Daisy and the Trouble with Life (6 page)

I wasn't too sure what to say. I thought of asking for some more pocket money, but decided maybe this wasn't the time. So I didn't say anything at all. In any case, it wasn't even a whole dib-dab. It was only a half-sucked one with hardly any sherbet on it. So what was all the fuss about?

The
trouble with not saying anything at all
is it leaves lots of space for other people to say things.

My mum told me off ALL the way home in the car, and then when we got home, she told our neighbour Mrs Pike what I'd done.

Mrs Pike told Tiptoes too and then asked me if I thought Freddy would ever pick up a dirty fish flake from the floor of her pond. Before I could even answer, she told me, “NO HE MOST CERTAINLY WOULD NOT! Not if it was the last fish flake in the world.”

Then my nanny and grampy came round to our house to lend Mum their step ladder. When they heard what I'd done, they weren't very pleased with me either. They said that even if they were in the war, when there were no sweets, they still wouldn't have picked a dirty sweet up off the pavement. Which doesn't make sense because if there were no sweets, how could one end up on the floor?

That's the
trouble with really old people
. Sometimes they don't know what they're saying.

Then, just my rotten luck: my Auntie Sue rings up to tell us about her new plasma green telly. Mum tells her about the dib-dab and then hands the phone to me. That's the
trouble with telephones
.

Some people just never stop talking.

Auntie Sue told me all about pavements and then all about germs. She said that once germs get inside your tummy, there's no telling what they can do. Especially if they're pavement germs. Pavement germs can give you diseases and tummy aches and headaches and temperatures. She said germs are like mini monsters. They've got ten heads and fifty eyes and twelve mouths with purple tongues and they love getting inside you so that they can do horrible things to you. Because germs are nasty. Germs are horrible. Germs are out to get you.

No wonder they hide on half-sucked strawberry dib-dabs — Oops, here I go again . . .

Mum sent me to bed early last night. She said children who eat germy dib-dabs don't deserve to stay up late, even if it is a Friday. Even if there is no school in the morning.

But who cares anyway? I totally wanted to go to bed early yesterday. And double anyway, I had a new comic to read.

The
trouble with comics
is you only get a free gift on the front cover.

I think comics would be much better if you got free gifts on all the pages on the inside too. Then you wouldn't need to look at the comic. You could just play with the free toys.

I got some fly vision glasses in my last comic. When I put them on, they made everything in my bedroom look weird. Every time I looked at one thing it looked like a hundred things. I wore them in the sweet shop last Tuesday and they made even gobstoppers look great.

When I let Gabby try my glasses on in her garden, she said it wasn't fly vision. It was alien vision. Gabby says alien vision is how things look if you live in a faraway place like planet Blerg.

That's the
trouble with Gabby
. She sometimes tells fibs.

My mum says there's no such place as planet Blerg and there's no such thing as aliens or monsters. Except in films – and even then they're just people dressed up pretending to be aliens and monsters. Like at a fancy-dress party.

That's the
trouble with films
.

They pretend to be real but they're not.