Posh and Prejudice (7 page)

So I told Mr. Bamblebury that “nang” was good ’cos it means Ms. Bracket is good, she’s like, cool. Mr. Bamblebury looked proper
pleased then. Then he said that he’d also heard that the Year Tens had all started calling him “Mr. Bumbleclot” instead of
Mr. Bamblebury and he didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing either? And at that point I decided to do the “Increase
the Peace” campaign for Mr. Bamblebury ’cos to be honest I felt a bit sorry for him.

I am seventeen today. Seventeen! Proper ancient! I thought seventeen might feel different, like suddenly I’d wake up feeling
well mature and start watching
Emmerdale
and enjoying brussels sprouts and doing word-searches but it ain’t like that at all. Seventeen just feels like sixteen.

When do you suddenly start feeling like a grown-up, I wonder? When do you suddenly get all your grown-up brain cells and know
whether you’re doing the right thing with your life and where you’re going? When does that all come?

I asked my mother about it this morning and she said the moment she knew she was a grown-up was this day in the early ’90s
when she found herself in ShopRite in Romford and Cava-Sue had just started school and I was only a toddler and Murphy was
just born and her mum had just died and suddenly she was in charge of everybody and she still felt like a kid herself but
she weren’t no more and she was staring at this packet of rice pudding like her mum used to make her and she realized she
didn’t know how to cook it and there was no one to tell her anymore and she had a panic attack and the manager had to take
her to his office and make her a cup of sweet tea.

“Anyway,” my mother said, chucking me a card in an envelope. “Don’t worry about that now. Happy Birthday.” Mum gave me a card
on behalf of everyone in the family with a £20 gift card for TJ Maxx, then my Wesley came round tonight and took me out to
Pizza Hut.

Wesley bought me a gold bracelet from Elizabeth Duke which sort of matches my locket. He is such a nice person. It’s proper
chunky though. “’Ere, Mum,” I said to her once he’d gone. “You don’t think this is a bit too bling if I wear it with the locket
and the hoops is it?”

“Don’t be soft,” Mum said, “You can’t never wear too much gold.”

I’ve started recruiting people to take part in the Mayflower Academy: Increase the Peace campaign. Well, when I say “recruiting”
what I mean is I stood on a chair in the Sixth Form common room today and said, “’Ere, everyone, listen!” and told them what
Mr. Bamblebury wanted. Everyone just stared at me pulling the same “Are you a mentalist?” face that I did last week.

Finally Sean Burton, who was spending his study hall sewing glitter patches onto a silver bomber jacket to go and see Kylie
Minogue, spoke up and said, “Shizza, have you seen some of those kids out there? There’s one lad in Year Ten who calls himself
Meatman who’s got gold teeth and a tattoo of Tupac Shakur on his arm? He shouts ‘Kill da fairy!’ everytime he sees me!” Lots
of folks nodded like they knew him. “Y’know, Shiz,” Sean said, “I ain’t overly concerned with increasing Meatman’s peace.
In fact, I’m sort of hoping someone shoots him soon.”

“Thank you, Sean, that’s ever so helpful,” I said, although to be honest I could see his point. I started to panic a bit then.
What the bloody hell was I going to do? But suddenly, Joshua Fallow stands up and says, “OK, Shiraz Bailey Wood, put my name
down. I want to increase the peace!”

So I say, “Are you serious, Joshua?”

And he says, “Yeah, it’s a good idea. We should do something…. I’ll help you organize it. Just tell me what you want to do
and I’ll do it.”

I wrote his name down and gave him a little smile ’cos despite him being proper up himself he had totally saved my life. Joshua
gave me little wink and I felt a bit funny.

Of course, the moment Joshua says he’ll help, lots of other people like Saf and Sean and Luther and Sonia and Carrie said
they’d get involved too. We are the “Mayflower Academy: Increase the Peace Initiative.”

Crapping hell—now we really have to do it.

Studying at my house is proper impossible. IMPOSSIBLE! I’ve told our Murphy a thousand times that he can’t play bloody Dubstep
in his room when I’m reading my Shakespeare but he just don’t get it at all. I hate him sometimes.

In the end I went over to Carrie’s house as we’re supposed to have finished
Henry IV
Part One by tomorrow. Carrie wasn’t much use at all. In fact she was a proper distraction. When I got to Draperville, Carrie
was lying on her bed staring at the beauty section of
In Touch.

Carrie said that eyes are going to be very big news next spring/summer season NOT lips like in autumn/winter. So I said, “Bloody
hell, Cazza! You love your cupid-bow lips! What are you going to do!?” So Carrie says, “Doesn’t matter, Shizzle, I’m going
to start doing smudge kohl eyes instead like Tabitha Tennant did at the
TV Quick
awards.”

So I said, “Wooo, dat is well nang, Cazza, but do you think we should read
Henry IV
Part One now?”

And Carrie said “Mmm… yeah, but first, what do you reckon about Saf? Do you reckon he’ll end up snogging me if we do “Increase
the Peace” campaign together? Man, he is well choong!”

The only time Carrie really picked up her Shakespeare was when we heard her dad on the landing shouting, “Carrie? I’m back!”
Barney walked in and saw Carrie pretending to study and looked really happy. “Would the future CEO of Draper Hydration and
her best friend fancy some Chinese food? ’Cos I’m putting a takeaway order in,” he asked.

“Ooh thank you, Dad!” Carrie said. “Can me and Shiz share a Set Meal A? But change the pork balls to chicken in black beans
and get shrimp crackers too… THANK YOU DAD, YOU’RE THE BEST!”

The second he shut the door she picked up
In Touch
again and started reading an article called “Hollywood Tips for Heavenly Eyelashes.”

We had our first “Increase the Peace” meeting today in the Audio Visual room. I was well nervous ’cos I’ve never been in charge
of anything before EVER and suddenly loads of Sixth Formers are all up in my face expecting me to have a plan and be all responsible.
SCARY MARY.

Luckily Joshua Fallow showed up and he was proper confident and had loads of ideas in a folder with a sticker on it that said
“
INCREASE THE PEACE
.” Joshua had even been on the Internet and found this video by this bloke from Hackney called Wootbouy for a track called
“Rude, U R Dead to Me.” He made it as part of an anti-violence initiative just like ours.

The video is about how easy it is to start rolling with a gang and end up putting your whole family’s life at risk. The video
starts all exciting with boys and girls all dressed going to a shubz having a laugh and getting off with each other acting
like mini-gangsters but then suddenly things start to get proper heavy with people getting shot and it ends up well upsetting
with mums screaming by hospital beds and police dragging away one kid to jail after someone’s been killed over some stupid
beef over a stolen iPod. HEAVY.

We’re going to show the Year Sevens to Elevens the video, then do a skit about how to “walk away from violence” and “increase
the peace” then finally we’re going to give some little speeches about how we all ended up in Mayflower Sixth Form and how
bloody whoop-di-doo fantastic it is.

I don’t know if I’ll give a speech about that ’cos I’m scared my face might give away that Sixth Form is actually proper hard.
In fact it’s just like normal school but ten times harder with the added stress of finding a smart-caj outfit every morning.

Carrie has wangled her way into playing Saf’s girlfriend in the skit. Luther, Joshua, and Sean are playing the part of a street
gang who give Saf a well bad diss in Ilford Mall Burger King by saying something ’bout his mum. The skit is about whether
Saf responds or just walks away and ignores them and “increases the peace.” I’m the play’s director.

The problem I see is that Luther isn’t very scary at all (he’s more cuddly ’cos all that weed he smokes gives him munchies
so he’s gotten quite fat), and Joshua talks like a proper posh boy and Sean is insisting on playing his part as a gangster
wearing navy mascara and a silver bomber jacket with glitter Kylie Minogue patches. Oh bloody hell.

Luther’s gang is totally wack. My nan and Clement could beat them up.

The whole thing would be bare jokes if I wasn’t in charge of it all. We’re performing to Year Seven on Monday! I hope I get
squashed by a bus before then so I won’t have to do it.

Today we did our first “Increase the Peace” assembly for Year Sevens.

I had been PROPER DREADING it all weekend. So much so that when Wesley took me to Fat Freddy’s Foodstop at Romford Plaza this
Saturday night I could hardly eat my buffalo wings or nothing and I didn’t even smile when the waitresses were juggling stuff
and tap dancing between courses which is the best thing about Fat Freddy’s Foodstop (well, so Wesley reckons).

“It ain’t just a restaurant, it’s like seeing a show or something, innit,” Wesley always says when we go. To be honest, I
don’t really like it. I just feel a bit sorry for the folks who work there. At least Mario just lets me serve fried egg rolls
with my gob shut and I don’t have to do two bloody verses of “Genie in a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera to get my tip. Wesley
got a bit huffy when I told him that. He gets a bit huffy with me a lot these days.

“You weren’t even watching them proper!” Wesley said. “You’re always miles away these days, innit!” This made me a bit cross.

I felt like shouting, “Well maybe if you’d spent two hours after school watching Sean Burton running round in a neon crop-top
and mascara carrying a bread knife shouting stuff like, ‘Ooooh, take that bruv! Ya just got merked!’ while Saf rolled about
on the floor laughing not looking dead at all and Carrie painted her nails and read
US Weekly,
well YOU’D WANT TO BE MILES AWAY TOO!” But I didn’t say that I just shrugged and said I was sorry.

Anyway, after all that, our assembly sort of went OK. Well more than “sort of.” Mr. Bamblebury reckoned it was “a roaring
success.” Basically, we turn up in the hall at 9:30
AM
today and the Year Seven kids all arrived at once and started sitting on the floor with their legs crossed looking proper
excited. The Year Sevens are well tiny and quite sweet. I don’t ever remember me and Carrie being so small and cute-looking
but we must have been I suppose.

We turned all the lights off and it was totally dark and silent aside from the odd fart and giggle, then we put on the Wootbouy
video for them all to watch. They all watched it proper quietly without saying a single word to each other and by the bit
where it got all heavy with the blood and folks dying and stuff I looked at the front row and some little girls were almost
crying and the boys looked proper scared.

Then we put the lights back on and we did our little play and everyone—Saf, Luther, Joshua, Sean, and Carrie—all tried proper
hard to do it well and no one forgot their lines and none of the little kids seemed to notice how flouncy Sean is or that
Joshua sounds posh like Prince Harry or that Luther would be more dangerous as a gang member if he ditched the knife and just
sat on people and squashed them with his big bum instead.

Then Joshua stood up and said a little speech about how amazing Sixth Form is and all the little girls in the room just stared
at his face and wide shoulders with their mouths wide open listening to every word like they were proper madly in love and
then he got them to shout “LET’S ALL INCREASE THE PEACE!” all at the same time together and he asked if they would ever get
involved with gangs and violence and they all shouted “NOOOOOOOO!” and he asked whether they’d try to stay on in Sixth Form
and they all said “YESSSSSSS!” then they all left to go to class and Mr. Bamblebury looked proper happy and said he was “over
the moon with this very valuable work.”

So I got home tonight and I felt sort of happy for a bit then I put on the news and it said that some kid over in Streatham
had been stabbed to death after school tonight by four other kids on the number 45 bus in what was being described by police
as a “post-school scuffle.”

I sat for a bit and cuddled Penny and I thought about how mental everything is in this world and felt a bit sad ’cos in the
grand scheme of things me and Joshua and Carrie and the gang probably hadn’t increased much peace at all.

I went to bingo tonight with Nan and Clement. It’s funny going places with them ’cos they are proper old and think about everything
in a different way than young people do. They don’t ever get too stressed about nothing like guns or knives or gangs or respect
or homework grades or how Martin Luther changed the face of organized religion in the 14th century or whether or not Shakespeare
meant to portray Henry IV as lazy or whether no one has left them any MySpace messages or what sort of lipstick Tabitha Tennant
is wearing or how fat or thin they look in their sensible cardigans. They never think about nothing like that. It must be
quite good fun being old.

All they’re into is bingo, bowling, crosswords, nice cups of tea, and having a laugh. “Ain’t nothing in this life much worth
shooting each other over,” my nan said when I told her about the “Increase the Peace” campaign.

“No, that’s not true,” said Clement sounding proper serious, “I’d shoot a man clean between the ears if he tried to keep me
from one of your sponge cakes.” Then Clement winked at Nan and they both laughed proper loud like kids and Nan poked Clement
for teasing her and he poked her back just like you’d do if you fancied each other a bit which I’m sure they don’t. Nan won
£50 in bingo and they put her name on the big screen and gave her a cheer so it was well exciting.