My Madder Fatter Diary (14 page)

9.36 p.m.

Dobber just admitted she liked Roxette. I may have to go home.

Thursday 9.8.90

8.32 p.m.

Don’t ask me why I’m writing this. I’m just narked off. To think they know our A level results NOW and they are not telling us! Why must they keep us waiting?! JUST TELL US!!

Friday 10.8.90

10.36 a.m.

HADDOCK POSTCARD 2!!

Dear Rae,

You’d like it here. Beer is warm though. Keep your boots on. Love Haddock XX

The writing is all over the place. Clearly pissed but WHO CARES!!

Can’t work out where it is either. I don’t think it’s Kuwait or Iraq so I don’t care!

11.40 p.m.

Just look at this diary. It reflects total boredom, apathy and basic misery. This summer has to be the biggest non-event of the century. I crash and burn whatever I do. I make the wrong decisions.

I feel as though this is one massive dream sequence. Everything is so hazy. I can’t explain. I feel like a ghost haunting my own life. And a ghost that people are actually shit scared of and freak when they see it.

Saturday 11.8.90

11.37 p.m.

My life is so empty without the thrill of Haddock. I go down the pub and it’s just NOT the same. I wait for the letterbox just in case he writes again. This is bad though. I should be thrilling myself not relying on a man I’ve never actually snogged to thrill me, but my life is EMPTY without him. I wish I could take comfort in the mutuality of that emotion but there is little indication as to the depth of his feelings. A postcard with a big Greek penis on it does not mean marriage.

Sunday 12.8.90

9.20 a.m.

So weird down the pub last night. George Betchum and Ryan Bates came to see me looking very proud of themselves. They have started to write their own comic book called
237 Ways to Kill Rae Earl with a Cheese Grater
. They think it’s hilarious and not at all offensive. And the odd thing was it was quite sweet in a mad way. They said it was a ‘tribute’ to my weirdness. George had also bought me a badge that said ‘Too ugly to live, too weird to die’.

I like it. Fuck it. I’m wearing it.

Monday 13.8.90

12.09 a.m.

Pissed. Really pissed. Doing a Joan Collins. No. A Jackie. DOING A JACKIE.

PROLOGUE

The girl seated uncomfortably in her white iron chair heard him come in. Though quite clinically ugly the boy had a charm of the gods, a wicked animal magnetism that inevitably meant that his life was littered with a string of passionate relationships. Though the label round his neck screamed ‘Fatherless person’, women flocked to him like flies to a
particularly
rotting piece of meat that was still attractive even in the most disgusting state. Sweet and irresistible yet guaranteed to leave you with fatal food poisoning. The man was an icon to his male counterparts and had at least grudging respect from the female population.

But the girl, seated upon a throne of the purest iron, could see straight through it. It was not him that thrilled her but the Prince that lagged beside him. Quieter, more assured but as prickly as a cactus that rarely flowered but when it did flowered with pungency. The girl knew when she looked at him that one day she would turn into the Queen. Into a fuck off Cinderella that doesn’t quaff diet Coke but champagne.

10.23 a.m.

I think that was meant to be part of a book but I read it back and it’s SHIT. Snakebite does not make you write well. I can’t see Jackie Collins or Jilly Cooper with Snakebite.

A level results. I am not going to a place I don’t want to go to. What was I thinking?! Exeter is too far away. Who cares if Battered Sausage is going there?! Prediction: C for English, D for Politics, E for Theatre Arts and definitely U for History. Unless they give me marks for imagination. Which they won’t.

Tuesday 14.8.90

11.13 p.m.

Just been for a chat
with Shellboss. We went to the Lord Burghley. Then we went to the total classic bar where Nibbles café used to be. Shellboss is brill. You can tell her anything and we have a right laugh.

Bad thoughts returned with a vengeance. Stress. Anxiety. Worry. I can feel it.

Massive numbness. It’s HADDOCK! He gives me my spark! He makes me feel funny and pretty. He’s like a lucky mascot and he’s probably shagging some impossibly skinny Italian woman. I just love him. I LOVE HIM! This is love I can totally feel. He is totally gorgeous and amazing.

When I look in the mirror I can’t write this because I feel I shouldn’t because I’m fat and I will never get him. I wonder how he’s doing? What’s he doing now? Please don’t be shagging Cicciolina the porn star. I love the Pop Will Eat Itself song but don’t shag her. You’re fit enough, you’re in her league but don’t do it.

Wednesday 15.8.90

4.56 p.m.

Adnan has to go back to Morocco! Apparently being married isn’t enough! The Home Office have to come and investigate to see if the marriage is legitimate! They think Adnan has just married Mum to get a visa. Yes – because you’d really leave Morocco, a bodybuilding career and constant sunny weather to live in Edinburgh Road and watch Mrs Bark peg her washing out with a fag hanging out her gob for a British visa. You HAVE to be in MAJOR LOVE to do that! It PROVES it.

I told Mum I thought it was a load of racist Tory crap and she had to agree. She voted Conservative in the early 80s though. One time at Peterborough station the striking miners were collecting and they said ‘Support the miners!’ and Mum said ‘Yes I will – the working ones!’ I was horrified. The miner swore at her. I agreed with him! What goes around comes around. That’s what Nan used to say. Thatcher closed all the mines and she’s now closing down marriages and love. I hate to say it but it sort of does serve Mum right in a way.

Really, this is just Thatcher biting Mum on the marriage bum.

Perhaps Mum voted Tory at the same time that she was seeing the psychologist! HA HA HA!

I am trying to be Ben Elton. I am not.

Thursday 16.8.90

12.03 a.m.

Here we finally are! A level Day is here with a vengeance. The culmination of two years’ work. Well the bit of work I have actually done.

The grades I need for the University of Exeter – ABC.

I hope TO GOD I don’t get them. I desperately want to go up North (I KNOW this was meant to be. I KNOW it).

Can it really be a year since A level Day last year? I wish Haddock was here. If I do really well it would be a bloody good excuse for reapplying and more importantly A MASSIVE HADDOCK hug. I’ll get drunk before so I can actually enjoy the cuddle.

I’m sick of having no-one to hold me at times like this. Times when everything is up in the air and nothing is working in my head. I’m scared. Terrified.

11.14 p.m.

BCD!

B in English

C in Politics

D in Theatre Arts

U in History

Full of shit – la la la! Crashed and burned. Not bad but not good. Future is getting weird with it. What the hell?!

Mort did brilliantly and Shellboss got BBB! JAMMY! She has done NO work for two years but I love her so it’s totally deserved.

The totally worst thing about the whole day was that Haddock’s girlfriend said to me ‘I looked in Chelsea’s scrapbook of her school years. She has a photo of Haddock – now that is NOT on!’ FUCK! I have currently about 10 photos, 3 cuttings from the
Stamford Mercury
, 2 postcards and a crap plastic plant that I won’t let go of!

I haven’t got a scrapbook. I’ve got a HADDOCK-BASED MUSEUM.

And I am not letting go of it. I’ll hide it but it’s MINE.

Friday 17.8.90

9.23 a.m.

Mum was actually quite nice about my A level results. She said ‘If you’ve done your best you can do no more.’

Er . . . I haven’t but when you’ve got a tumour in the bum a month before your exams and you were in a psychiatric ward just before your A levels started you’re hardly going to be swanning into Oxford are you?!

Now she’s asking me what I am going to do next. Well Mum, because we don’t have a home phone and arranging your entire future from a phone box is difficult when you have A) limited 10p pieces B) women are shouting at you to hurry up as they need to speak to the DHSS or C) people are chanting ‘Jabba’ or ‘Fat Bitch’ at you. I’m going to see if I can go over the road and use Mrs Armitage’s home phone. I need Exeter to reject me and then I need Essex to tell me to bugger off too then I CAN have a year off.

3.45 p.m.

EXETER HAVE REJECTED ME!! YES!! Sorry, they said, I needed to meet my exact grades! No problem posh lady. Thank you for being nice but that’s actually just what I wanted thank you! Just did a victory dance round my bedroom to MC Hammer but pretended to Mum I was gutted and ate two packets of crisps to make it look really authentically pissed off.

Oh I ate the crisps anyway because I wanted to but it helped the general effect.

Saturday 18.8.90

11.01 p.m.

I might be reading too much into this but when I told Battered Sausage I wasn’t going to Exeter he looked a bit narked off. Oh live with it. He blows hot and cold and takes the mickey all the time. I’m not being donkey to his racehorse.

And another thing – yes – Dobber looks like Betty Boo. She is gorgeous and undeniably looks like Betty sodding Boo. And yes Battered Sausage, I look like Pavarotti without the beard. Well Betty Boo ‘Doin’ The Do’ only got to about number eight in the charts and ‘Nessun Dorma’ got to number two so looks aren’t actually everything are they? No!

Yes. YES. YES. Of course I’d rather look like Betty Boo. It’s called looking on the bright side apparently. Psychiatrists tell you to do it but most of them don’t look like sweaty Italian opera singers.

Sunday 19.8.90

11.23 p.m.

Watching a programme called
Falling on your Feet
– it’s a show for jobless teenagers. It might come in useful.

I will have to go over to Mrs Armitage’s again tomorrow to use her phone. Just reject me Essex! PLEASE!

Monday 20.8.90

7.13 p.m.

When will I be a
proper woman? My tits grew way before anyone else’s. I was in Harwayes getting bras when other girls were still in vests. Yet now they snog, have relationships and I’m still the fat cow making everyone laugh and then pissing off home for ten chocolate digestives and a
Prisoner Cell Block H
session.

I suppose university could be the chance to start again. Be who I want – not what I am.

Tuesday 21.8.90

5.09 p.m.

I got into the University of Essex. Bastards. I feigned happiness on the phone when they told me.

Mum is thrilled. Of course she is. A clever daughter not mad in the loony bin – somewhere else being clever doing clever things.

Mort has given me a pink dinosaur teapot as a well done present. It’s lovely. I’ll keep it forever but – Essex. Why the HELL did I put Essex?! I’ve never been there!

I have to go. I can’t stay here but I’m terrified.

Wednesday 22.8.90

10.39 p.m.

Apparently Haddock’s girlfriend got off with someone. She’s finished with Haddock in his absence. It’s all a storm in a teacup. I’ve seen it all before.

Mum has a phrase – she says some people will always fancy a rough bit of scrag end even when they have steak at home. I know what that means now. Haddock is fillet steak. The finest. And yet his girlfriend has just snogged scrag end.

Fig said to me tonight ‘You’re back on form Rae. You’ve been a bit weird.’ Yes Fig I’ve gone mental but nobody has noticed. I didn’t say that of course. I never say what I’m thinking.

Thursday 23.8.90

11.35 p.m.

It’s weird being nuts. Being on holiday proved it really. Had I got meningitis or brain or bum cancer everyone would have been lovely and turned up with grapes, magazines and plastic plants. When I’m mad people either move away from me or offer me the emotional equivalent of the shit sandwich.

And bugger off Timmy Mallett –
Wacaday
was bad enough but making records is bang out of order.

Friday 24.8.90

10.47 a.m.

I swear I will BURST.

Haddock is back from holiday. He just turned up on my doorstep this morning. I can‘t even express the level of gorgeousness. He HAS A TAN. Never have I been so aware of my inadequacy, my fuck ugliness and my weight. How much does it kill me? It won’t stop.

He told me they had finished. I want them to get back together. At least she is lovely. What if he ended up with a bitch? His girlfriend said to me ‘Rae, will you talk to him because he listens to you’ so I tell him the truth – she loves him and she’s lovely. I don’t tell him the other part of the truth which is ‘Haddock. I love you. I genuinely think we are meant to be together and what will it take to make you like me in a sex way?!’