Skinny Melon and Me (12 page)

Mum showed me today what they’ve done to the spare bedroom while I’ve been away. I was quite surprised! The walls are dead white with little figures running all the way round and in the middle lots of teddy bears and beach balls and space rockets have been painted. Oh, and elves, of course! Elves all over the place.

Mum said, “What do you think?” and I said, “I don’t remember having this when I was a baby,” meaning it was really nice and the sort of thing that a baby would like, but Mum took it the wrong way and snapped, “That’s because you weren’t lucky enough to have Roly for a father!”

She is really touchy these days. I can’t seem to do anything right.

I said to Skinny Melon today that I didn’t think my system could stand much more poisoning from school
dinners. She said she didn’t think hers could, either. She said she was absolutely positive that the other day she’d found a bit of worm on her plate. She’d shown it to Mrs James (this was the day I bunked off and came back to school by cab) and Mrs James had looked at it and told her not to be silly, it was “just a bit of grissle.” (Gristle?) But as Skinny said, even if you believe her – which she personally did not – you don’t pay out good dinner money just to be given bits of gristle. (I think this is the way it’s spelt.) And as I said, it’s not very nice to think you’re chewing on pieces of dead animal anyway, whether it’s pieces of worm or pieces of lamb.

Skinny didn’t seem quite so sure about this until I pointed out to her that she wouldn’t want to eat Lulu, would she, and she went a bit pale and said no of course she wouldn’t. Whereupon I said so where was the difference between eating Lulu and eating a lamb, and she said she thought there was one but she couldn’t think what it was.

We talked about it for a bit and in the end she agreed that if she saw a lamb in a field she wouldn’t want to go and kill it, and it was only the fact that it came ready wrapped and not looking like a lamb that made her able to eat it. I said, “I bet if someone gave you a whole raw lamb to cook you wouldn’t ever eat lamb again,” and she really didn’t have any arguments left.

So then I said that I was seriously thinking of becoming a vegetarian, and Skinny said that she was,
too. I said, “When shall we do it?” and she thought about it a bit and said, “Next term?” I said, “Why next term and not this?” and she said because of Christmas. She said they always have roast turkey at Christmas and she didn’t think she could live without roast turkey. Not this Christmas. Maybe next Christmas when her taste buds had changed. (It was me who told her her taste buds would change. I don’t know if it is true, but it’s what Slimey said to Mum so I hope it is.)

We have agreed, therefore, and made a solemn pact, that next term we shall become veggies. I of course could become one immediately, since we shan’t be having roast turkey on account of dead things in the fridge, but it seems better to keep the Skinbag company and start at the same time so that we can encourage each other when our spirits flag or our carnal appetites threaten to get the better of us. Also I don’t want Mum crowing. I will tell her the good news after Christmas and not before. This evening it is Hallowe’en and some kids are roaming the streets dressed up as ghouls and ghosts and skeletons. Slimey said, “Don’t you go and trick-or-treat?” But that is something I have never done. I don’t know why; I just haven’t. Skinny doesn’t either. Slimey said that next year we must make a Big Thing of it and have fun. He likes to make Big Things of things. On Saturday it is Guy Fawkes night and he is taking me and Mum and Skin to a firework display. I suppose I am quite looking forward to it, really.

I am reading Slimey’s book. It is called
I Capture the Castle
by a person with the very strange name of Dodie Smith. What kind of name is Dodie? A strange one! But the book is brilliant. Very funny and yet r-r-r-romantic!

It is all about a girl called Cassandra who wants to be a writer and is keeping a diary, just like me, except that she lives in an old ruined castle and her family don’t have very much money, in fact they don’t have any money at all on account of her father, who is also a writer, sitting up in the turret reading books all day and not doing any work. It is so cold that Cassandra has to sit on the draining board wrapped up in a blanket with her feet in the sink to write her diary. She has a beautiful older sister called Rose and a weird but equally beautiful stepmother called Topaz, who used to be an artist’s model. The romance comes in when two Americans, Neil and Simon, arrive on the scene. Simon is a bit old and has a beard but Neil is gorgeous. This is as far as I have got. I think that probably Rose will marry Simon and that Cassandra, maybe, will fall in love with Neil.

Oh, I nearly forgot. There is also a nice-looking but rather dopey boy called Steven. Steven loves Cassandra and Cassandra is very fond of him but not in the way that he would like. The family owe Steven a great deal as he works for them for nothing and also goes out and earns money which he gives them. Without him they would not survive.

I have never read a book quite like this before and I can’t wait to get back to it! I thought after horrors it would be slow and boring but it is not at all. Skinny is going to read it when I have finished.

I forgot to write in here yesterday.

Stewed sewage and gunge. Thank goodness we have decided to go veggie!

This morning we went to buy some fish for the pond. Fish, I feel, are basically uninteresting. All they do is swim up and down and gobble with their mouths.

I kept pointing out ones I thought we should have but these, it seems, all the ones I wanted, are warm water fish
and not suited to outdoor life. They wouldn’t be, would they? Mum said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Cherry, stop being so awkward! You know perfectly well this is a pond, not an aquarium.” I said, “If we’d had an aquarium we could have had some of the pretty ones.” At least you could sit and look at them and get a bit of pleasure that way. Mum snapped (she is always snapping these days), “If it weren’t for Roly you wouldn’t have anything!”

I beg her pardon. If it weren’t for Roly I could have my dog.

Now the pool is full of boring old fish that half the time you can’t even see. If we had a dog he could get in there and chase them.

I nearly forgot to mention that this evening we all went to the fireworks display. It was up in the park and it was really good. Skinny doesn’t like the bangers, but I do! The louder the better is what I say. (Mum and Slimey like the pretty ones. Wouldn’t you know it?)

Oh ho ho! Something has eaten the fish. They think it might be a heron. I am sorry for the fish but herons need to eat and if stupid human beings will go digging ponds in their back gardens and filling them with food, what do they expect? They might just as well write a big sign saying:

Mum says I am cruel and heartless but I am not. It is in a heron’s nature to eat fish. They are programmed to eat fish. They can’t do anything else. It is what the fish expect. And anyway Mum still eats prawns, she says it’s her “one weakness”. What are prawns if not fish? I told her this and she snapped (again), “That is not the point!”

So if that is not the point, what is?