Louise Rennison - ‘… then he ate my boy entrancers.’

Rosie said, “What? The ‘No Forehead Stick-insect Fighting Fund’?”

“Absolutemento mon pally.”

We are indeed vair vair amusant.

Miss Baldwin has got gigantic basoomas. Even bigger than my mutti’s, and that is saying something. I was very much afraid that she would set fire to them with the Bunsen burner. Sadly there was no basooma incendiary action, so I couldn’t use the foam extinguisher, which would have topped the lesson off in my humble opinion.

I told the Ace Gang about Operation Go to Hamburger-a-gogo Land. They were, as usual, agog as two gogs. Three gogs in Ellen’s case. Thank the Lord she seems to have dropped her infectious laugh. I was going to have to kill her if she kept it up.

As we crunched through our nutritious snacks of cheesy Wotsits and chuddie, I said, “It is going to be marv, as I said to Jas – even though she didn’t get it – we will be like the Thelma and Louise of England.”

Rosie said, “But you won’t have a gun.”

“I might do.”

“No, you won’t. Your dad won’t let you go to an all-nighter, so he is definitely not going to get you a gun.”

“He is. He said I could have one when I got there.”

Rosie just looked at me.

“Just a small one for emergency shooting.”

They all just looked at me.

Ellen said (annoyingly), “Where…er…where is Masimo? I mean where is he going to be in America?”

I said, “Well, you know, near where we are going to be.”

She went on in her vague, dumped-by-Dave-the-Laugh way. “Yes, but I mean, well…where are you going to be?”

I said, “At the clown-car convention in America.”

Rosie blew a big gob-stopper bubble and then sucked it back in again. Then she put her face right up close to mine and said slowly, “Yes, but Georgia, where is the clown-car convention?”

“Memphis.”

“And where is that?”

I laughed and said, “Good grief, I thought I was bad at geoggers. Don’t you know?”

“YOU don’t know, do you?”

“Of course I do. It’s…down…a…bit from New York.”

“Down a bit from New York?”

“Yes.”

“Like you thought Hamburg was famous for its hamburgers?”

What had Rosie turned into? Memo the Memory Man? Honestly, just because I had been secretly exfoliating my legs under the desk in geoggers when we were doing the Rhine, and Miss Simpson sprang a surprise question on me…

I changed the subject. “So, what do you think I should pack for my trip?”

Jools said, “Well, not knickers, because they don’t wear them there.”

I said, “Wow, saucy minxes! You mean they go round in the nuddy-pants? They don’t mention that in geoggers, do they? It’s all boring stuff about wheat belts and the Atlantic drift.”

Jools said, “Panties.”

I said, “Oy, clear off with your panties talk. You are a nicelooking girl and everything, but I am just not interested.”

Jools said, “No, that’s what the Hamburgese wear.”

The bell went.

Donner and Blitzen! How am I supposed to discuss my wardrobe if we keep having to go to lessons?

Oh, hang on though, it’s German next, so that’s OK. We can discuss it then without being disturbed.

Herr Kamyer was, as usual, rambling on about the Koch family going on one of their endless camping trips.

Keeping in mind that Koch is pronounced ‘cock’, and keeping in mind that they are the family that star in our German textbooks, you have to ask yourself this: what sadist decided to feature a family called Koch in our textbooks? They know that they are going to be read out by the naff and the sad (German teachers) to a load of giggling and hysterical girls obsessed with boys and rudey-dudeyness. The family could have been called anything, couldn’t they? Schwartz or Schmidt, for instance, but oh no, it had to be the Kochs and their spangleferkels. How many sausages can one family eat? In the Kochs’ case, the answer is A LOT.

I put my hand up because I am sehr interested in the Kochs.

Herr Kamyer said, “ Ja, Georgia?”

I said, “Herr Kamyer, did all the Kochs go camping, or was it just the little Kochs and the big Kochs stayed behind? Or was it a mixture of little and big Kochs that came out?”

The whole class was in uproar. Herr Kamyer was, as usual, completely bewildered. He said, “Vat is zo funny about the Kochs? Do you not haf the Kochs in England?”

Happy days.

As we lolloped off I said, “German is such a restful and amusing language, isn’t it? Incomprehensible, obviously. As, indeed, are the lederhosen that the Germans go yodelling in.”

Jas was in Jasland and said, “You think The Sound of Music is what Germany is like, don’t you? That’s why you always rave on about singing nuns and yodelling.”

“Well, The Sound of Music is, of course, a documentary-style film. You can’t argue with facts, and I do know what I’m talking about because Libby has made me watch it twelve times.”

“It was set in Austria.”

“Yes…and?”

“Last term you said that Germans were obsessed with goats and cheese.”

“Yes…and?”

“That was because you had read Heidi, and that was set in Switzerland.”

“Jas, what in the name of Beelzebub’s stamp collection are you going on about?”

“You are crap at geoggers.”

Oh, rave on, fringey nitwit. (I didn’t say that bit aloud because I am grooming her to be my sidekick on the Road to Romance.)

Still, in the interests of world peace I might be forced to get the old atlas out and look at where Memphis is and so on.

Work work work, I’m so vair tired. And I still have to walk all the way home.

I wonder if Jazzy will give me a piggyback?

No.

I’ll be bloody glad when Gordy is allowed out. When I arrived home he had the rubber plant on his head. I’ve put the stump back in the plant pot and superglued some of the leaves back on. With a bit of luck it will be all right till we go away, and then I can blame it on whatever fool cat-sits for us.

How can I find out exactly where Masimo is?

I can’t trust Radio Jas to ask Tom to find out where Masimo has gone in Hamburger-a-gogo land. Anytime I ask her anything private it’s usually on the Radio Jas airwaves in about two and a half minutes. Her idea of being subtle and finding out things is that she goes out into the street and shouts, “Anyone know anything about this secret thing I am never going to mention?”

Hmmmmmmmm.

I hate to admit it, but I need the assistance of Dave the Laugh.

Donner and Blitzen!

If I could just accidentally bump into him on the way home then I wouldn’t have to phone him.

Because if I phone him and Rachel is there I will feel like a facsimile of a sham. I mean he is officially (ish) going out with her.

Even though he keeps snogging me.

Anyway, how can I trust anything he says – it was him, after all, who said he fancied my mum!

But then he is also my mate and official Hornmeister.

Also, he said that I have accidentally done the right thing and become Mystery Girl with Masimo.

Jas and me were ambushed by four Foxwood lads. Two of them deliberately ran into my legs on their bikes, fell off, got back on backwards and started circling us really fast yelling, “You slags!!”