How to Write Really Badly (7 page)

Example:

As you can see, this could easily be taken for ‘thirty!’

I thought it was important to cover dotting ‘i’s and ‘t’s.

The Golden Rules for dotting are:

1. Don’t give a dot to anything that should have one.

2. Put it a few letters away (in either direction).

Joe provided the example.

So I thought of something else.

Always make sure that you have more dots than you need. The extra dots should be scattered just anywhere over the page of writing
.

Then we went home.

After the weekend, we started on punctuation.

Too much punctuation is fussy and unattractive. Forget about question marks and exclamation marks, and be
very mean indeed
with commas. But you can sprinkle full stops anywhere in the sentence (except at the end). Example:

And then, just to finish it all off neatly, we did spacing and layout.

Always go right to the very edge of your paper, even if you fall off. Any bright reader will be able to guess what your last word was going to be.

Example:

If you are sitting right, your work should slope right up or down the page. Don’t worry about paragraphs. Esteemed chicken-scratchers
never
worry about paragraphs
.

I handed the pen to Joe.

‘Now write “Good Luck” to finish.’

Out popped the old tongue, and he wrote:

Then he studied the last bit more carefully.

‘What’s “esteemed”?’

‘Respected. Honoured. Famous for something.’

‘So,’ Joe said, much taken with all this ‘example’ stuff he’d been so good at over the last few days, ‘we could say, “
Example:
Joe Gardener is esteemed for writing really badly”.’

(No way round this one.)

‘We most definitely could.’

Now Joe was finished with his own work, he started taking an interest in mine.

‘Why are you sitting like that, all twisted round? Are you trying to write really badly?’

‘No. I’m just hiding my work from you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s secret.’

He was hurt.

‘I’ll get to see it anyway, on Open Day.’

‘But not till then.’

He shrugged. Then Mr Hurt turned into Mr Worrywart.

‘It must be hard for you, writing bent round like that.’

‘
You
manage perfectly well.’

‘But I’m used to it.’ His eyes lit up. ‘I know! I’ll make you a screen!’

He did, too. The very next day, he brought in a brilliant screen he’d made out of cornflake packets. It folded neatly when it wasn’t up, and fitted in his desk. But whenever Miss Tate said, ‘Time to get on with your How-to books,’ he’d take it out and set it up between the two of us, lowering the flattened lavatory roll stabilising flaps, and swinging the empty cassette case stability buttresses round into place.

And it did the job perfectly. He couldn’t see.

‘Wonderful!’ I said gratefully. ‘That is so much easier.’

Miss Tate wasn’t quite so keen on it, you could tell.

‘Must you two have all this junk cluttering up your desks?’

‘It’s my security screen,’ I told her. ‘It helps me work.’

She sighed.

‘I suppose I should just be thankful you’ve started at last.’

Started?
Why, I was working like a
fiend
! I spent every hour I could checking my calculations, ruling perfect lines, and making sure my number work was flawless. Joe sat beside me, fiddling with scraps of cardboard and string and glue under the desk whenever Miss Tate wasn’t looking in
his direction, and worrying about me all the rest of the time.

‘Do you think you’ll be finished by Open Day?’

‘I most certainly hope so.’

I wasn’t sure, though, so I took it home and worked on it while Dad was making supper.

‘What on earth is that?’

‘This is my project,’ I told him. ‘It’s a How-to book.’

‘Oh, yes? How to
what
?’

‘Survive in school.’ I saw him staring. ‘It’s a present for Joe.’

Dad wiped the pizza dough off his fingers and flicked through the pages I’d done.

‘This isn’t proper work. All this is, is a heap of numbered squares.’

‘It isn’t just any old heap of numbered squares,’ I said. ‘By the time Open Day comes round, in that book there will be
exactly one beautifully measured numbered square for every single day that poor Joe Gardener still has to spend in school.’

Dad turned to the last page, roughed out in soft pencil.

‘One thousand, six hundred and forty-six?’

‘We’re really down to one thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight now,’ I admitted.
‘But still I thought it would be nice for Joe to cross a good few off right at the start.’

‘That’s all it’s for? For Joe to cross them off?’

‘Or fill them in with coloured pens.’

Dad was appalled.

‘But what’s the
point
?’

‘It’ll make him feel better. All prisoners do it. It helps them get to the end of their sentence without going out of their minds.’

‘But Joe’s not in prison. He’s in Walbottle Manor (Mixed)!’

‘He might as well be in prison. In fact, if he was in a prison, he’d have a better time. He’d enjoy fixing all the sewing machines they use to make mail bags, and inventing weird things for picking locks.’

Dad started thumping his pizza dough really hard.

‘School’s not a chain gang,’ he protested. ‘It is a worthwhile journey of the mind to
a valuable destination.’

‘Tell that to Joe!’ I scoffed. ‘To
him
, school is just somewhere he has to go because they make him, and when he gets there they just nag at him all day for doing everything wrong.’

Dad stabbed my How-to book with doughy fingers.

‘I reckon he won’t be the only one being nagged, the day Miss Tate sees this.’

I didn’t argue with him. I was too sure that he was right. But I still kept on ruling out my perfect squares each time Miss Tate told us to get on with our projects. And sometimes even when she told us to stop.

‘Pens down! It’s time to plan the class displays for Open Day!’

Joe gave me a nudge.