The Donut Diaries (2 page)

I was actually rather nervous about this whole topic of conversation, for the very good reason that what I’d got for Christmas was a skipping rope.

That’s right.

A piece of rope that you use for the purpose of skipping
.

I’d been given a skipping rope for two reasons:

1) I could use it to skip with, thereby contributing to my Healthier Lifestyle.

2) I didn’t deserve anything decent
because
I’d blown up Ruby’s teddy.

It was Renfrew who asked the fatal question, probably trying to deflect everyone from making fun of his violin.

‘What did you get, Donut?’

All the faces swivelled towards me. I tried to think of something believable – some sort of gadget – but my mind went blank. I couldn’t think of anything. I started to panic. Sweat broke out on my forehead. The image of the skipping rope swung in front of my eyes. And then I was saved. Well, sort of saved. Like when you get saved from being eaten by a shark because a killer whale eats you first, which is frankly the very worst way of getting saved.

‘Hello.’

It was my arch-enemy, my nemesis, Steerforth,
the
Floppy-Haired Kid himself. He was flanked by a couple of his cronies, who always followed him, the way a noxious burp follows a bad burger.

I looked him straight in the eye. He was smirking. He was nearly always smirking. They should make signs that say ‘NO SMIRKING’ instead of ‘NO SMOKING’ and you could hold them up whenever he walked by. Sadly, I didn’t have one now.

NOTE TO SELF: LOOK ON THE INTERNET FOR A CHEAP ‘NO SMIRKING’ SIGN.

‘I suppose you’re thinking that the worst is over for you, my plump chum?’ He spoke in such a sweet tone you’d really think that he was my chum, unless you knew him. ‘Got through the first term unscathed, plain sailing from now on, eh?’

I shrugged. There was no point in getting into a war of words with the FHK. He was always going to win it. Unless you fought back with the kind of ammo that comes out of a monkey’s bum.
¹

‘But the thing is, my donut-munching
compadre
’ – and here he stepped towards me and took hold of my cheeks with his fingers – ‘it
is
. It really is. I’ve been thinking that I was acting like an idiot last term. It’s time for us both to move on. I don’t suppose we’ll ever be friends, and that saddens me a little. But at least we can be civilized acquaintances.’

And then he slid smoothly away, like a wet fart.

I turned to the others, who were all staring.

I shrugged.

They shrugged.

Sometimes, in life, shrugging is all you can do.

As it was the first day back after the holidays we were all a bit, er, high-spirited at morning registration, and our form teacher, Mr Wells, who normally tries to be everyone’s best friend, got into a right old state. I felt a bit sorry for him, but not so much that I didn’t join in with the paper aeroplane throwing, animal-noise making, Chinese burning, etc. etc.

Oh, in case you don’t know, ‘Chinese burning’ doesn’t mean burning Chinese people, which would be wrong and racist, and also stupid as they have a massive army and would totally destroy you. No, it’s when you grab someone’s wrists with both your hands and twist the skin in opposite directions, causing Immense Agony to
the
person you’re torturing.

Except me, that is. For some freakish reason I’m immune to Chinese burns. I’ve got a feeling that one day this will save my life, but for now it’s only useful when I challenge people like Renfrew to a Chinese burn-athon, as it guarantees my victory.

NOTE TO SELF: SEND LETTER TO MI5, MI6, BRITISH NAVAL INTELLIGENCE, ETC. ETC., TELLING THEM ABOUT MY SPECIAL ABILITY TO WITHSTAND CHINESE BURNS IN CASE IT CAN BE OF SERVICE TO THE NATION.

It’s the first day back so I reckon I’m allowed the extra half, OK?

1
See earlier note about monkey poo. This seems to apply even more to monkey bums.

DISASTER. BECAUSE OF
yesterday’s hi-jinks, Mr Wells has changed how we sit. We now have to go boy-girl-boy-girl.
¹
This is the worst thing that
has
happened to me since I was old enough to realize that I had sisters.

On one side of me I have Tamara Bello, who’d be a dead cert to play the princess who could feel a pea even though she was sleeping on ten mattresses. By which I mean she’s quite pretty, in a princessy kind of way, but also a royal pain in the bum.

On the other side of me I have this girl called Ludmilla Pfumpf. Her real name isn’t Pfumpf – that’s just the sound she makes whenever she stands up or sits down. I’ve concealed her real name to avoid giving offence. Ludmilla Pfumpf has bulldog jowls and weightlifter arms and she smells of meat. You’d have to be a meat expert to say for definite what kind of meat she smells of, but I’d guess it’s probably buffalo. Or maybe horse. Possibly badger. Imagine wandering into
a
butcher’s that specialized in buffalo, horse and badger meat and you wouldn’t be far off target in terms of the smell. Now, smelling of meat is only the ninth worst thing you could smell of – coming after poo, wee, vomit, blue cheese, belly-button gunk, my dad’s feet, dog spit and a tramp’s underpants – but it still isn’t a smell you’d choose to sit next to.

Apart from her ‘Pfumpf’ noise, Ludmilla doesn’t say very much, but I could hear her stomach rumbling all day, and I lived in mortal fear that she was going to raise her chunky buttock – as knotted and knobbly as a bag of walnuts – and pump out a badger-flavoured fart in my direction.

I made the mistake of telling my family about it at tea time, thinking it would make a funny story. My dad seemed to enjoy it but Mum said it wasn’t nice to mock the afflicted, and that it wasn’t Ludmilla’s fault that she had a bum like a bag of walnuts. But then my psycho sisters, Ruby (who wears pink) and Ella (who wears black), decided that I must fancy Ludmilla, and was going to go out with her and probably get
married
and we’d have mutant, meat-smelling babies together, etc. etc. etc.

See – I’m being good, I really am, despite the whole Ludmilla provocation.

1
Technically, as there are 32 of us, we go: boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl. Hmmm, I think that might be the most boring thing I’ve ever written in this diary. Possibly the most boring thing ever written by anyone in any diary in history. And going on about it makes it even more boring.

AS PART OF
my campaign to cut down (a bit) on donuts, I’ve started to eat a lot of bananas. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. I like bananas. Most other fruit basically counts as work – I always feel like I need a lie down after an orange or an apple. I once ate a mango and had to stay in bed for the whole weekend to get over it. All fruit other than bananas I eat as a favour to my mum, to make her feel like she’s being a proper parent. But eating a banana, well, it’s quite
nice
, isn’t it? Not
donut
nice, of course, but then nothing is donut nice except donuts.

The funny thing is that I don’t like things that are
banana-flavoured
– you know, those weird banana-flavoured toffees, or banana milkshakes. In fact, I hate all banana-flavoured things except for actual bananas themselves. Cherries are the opposite. Real cherries, you know, off
trees
, don’t really taste of anything as far as I can tell, but cherry-flavoured sweets are delicious, probably because they don’t have any actual cherry in them. They ought to get the stuff that makes cherry-flavoured sweets so delicious and squirt it into cherries. Then you’d have cherry-flavoured cherries, and I’d eat them till I burst.

But in the absence of cherry-flavoured cherries, I take a banana to school to have as
an
emergency snack, in case I get tempted by a donut. Actually, quite often I’ll have a banana
and
a donut, but in those circumstances the banana has probably saved me from eating two donuts, so it’s still done its job. In that situation – I mean eating a banana
and
a donut – the key is to eat the banana before the donut, not after it. That way you get a rising level of sugary goodness, like this: