Angie Bates - Sleepover Club 2000

Mrs Poole explained that in those days, hardly anyone owned a camera.

“This is a tremendously big deal for them. It isn’t like some holiday snap you throw away. The photographer is capturing a moment of real history”

I expect you’ve guessed that our headmistress was leading up to a really big announcement. Isn’t it funny how you can tell? It turned out the Parish Council had arranged to have a special millennial photograph taken of today’s Cuddingtonians in our school playground!

“So I hope you’ll all come along on the last Sunday in January to take your place in history,” Mrs Poole wound up.

When we got out into the corridor, everyone was buzzing, discussing what we’d wear for the photograph, so future generations would realise how cool we were.

“It’s got to be my Leicester City scarf,” said Kenny promptly.

Lyndz giggled. “Oooh, won’t you be really cold?”

“I’m wearing my silver jacket. No question,” said Frankie. She has this weird thing about silver. I’m surprised she doesn’t wear silver knickers.

“I don’t know what I’ll wear,” moaned Rosie.

Me neither. It dawned on me, that I didn’t have anything in my whole wardrobe you could truly call millennial.

Yippee! Time to go shopping, I thought.

We’d only been back in our class about five minutes when Mrs Weaver brought us down to earth with a bump.

But first I ought to explain that before we broke up for the Christmas holidays, we’d been given a special assignment. We were MEANT to get together with our group over the holidays and brainstorm ideas for whatto put in this kind of home-grown Millennium Dome our school was planning.

Well, we’d done the getting together part! Several times. But what with new babies, parties and future weddings, we kind of forgot the homework part.

Everyone else in our class started pulling out long lists and spidergrams and balsa-wood models and I don’t know what.

The M&Ms had put together this really slick presentation. They actually gave a TALK to the whole class without Mrs Weaver asking them to! How creepy is that !!!

One of them had obviously got a whizzy new computer for Christmas, because they’d printed off this, like, mega posh document, listing the most important points in their talk in case we forgot them. Then they strutted round the class, making a big hairy deal out of handing everyone their personal copy. “That way we can have a proper class discussion,” smirked Emma, sounding about forty-five years old.

“Yeah, right!” muttered Frankie.

I sat on my hands, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me. The others looked vaguely round the room. Well, except Kenny. She was busy making a paper aeroplane out of you know what!

Actually, I don’t think Mrs Weaver had a very nice Christmas. Because when she realised we hadn’t done our homework, she went into a total Cruella DeVil act.

“You’ll never get anywhere with this kind of sloppy attitude!” she fumed. “Everyone else in this class did as I asked. As a result, they have all earned the right to work on their favourite zones. But you girls will have to put up with whatever is left over!”

Can you guess what “whatever” turned out to be?

Ecology.

But if we thought this was bad, Mrs Weaver’s next words totally sent us into shock.

“I’m giving you one final chance,” she said. “But if you girls don’t come up with some really inspiring ideas for your zone by next Monday, you’ll be VERY sorry indeed.

“We stared at her, like Dalmatian puppies about to be turned into fur coats. We couldn’t believe our ears. That meant we’d have to spend our sacred sleepover weekend doing homework!

The M&Ms were loving every minute of it. They could afford to. All their sucking-up totally paid off. They’d landed the all-time coolest zone – the Media Zone. See what I mean? Those girls come up smelling of roses every time!

It was a really horrible morning. And it got even worse. At break time, Mrs Weaver made us all go outside, even though it was cold enough to freeze your eyeballs. We huddled together miserably in our usual corner of the playground and Kenny shared out some Cheesy Wotsits.

Lyndz looked a bit puzzled. “Why are we so upset?” she asked at last. “I thought ecology was a good thing. I mean, it’s about saving the planet, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah. Ecology is cool and fab and totally groovy,” snarled Kenny. “That’s why everyone else was falling over themselves to do it.”

She glared at the sky, which was filling rapidly with dirty yellow clouds. “Great! It’s going to snow,” she moaned.

My heart sank. Snow after Christmas has absolutely no point and should be banned.

Frankie collapsed dramatically against the wall. She pulls that kind of stunt all the time. She tells us she’s practising for when she’s a world-famous actress.

“This sleepover is doomed for ever,” she groaned. “I mean, ecology is about recycling, right? Cans and old newspapers and stuff? How depressing is THAT?”

Kenny cheered up. “Hey! We could do something about blood and guts. That’s ecology too.”

Rosie gulped. “For vampires maybe,” she said.

“I thought ecology was, like, mud and Nature,” I said.

The others gave me really funny looks. I hate it when they do that. It makes me feel totally stupid.

“OK, so what are those things, then?” I said sulkily. “You know, those tiny invisible things that live in mud?”

Kenny giggled. “Fliss, you’re such a wally! Like we’re not in enough trouble. And now you want us to fill an entire zone with invisible mud creatures!”

Everyone cracked up. Including me, I have to admit. Kenny’s such a laugh. And I bet you can guess what happened next, can’t you? That’s right!

Before you could say “hiccups”, Lyndz was hiccuping away like a fruit machine. Lyndz is always getting hiccups. She drives us crazy.

We started thumping her on the back. “It’s OK. They’ll go off, hic, in a minute,” she gasped. “Look, why can’t we do something about, hic, horses?” Lyndz is totally nuts about horses.

“Animals only count if they’re endangered,” said Kenny in a snooty voice.

“I can’t believe Mrs Weaver actually expects us to sacrifice our sleepover for ecology ,” Frankie wailed. “I mean, ecology is so-o sad .”

“Not as sad as we’ll look if we don’t come up with something good by Monday,” Rosie pointed out.

“Yeah,” agreed Lyndz. “The, hic, honour of the entire Sleepover Club is at, hic, hic, stake.”

At this point I noticed a tiny flake of snow come circling down. Then another. And another. For some reason those little lonely snowflakes made me feel really helpless.

Frankie was right. Our sleepover was doomed.

I don’t feel very well, I thought. In fact, now I came to think about it, my skin felt funny. Hot and kind of sore. My head hurt too.

Well, if that doesn’t put the king in the cake, I thought miserably. I’m getting that bug after all. That evil millennium flu bug.

The first week of term was totally depressing. It didn’t even SNOW properly. There was just this really biting wind. And sometimes sleet battered our classroom windows. But on Friday morning, it finally snowed its little socks off!

By lunchtime all the school dustbins had acquired tall frothy hats. Frankie said they looked like giant cappuccinos.

In the afternoon, Mrs Weaver let us skive off to the school library, supposedly to do research for our Ecology Zone. We were still gloomily opening books and shutting them again when Mrs Poole sent a message round, saying the school was closing early because of the bad weather.