The Donut Diaries (12 page)

Saturday 30 September

RENFREW CAME ROUND
today, along with Corky. It was a bit weird having a play date with my new mates.

NOTE TO SELF: IT’S NOT A PLAY DATE WHEN YOU’RE AT BIG SCHOOL. IT’S JUST CALLED ‘HANGING OUT’
.

NOTE TO SELF: HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT USING THE TERM ‘BIG SCHOOL’?!!!!!

Corky seemed a bit more relaxed than he was at school. His stutter was still really bad, though, and it took him about ten minutes to say hello. Renfrew sort of looks after him, which is kind of nice.

We were in my room when Corky did this fart that sounded exactly like that song, ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’. It was about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Also pretty gross, of course, especially when you considered that I had to sleep in that room, and the fart gas was going to linger in there for some time, hanging under the ceiling or lurking behind the curtains.

Actually, it didn’t smell that bad, considering how long it had gone on for. Jim says that short farts are more pungent, but I’ve always thought it was the really long ones that do
the
damage. My theory is that the first bit of the fart is fairly harmless as it’s really just froth and air. But once you get down to the last dying bit of a long fart, you’ve got some really toxic stuff in there. It’s the dregs, and there’s more to it than just gas. We’re talking chunks. I know the fairly innocent Corky long fart seems to weigh in on Jim’s side of the question, but that’s because we’re ignoring another dimension – the loudness. As everyone knows, the silenter a fart is, the more deadly. So you have to integrate that fact with the data we have about the duration.

You need to think about it like a graph. If the duration of the fart represents the x-axis, then the loudness of the fart is the y-axis, with the loudest fart at the bottom of the axis.

For any fart, the toxicity (i.e. poisonousness) is measured by plotting both the length and the loudness of the fart. The worst farts are the long, slow silent ones. The least nasty are the short loud ones.

In the example here (all these farts are hypothetical), Fart A is the least noxious, as it
has
both low duration (or length) and high loudness. Fart F, on the other hand, is long and quiet and would therefore be a real killer.

Anyway, all this stuff about farts gave me an idea.

‘Corky,’ I said. ‘If you can sing “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, couldn’t you sometimes say other things, you know, using your butt? I mean, when you get stuck.’

Corky thought for a moment, looking deadly serious. Then he lifted up one buttock and farted a clear and distinct ‘Yes!’

We laughed so much that my dad came out of the toilet to see what was going on.

A bit later Jim came round, but I asked my dad to tell him that I wasn’t in. I wasn’t ready yet to mix up home and school friends. My dad gave me a funny look and began to say
that
it was wrong to tell lies for no good reason, but then went and did it anyway.

I think he understood.

DONUT COUNT:

Sunday 1 October

I HAD TO
do a family tree, for history homework. We were supposed to stick in pictures of any relatives we could find in the right place in the tree diagram. We have a load of family photograph albums in the cupboard under the bookshelves and I got them out and had a look through. All the usual baby pictures: plenty of embarrassing ones of me on the potty, etc., plenty of pink ones of Ruby, and lots with Ella staring moodily into the camera, like she’s got
terrible
deep dark thoughts, even though she’s only three.

There were other albums with pictures before we were even born. Pictures of Mum and Dad looking happy. These days my dad looks depressed and my mum looks cross or busy, but in these pictures they were always smiling or laughing. And sometimes, disgusting though it is, snogging. I mean, why would you start
snogging
when someone’s about to take your picture? It’s just plain crazy. Snog some other time. Or, better still, DON’T SNOG AT ALL.

Then there were even older albums with pictures of my dad when he was a kid with Uncle Kevin and Granny and Grandad. And there was an album with Grandma and Grandpa, Mum’s parents, that is. But, weirdly,
there
were hardly any of Mum in them. There were some of when she was a baby, and then a toddler with yellow hair and blue eyes, but none of her as an older kid, a teenager or whatever.

Anyway, I knew that I couldn’t just rip the photos out of the album, so I banged on the toilet door and asked my dad if there were any loose pictures I could use. He huffed and puffed and then went up into the loft and came down with a carrier bag full of photos.

‘Have a look through this lot,’ he said, and disappeared back to the loo.

I poured the photos out onto the living-room floor. Most of them were just rubbishy versions of the ones in the albums, with someone looking the wrong way or their mouth at a funny angle or everything out of
focus
, except for a pigeon flying past. And then I saw something truly weird. There was a picture of a fat girl. It looked a bit like Ruby, except it was obviously from the Olden Days because of the clothes.

Then the door opened and my mum came in.

‘What’s all this mess?’ she shrieked. And then her face went hard and white, like stone. And suddenly I realized who the fat girl was.

It was her.

My mum.

My super-yogarized, incredibly skinny mum.

She came over and shoved all the photos back in the carrier bag, without saying a word.

So, that’s it. That’s why she’s so bothered about me being a bit overweight. She’d been a fatty.

At least it took my mind off the poo.

Until now.

The little pot is on my windowsill. I can hear it calling me in its mocking voice.

‘Fill me. Fill me. If you dare.’

DONUT COUNT:

Monday 2 October

THE GENERAL WEIRDNESS
continues. Today it was Tamara Bello, of all people. I was putting some stuff in my locker, and when I closed the door she was there. I think I might have let out a little squeak.

NOTE TO SELF: DO LESS SQUEAKING
.

Tamara, as usual, looked at me like I was something she’d squeezed out of a spot. Not that she’s got any spots. Her skin is so perfect you’d
think
she was a cyborg. She probably
is
a cyborg. One of the ones that gets sent back from the future. I don’t know yet if she was sent back to destroy me or to save me. Maybe she was just sent back to ignore me, although I suppose that would be pretty stupid, and they probably just shouldn’t have bothered.

‘You should watch out,’ she said.

‘Eh?’

NOTE TO SELF: DON’T SAY ‘EH?’ WHILST WEARING A GORMLESS EXPRESSION: YOU LOOK AND SOUND LIKE A VILLAGE IDIOT
.

‘Steerforth.’

‘Eh?’

DID YOU NOT LISTEN TO THE LAST ‘NOTE TO SELF’? WHAT’S THE POINT IN WRITING THESE THINGS DOWN IF YOU DON’T PAY ATTENTION!

Then I remembered who Steerforth was.

‘Oh, the FHK.’

Now it was Tamara’s turn to look puzzled, although she didn’t say ‘Eh?’ or look particularly gormless.

‘I mean the Floppy-Haired Kid.’

A tiny little twinkle appeared in her eye. ‘Yeah, him.’

‘Sorry, what was it about him?’

A huge tut from Tamara. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’

Then she was gone.

DONUT COUNT:

Tuesday 3 October

RIGHT, SO AS
well as all the small footie games that go on around the yard, there’s this massive football match that begins on Monday and ends on Friday and basically anyone can join in. Well, in theory. Obviously me and my mates aren’t the world’s greatest footballers. Renfrew and Spam basically can’t play at all. AT ALL. I don’t just mean that they’re rubbish, I mean that Renfrew can’t kick the ball without falling over, and Spam never even manages to make contact
with
the ball but just swishes away like someone practising a golf shot with their leg.

Corky isn’t that bad, but he loses his temper and randomly runs around kicking anything that gets in his way – kids, walls, the ground, whatever, so no one ever wants to be on his team. I’m basically OK at football – not good, but not totally useless either, but I’d never got up the courage to play in the Big Match because of all the chances to get snubbed and humiliated.

Actually, the humiliation would start at the picking. The way they do it is for the two best players to ‘step it out’, which means that they stand facing each other like two gunslingers, and then walk towards each other, and the one whose foot goes over the top of the other’s gets to have first pick. Then they take it in turns until everyone’s used up.

I knew what would happen if I tried to play. The group of the unpicked would get smaller and smaller until at last it was just me, like the last manky mutant donut left on Mr Alexis’s shelf. (I usually get that one anyway.)

And three guesses who is always one of the captains? Who else but the FHK? The other was usually a big bruiser called Jonathan Body.

The FHK was pretty skilful. He was one of those players who doesn’t need to run around much. He’d just look up, play a little dummy, leaving some other kid on his backside, and then slide exactly the right pass to some other kid who was doing all the running around for him.