And I don’t bother saying hello to her this time as I’ve tried loads of times and I always get the same reaction, no matter
how much I try to not wear my gold or not wear my scrunchie or not wear my hoodie, she still treats me like I’m NOT A REAL
BLOODY PERSON at all and always starts talking about Josh’s good friends in North West London who I’ve still never met and
then she always starts talking about her friend Jocasta’s daughter Claudia who is “asking after Josh again.” So to be quite
honest, I’m not bothering with Mrs. Fallow, I’m more interested at this moment in Josh’s neck ’cos now I can see him in the
direct sunlight sitting with his back to the patio doors I can see there is a mark on his neck that LOOKS JUST LIKE A HICKEY.
And I haven’t given my Josh a lovebite. ’Cos as I say, he went missing at Martika’s shubz and I’ve not seen him much since
then at all.
And I want to kick off and leave but just then the doorbell rings and I go and look out of the bay windows and it’s Uma. And
Uma is looking one hundred percent how Uma likes to look and she’s not compromising for anyone, certainly not Mrs. snooty
Fallow.
Uma’s got on footless leopard-print tights and a denim mini-skirt with black snakeskin pumps and a skin-tight white cropped
T-shirt which shows her belly-button ring. She’s got on an electric pink hoodie, two sets of big gold hoops and her gold clown
pendant. She’s wearing her gold charm bracelet and carrying a massive white fake Mulberry handbag from Ilford market. Uma
is standing in the front garden by Josh’s mother’s row of recycling boxes, finishing off a Marlboro Red, and as Josh gets
to the door, she shouts, “Zeus! Come on!” and Zeus comes trotting in behind her doing his best devil dog impression ever.
For some reason, I want to cheer, because the thing I love about Uma is she ALWAYS keeps it real.
Well, it all starts going off then, ’cos Uma strides in and Zeus pads in after her and she shouts, “Sit down, Zeus!” which
Zeus does ’cos he’s actually properly trained ever since Uma’s little brother shoplifted
Dog Whisperer
on DVD for Uma’s Christmas pressie. So Uma’s been doing the whole command/reward thing and Zeus has been learning it. Well,
Uma sits down and gets out her laptop from the massive handbag and clicks a bit and logs into Josh’s WiFi broadband and starts
showing us all the MySpaces and Facebooks of kids at Mayflower who make music already and she’s talking proper fast about
e-mails she’s sent and who she’s heard back from. And we’re sitting there, proper amazed at how much she’s achieved.
Then Uma starts saying that what we need is some people who are a bit more professional to help out, y’know, like local rap
artists who have a big name on the local pirate radio stations like the Crowley Park Brapboys and the Rinse and Go Fraternity?
Maybe folks like that could do a little collaboration with the Year Sevens and Eights? Then Uma says that she’s having no
luck getting in touch with them but didn’t Carrie and Shiraz’s ex-boyfriends Bezzie Kelleher and Wesley Barrington Bains II
used to know all these people really well? In fact, didn’t they used to lay down tracks with them when they were in the G-Mayes
Detonators? It’s people like that we need to really help out, she says.
So Carrie says to me, “Well, we could ring Wesley and Bezzie and ask, couldn’t we?” And I say, “Errrrm, dunnno about that.”
And Joshua bursts out laughing and says “Wesley Barrington Bains II!! Ha ha ha, are there two of him?” So I say, “Shut up,
Joshua. Just shut up!” but Joshua is proper wetting himself going, “The G-Mayes Detonators! I’ve heard it all now! Ha ha ha
ha!”
“Oh, just shut it!” I say. “And anyway what’s that bloody mark on your neck?!”
And at that point there is a huge, ear-splitting scream in the kitchen and it’s Mrs. Fallow howling, “Oh my God! Oh my God!
Joshua, call the police! Call the animal control! There is a rottweiler in my kitchen! A ROTTWEILER! Call the dog-catcher!
And it’s eating my Portuguese Pasteis de Natas that I’ve baked for my book club! Aaaaaaaaaghhhhhhh!”
So we all run into the kitchen and Mrs. Fallow is standing on the kitchen table flapping her arms and crying and Uma tries
to catch Zeus but he is properly distracted by the Portuguese jam tart things and Mrs. Fallow is shouting, “Get it out! Get
that rottweiler out of here! Call the police!” And in the end Uma shouts, “Oh, shut your trap you silly cow, it’s only a Staffy!”
and Mrs. Fallow goes PROPERLY BERSERK then and chucks us all out and somehow in the confusion poor Zeus forgot all the things
he learned from his
Dog Whisperer
DVD and he ended up taking a wee right up the front of Mrs. Fallow’s Aga cupboard thing.
But it’s made of iron, I’m sure it’ll wipe clean. Some people are so dramatic.
34, Thundersley Road,
Goodmayes,
Essex,
IG5 2XS
Dear Wesley Barrington Bains II,
I’m writing this letter to you, but I pretty much one hundred percent know that I’ll never send it. I just need to write stuff
down to make things clearer in my head.
So much totally mental stuff has happened over the last few months that my brain is in a proper spin. Well, anyway, I was
watching the morning shows the other day before school and this agony aunt was saying the best thing to do with feelings is
write them in a letter then set fire to it, so the feelings can get some “closure.” So that’s what I’m going to do. Right,
here goes.
First of all, Wesley, thank you so so so much for helping us out with the “Increase the Peace” campaign. When Uma started
saying that we should call you and Bezzie up, well I was like, NO WAY, UMA, ’cos I thought you’d be all moody with me and
would hold a grudge. But you didn’t, Wes. You were proper lovely and chatty and helpful and you totally saved our lives. I
was bricking it that Tuesday last month when me and Carrie came over to Bezzie’s on Dawson Drive to chat to you both about
the Prince Charles thing.
But then we gets to Bezzie’s house and Bezzie opens the door and Bezzie’s ancient King Charles Spaniel, Shane—who is somehow
still alive ’cos he must be about 102—runs out and starts trying to give me a paw and lick my face and Bezzie’s mother starts
shouting to shut the door ’cos there’s a draft and it felt well weird ’cos it was exactly like when I very first met you.
Everything was exactly the same, except now everything was totally different ’cos I’ve totally broke your heart.
So I walk up the stairs into Bezzie’s room and there you are sitting on Bezzie’s bed in your white Hackett sweatshirt and
Nike trackie pants and your Von Dutch cap reading
Super Street
car magazine, smelling of Burberry aftershave and we start talking and my heart is beating really quick ’cos I’m nervous
and I can tell you’re nervous too ’cos your top lip is all sweaty. And you’re like, “Hello, Shiraz Bailey Wood.” And I’m like
“Hello, Wesley Barrington Bains II!” and quickly we’ve settled into taking the mickey out of each other and you never mention
Joshua Fallow once at all and that’s proper good of you Wesley ’cos if you’d left me for another bird I’d never have let you
forget it, mate. I’d have added her name into every single sentence. In fact, I wouldn’t have spoken to you ever again at
all.
I don’t deserve a friend as properly lovely as you.
I can’t believe you could just put all that stuff out of your head and get on and help us out. If it wasn’t for you and Bezzie
we’d never have talked the Rinse and Go Fraternity into coming to our school and performing a track with the Year Sevens.
And we’d DEFINITELY never have talked the Crowley Park Brapboys into coming to Mayflower and doing a little collaboration
with Delano and Meatman in Year Ten. In fact, without you making some phone calls and giving us some lifts in your car and
basically being properly supportive, well, I reckon we’d have had nothing to show Prince Charles at all.
That said, maybe that would have suited Prince Charles down to the ground ’cos he had a face like a drizzly day on Walthamstow
Market right through the lot of it. In fact, I reckon if he’d had a choice between listening to the Rinse and Go/Year Seven
track again or dying slowly of full-blown cat AIDS I think the AIDS might have won hands down, but that don’t matter Wes ’cos
we’re still going to be in all the newspapers tomorrow and we’re still all over BBC today with that Max Blackford dude going
on about “An amazing change of fortune for Mayflower School who were once a bleak and war-torn establishment.” ’Cos, y’know,
I’m not saying we changed the world today or nothing but for one day in Mayflower Academy everyone got on and the peace was
temporarily increased and there was hope. And we need some hope right now ’cos for some mental reason kids are stabbing and
shooting each other all over London right now over nothing and it’s heavy as hell. I think what we did today was amazing.
The thing that totally gets my head properly flummoxed about me and you, Wesley, is that although we are totally different
in loads of ways and you reckon I’ve changed loads and got right up myself, well, the thing is we’re also totally, exactly
the same too.
Like today for example, from the second you arrived at Mayflower, I knew you were sort of seeing things in the same way as
me. ’Cos we’re from the same place and we’re from the same type of family and same type of background and we find the same
type of stuff funny and we notice the same type of stuff going on about us that other folks don’t. From the very first moment
I ever met you sitting on that bed in Bezzie’s house the other year it was just like one big, long, silly conversation about
stuff. ’Cos me and you Wesley, we just sort of gel.
So I knew today that you were finding the same type of stuff bare jokes, like the way the school all smelled of fresh paint
’cos Mr. Bamblebury had been flying about with a paint can himself that morning. And the way there was suddenly no litter
or grafitti anywhere ’cos old Bumbleclot had been up all night scrubbing it off. And the way the cafeteria ladies were all
wearing lipstick and fresh clean pink smocks and not looking like bloody lesser-spotted Mexican swamp-donkeys as usual. And
how all these total nutters have started appearing at the school gate clutching Union Jacks and tea towels, including my mother
who has been lurking outside the school with Aunty Glo since 7:30
AM
wearing a T-shirt that says,
CHARLIE IS MY DARLING
that she’s had in her wardrobe since she camped outside Buckingham Palace for the Royal Wedding in 1981! Properly shameful
I know!!!
But the thing is Wes, I’m not ashamed about my family when it comes to you ’cos your family are just like that too. ’Cos you’ve
got a mad Uncle Terry who reckons he’s Batman who drives about Ilford in a battered old Subaru playing proper loud Madness
on his stereo. And you’ve got a daft Aunty Lil who’s married to a Pearly King and she walks around Bermondsey on Sundays in
a jacket and big hat covered in buttons collecting money for a kiddie’s charity.
And you’ve got a bonkers godmother, Sheila, who’s proper obsessed with
Phantom of the Opera
who always wears an official baseball cap and sweatshirt and runs the Internet fan club from her extra room. And your mum
is always showing me the latest two-for-one bargain she bought down at Food Lion. And you don’t think it’s weird that we own
a Staffy and all our friends own Staffies (sometimes two or three Staffies each!!) or that I knock about with someone who
has a fridge in their front garden, or that we all decorate the front of our houses at Christmas or that no one in my house
has ever been to university ever or that all the women on my street wear a lot of gold, because the thing is, Wesley, they’re
all like that on your street too.
I miss that, Wesley. I don’t have that with Joshua Fallow.
But the thing is, Wesley Barrington Bains II, although we are totally the same in lots of ways, we are also properly different
too.
And I don’t know why that is, Wes, sometimes I just think that maybe our brains are wired up different. ’Cos ever since I
started doing well at school in Year Eleven, my brain started properly racing ahead to learn the next thing and I started
working out where I could go with it all and thinking and thinking and thinking about the whole big world out there and my
part in it and you don’t really think like that at all, do you?
You think it’s proper weird when I want to buy a big newspaper or if I want to find out about other people’s religions or
that I think it’s totally OK if Nabila Chaalan’s mother wants to walk about in head-to-foot Niqib if that’s what makes her
happy or if Danny Braffman wants to grow the biggest Jew-fro hairdo this side of Stamford Hill and his mother wants to wear
a wig that is exactly like her normal hair ’cos it’s her religion. Or if Sean Burton wants to turn up to meet Prince Charles
in a pink T-shirt with a big rainbow on the front and then do a rap which rhymes the words “King Lear” with “totally queer”
that gets such a loud sucking of teeth from the whole of the Year Ten rudes that I think he’s going to get knocked backward
off the stage with the sonic boom of noise. Even you were tutting too, Wesley.
But Sean Burton don’t care ’cos he is proud to be different and I’m proud of him too. I reckon you’ve got to live and let
live, Wes. There’s so much out there in the big wide world, Wesley, and I want to find out about it all ’cos I’m proper curious
and I don’t just mean about schoolbooks and Shakespeare, I mean real life, real people, real situations, and real experiences
and you don’t want to have them, do you? You don’t want to see the real world outside Essex at all. You don’t want to stand
on Waterloo Bridge and feel alive.
Do you?
But, whatever. The one thing that today’s events have made me see, Wesley Barrington Bains II, is that you’ve always got my
back. You’re always looking out for me and there’s not many folks in this world I can say that about, ’cos as far as I can
see in this life, you’ve got your family and you’ve got maybe one or two other folks who would honestly give half a crap if
you got squashed by a falling piano or run over by a herd of startled gazelles. And one of them folks in my life is you. I’m
proper scared, Wes, that I’ll mess this up with you and then there won’t be no others.