singer with a guitar, not some random girl with big hair playing a freakin’ tam-tam.” She paces the floor and turns to me with her arms folded, waiting for my response.

I shuffle from foot to foot. I don’t dig confrontation, especially when it’s with my most favourite of all punk princesses. I didn’t like how her accent got a li’l harsher and her face got all screwy. This was not very ‘om’-like of her and I didn’t like it. Stoopid, I know, but I really thought she’d be cool with it. It turns out I didn’t really know Bella that well because she was most deffo anything but cool with it.

“Well?” She asks, tapping her big black boot that she carries off with the daintiness of a ballerina. “What were you thinking?”

Ok, what was I thinking? I was thinking I just wanted to hang out with all my fab friends and have a grand ol’ time rocking out and maybe meet a cute popstar in the mix. Now, I was thinking that I might really rather like to run like crazy, go back home, dig out my ‘weird writer girl’ badge that I’d put away for safe keeping, and once again start wearing it with pride. I might now have pink hair, a pink ‘tude and the ability to strum three chords on the guitar, but I was obviously not cut out to be in an actual band. I should just stick to what I’m good at, making up worlds in my journal.

In my journal being in a girl group with my fabulous friends is all pink feather boas, pink glitter sparkles and well, a lot of pink fabulousness. It would not involve kicking imaginary bits of dust while I tried desperately hard to think of how I could make everything better, really, really quickly.

Running away was still my most desired option, but my pink, kicked-in Converse had other ideas. It’s like by some kind of hocus-pocus jiggery pokery, they’ve been sent by the pink thinkin’ police to re-adjust my ‘tude. Pink thinkers were not quitters. No matter how icky the sitch.

Fact. Well, that’s what I thought until Sadie joined in. Yes, you heard right, even Sadie was mad at me.

“Lola,” she says standing up from behind the drum kit. She has to stand up, because where she’s so small and petite, she’d just be a talking drum kit otherwise. “It’s not fair that you’ve made decisions without asking us. I had already started planning costumes—I was thinking about a Fluro—electrobeat 1970s collaboration with…well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, because Angel is all fashion girl glam and will have us wearing lots of tight-fitting clothes and make up.”

Now that was totes unfair, but it sounded like Bella and Sadie had already made up their mind up about Angel. I guess they just don’t know her like I do, which would be really hard to do because I’ve known her for forever and they’ve only met her a couple of times. She is uber-confident and sometimes people mistake that for arrogance, which it really, really isn’t. Personally, I think she uses it as a protective bubble, a way to stop anyone getting too close but that’s because I know her better than anyone.

Y’see, Angel had a tough time when her parentals split up. She thought they were rock solid, we all did. They had been childhood sweethearts but then her dad got really good at all things business. He made lots of money and decided to change his title from ‘husband and father’ to ‘player’ (I know, how icky?). He now has lots of different girlfriends that he invites to one of his many houses both here and abroad.

Angel’s mum was a nurse who lives in a flat right in the centre of town. Angel’s mum still is a nurse who lives in a flat right in the centre of town.

Angel’s world was rocked. Big time.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, she liked that her dad sent her money for her to buy expensive things like bags and shoes, but secretly she missed actually having him around and doing the things that dad’s should do. I say secretly, because it’s only me that knows. She’d be every kind of crazy mad if people knew how she actually felt. Oh, and our journals. We both keep journals, but they’ll never tell, they’re good like that.

Angel would take out her anger and sadness on her mum. A lot. They’d have huge, huge rows that would always end with Angel throwing a huge, huge hissy fit—something she is very good at—and demanding that she go live with her dad, at once. Except, a daughter was not part of her dad’s new Swank-Land lifestyle, so he offered up his love in the only way he knew how and paid the buckeroonies for Angel to attend a super-swank boarding school.

While I don’t think this is what Angel had in mind, she deffo does like it there. I was worried that she’d make loads of new Poshville friends from Poshville and she’d never want to hang with me ever again but it never happened. Oh, she made new Poshville friends, they’ve got names like Eugenie and Cassandra but I mean, we still talk. All the time in fact and we text each other, when I’ve got credit. Which is like, virtually never.

Bella and Sadie were both staring at me now, and more than anything I’d like someone to tell me how to make this right. It’s at this point that I would usually call on my Aunt Lullah. She is my fairy goddess girl, my agony aunt, my mentor. But she also lives in New York—the coolest city in all of the world, dontcha know—and she has a beyond cool job designing costumes for films. What’s not to love about this woman of total fabulousity?

Well, right now, I’m not entirely loving the fact that she’s not here, helping me out of my sticky sitch. And I’m not digging the fact that she’s not even emailable for another week either. She’s on location. In the jungle. She wasn’t allowed to tell me a lot about it, but I’m guessing there might be quite a lot of khaki involved.

I could channel my inner Audrey Hepburn but it really would depend on which of Audrey’s characters I channelled as to what response I would get. For example Holly Golightly, the deliciously eccentric New York City girl from Breakfast at Tiffany’s would be all “Lola daahling, walk away, you’re faaar too fabulous to get involved with all this silliness.” Holly is not renown for her ability to take responsibility.

While Audrey in the movie Funny Face, is a bookstore assistant transformed into a modelling sensation and she would say “Lola, I can’t possible tell you what to do. One minute I’m being true to my art, then I fall for Fred Astaire and everything s’wonderful and s’marvellous!”

Which, quite frankly, is of no help at all.

Nope this was up to me.

“Girls, I’m sorry.” I kick at yet another imaginary bit of dust, trying to avoid eye contact. “I didn’t mean to make anyone angry.”

“Lo, we’re not angry,” Sadie says coming over to put her arm round my shoulder.

“Speak for yourself” says Bella, not moving from where she’s stood at the other side of the room.

“Bell!” Sadie scowls at Bella, to which she responds with a defeated shrug. I don’t quite know how she does it, but with a change in tone and a narrowing of eye, Sadie can pull Bella into line in nano seconds, without ever being rude or horrible.

“We’re just really upset that you didn’t think these were things we should all decide together.”

“You’re right,” I agree. I make eye contact this time, because I want them to know I’m super serious. “I just really wanted to be in a band with all my buds, but I took you both for granted and I’m sorry. I really am. Angel’s coming back this weekend, I’ll tell her I got it all wrong, she’ll understand…”

Just as I was considering all the ways in which Angel wouldn’t understand, Bella, who had received several nudges and eye slants from Sadie, interrupts my thoughts.

“Don’t do that,” she says linking arms with me. “If she’s coming back this weekend, we could record our demo!”

“Really?” I say. “That would be awesome! We could go shopping for costumes, record our demo and take snaps of us as a girl group! It’ll make a perfect story for the next issue of the zine too!”

“So, we’re all happy?!” Sadie asks, looking at us both.

“Only if I’m still choosing the band name…” Bella asks before deciding to confirm or deny her happiness.

Sadie and I both nod in agreement.

“Yay!” Bella holds up both her hands for a high five. “No more decision without checking with everyone first, okay?” she asks.

I nod happily. My Pink Ladies are the bestest evah.

Fact.