The Donut Diaries (9 page)

So now everyone thinks I’m one of those kids who reads the Bible in bed and probably has ‘Jesus Loves Me’ written all over his pyjamas. Even Miss Brotherton looked a bit embarrassed for me.

I don’t know, I seem to have some kind of a social death wish. First there was the ‘My name’s Donut and I love Dermots’ incident, then the Bible thing. You’d think that it would be enough for fate to make me fat without also making me a massive doofus.

Ate two donuts in my room. One South African go-go berry flavour and one Peruvian guinea-pig flavour. Just kidding about the guinea pig. Mr Alexis gave me a plain old jam
and
I was happy for the length of time it was in my mouth.

That’s enough diary for one day.

DONUT COUNT:

Thursday 21 September

CAME IN THIS
morning and there, waiting for me, was the same gang of kids who’d ambushed me with the sousaphone. They all knelt across the path and put their hands together and started praying loudly. I pushed past them but they got up and followed me, shouting ‘Alleluia’, ‘Praise the Lord’, and that sort of thing.

Quite funny, I suppose. For some reason it didn’t get to me the way the sousaphone incident did. But I still really wished that the
earth
would open up and swallow me. Actually, no, I hoped the earth would open up and swallow
them
down into its core of molten iron and burn them to a crisp.

In the afternoon it was PE. Except it wasn’t, unless PE stands for ‘Particularly Embarrassing’. Our PE teacher is called Mr Fricker. Mr Fricker has no hands. The word was that he lost them in a terrible accident involving, depending on who tells you:

• a helicopter
  
• a lawnmower
  
• the Taliban
  
• an angry dolphin
  
• a sausage-making machine
  
• one of those rotary pencil sharpeners with a handle you have to turn round that went wildly out of control
  

However it was that he lost his hands, whether torn off by polar bear or gnawed away by ants or dissolved in acid, nobody would ever make fun of Mr Fricker. This wasn’t just because it’s wicked to make fun of people who have lost their hands (or anything really, except maybe unimportant things like a toe or their bus pass). No, you wouldn’t make fun of Mr Fricker because he’s the most terrifying human being who ever lived.

He has two ways of talking. One is very quiet and sinister. It’s the kind of voice a serial killer would use to lure you into his basement.

The second way of talking isn’t talking at all but SHOUTING INCREDIBLY LOUDLY.

The shouting incredibly loudly began in the changing rooms. My PE kit was as tight as a piece of cling film wrapped round a block of
cheese
, and it took me longer than anyone else to get changed. So Mr Fricker stood about six centimetres away and screamed:

‘MILLIGAN, NOT ONLY ARE YOU TOO FAT BUT YOU ARE ALSO AS SLOW AS A SLOTH IN TREACLE! GET YOURSELF CHANGED, BOY, BEFORE I GO AND FETCH A ROUNDERS BAT AND USE YOUR FAT HEAD AS A BALL.’

The word ‘ball’ was so loud, a bit of plaster actually fell off the ceiling, as if we were in a bunker under heavy artillery fire.

Of course, all the other kids were sniggering because it wasn’t them being screamed at, but then Mr Fricker glared round at them too, the changing-room lights glinting off his baldy head.

After that we just sat in rows while Mr Fricker gave us a long speech about personal
hygiene
. The boys, that is – the girls were at the other end of the gym getting a similar talk, I imagine, from Miss Gunasekara, Mr Fricker’s second-in-command. At the end of our talk, Mr Fricker glared at us all for a bit longer, then he said:

‘I suppose some of you are thinking that because of my …
hand issue
’ – at this point he raised his handless arms – ‘I’m not able to compete at the highest sporting level. But I assure you that I can still beat any one of you at any sport you care to mention.’

Then he went into his private office, which is a corner of the gym with a curtain around it. Renfrew was sitting next to me. ‘He’s a complete nutter,’ he whispered in my ear. Then, as if to illustrate the point, Fricker sprang out. We were all amazed. At the end of one arm, fastened using
some
elaborate metal attachment, was a ping-pong bat. On the other side he had a hockey stick, looking a bit like a stretched pirate’s hook. I don’t mean the pirate had been stretched … Oh, you know what I mean.

‘He’s a cyborg,’ I said to Renfrew, quietly.

But not quietly enough.

Fricker’s ears swivelled to pick up the sound, then he zoomed over, his legs a blur.

‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ I said, trembling.

‘Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,’ said Mr Fricker in his scary quiet voice.

Then he blew.

‘ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?’

It echoed round the gym, and the girls at the other end all looked up.

‘N-no, sir.’

‘THEN TELL ME WHAT YOU SAID!’

My mouth opened up, but nothing came out. I was terrified. I thought Mr Fricker was going to ping-pong my head.

‘He called me a sideboard.’ That was Renfrew speaking.

‘What?’ said Fricker, looking like he’d just found a small piece of dried poo in his bag of crisps.

‘It’s my nickname, sir.’

Fricker stared from me to Renfrew and back again. You could tell that he wanted to hook someone round the neck with his hockey-attachment, and then maybe hoist them into the air and send them flying across the gym, but he couldn’t think of a good enough reason.

‘Never talk again in my class,’ he said in the end to both of us. ‘Or you’ll wish you’d never been born,’ he added, but you knew his heart wasn’t in it.

DONUT COUNT:

(Scandinavian loganberry, Swiss cheese, and Scotch haggis. Thank heavens it’s the last day of the Donuts of the World promotion.)

Friday 22 September

NOT EVEN GOING
to mention school today. Which isn’t because it was so awful that I don’t want to think about it (it was actually one of those inbetweeny days when nothing either great or rubbish happens). No, it’s because after school I had my second visit to Satan’s nutritionist, the gruesome Doc Morlock.

We were standing in front of her wall. There was a chart on it. On my bedroom wall I have a chart of Second World War fighter aircraft.
This
was a very different type of chart.

It was a poo chart.

It looked like this:

Doc Morlock had a stick. She pointed at the little round poos on the chart – Type 1.

‘This is what we want to avoid at all costs.’

She pointed to Type 2.

‘This is hardly any better. Sooner or later these will kill you.’

I nodded, imagining myself being chased around by little hard poos wielding Samurai swords. I don’t mean to imply that little hard poos are at all Japanesey, because that would be racist – just that whenever I imagine myself being chased by anyone or anything, they usually have a Samurai sword. It’s one of my quirks.

‘What I want to see,’ Doc Morlock continued, ‘is a Type Three or Type Four. A nice long smooth stool, pointed at both ends, with a texture like warm fudge. That
indicates
a proper, healthy diet, full of fibre. It’s the stool of champions. Now, Dermot, take the stick and point to your stool type.’

I took the stick. I imagined how nice it would be to shove it right up Doc Morlock’s nose and into her brain. I was blushing so much my face had gone beyond red and into the purple zone. I couldn’t look at her horrible, disgusting chart. Couldn’t bring myself to point at any of her horrible, disgusting stools.

‘Don’t know, I never look.’

‘Well, from now on you must, Dermot. You must. By the way, did you bring the diary with you?’

‘Diary? Er, no. I didn’t know I was supposed to …’ I thought about all the stuff I’d written in the diary. Secret stuff.
This
stuff.

‘Well, you were. How else am I to monitor your progress? Now, strip down to your pants and we’ll take those measurements.’

DONUT COUNT:

Can you blame me?

Saturday 23 September

MY MUM HAD
to go into work today, even though it’s the weekend, so Dad took us swimming. I’m actually pretty good – I can beat Ruby and Ella at the crawl. But that’s probably because vampires like Ella are water-soluble, and Ruby spends all her time checking out the boys and convincing herself that they are checking her out right back.

As Ella was swimming along, her hair dye and mascara and stuff dissolved, leaving a long
black
stain in the water.

Ruby was wearing a pink swimming costume that you could see from space. The best part was when she was doing sidestroke so she could look at this muscly kid on the high board, and so she didn’t notice a manky plaster that was floating in the water and she sucked it into her mouth and choked on it and then ran into the changing rooms going ‘
Aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
’ with everyone staring at her and thinking she was a nutcase, which was brilliant, really.