5th April 2003
I need to start this diary over again. So much has happened.
The most important, and saddest thing, is that my cat died. Pep couldn’t walk anymore, so we had to take her to the vet and have her put to sleep… the day before I went to Canada. I’m still so sad about her dying; I really miss her and it’s so crap not to have a cat to cuddle.
This was so unbearably sad, I’m tearing up thinking about it now. Even my dad cried when Pepper died.
She’d had all kinds of things done to prolong her life over the previous couple of years because she had a dodgy thyroid and one day, when she stopped being able to get about, she told us it was time. It was the one and only time she didn’t make a fuss going into the carrier.
And then I had to go off to school to get the coach to the airport to go to Canada the same evening, still a bit weepy. No one gave much of a shit, unsurprisingly.
Davey has become a bit of a dick! He doesn’t want to hang around with me and Joe anymore and it’s not fair. He isn’t bothered about us anymore and it’s clear he’d much rather hang around with Joanne and the girls in Year 11.
Yep, standard Joanne: “you can have friends other than me, but you best believe I’m going to appropriate them and freeze you out if you try”. This was what I’d been worried about when she started hanging out with me, David, and Joseph, and it turned out I’d had good cause to be concerned about it.
Boys are so straightforward in comparison: if they don’t like one another, they have a fight, job done. If two girls don’t like each other it’s a war of nerves and attrition and it can go on for YEARS.
I don’t need him anymore. If he wants to be a twat, that’s his problem, not mine. He can go fuck himself!
Joanne is in the process of getting with Matt. I don’t really care, but I did tell her I thought I was catching feelings for him, to try to make her feel guilty. I feel bad for lying but I wanted to make her feel guilty for talking shit behind my back, which is fucking rude. Bitch.
Joanne is a snake, we can take that as read. But… how in the all-consuming fuck do you honestly think pretending to have feelings for the dude she’s after is going to in any way benefit you here?
If anything, it’s just going to make her even more determined to get with him because Joanne always gets what she wants, and anyone who gets in her way is just collateral. I really didn’t help myself with any of this.
I’m still friends with Joe – he’s funny but he can be so gross sometimes. We have a laugh together in French and German and call each other often.
Joseph and I were feeling a bit displaced by David’s determination to be everyone’s Gay Best Friend and he’d made it pretty clear he didn’t have much time for either of us these days.
David and Joseph had been friends since we were in Year 8 so he had a lot more to be salty about than me, but I was mostly upset that all the nice things he used to say about how I looked “divine” and so on, he was now lavishing on Joanne, who was lapping it up like it was going out of fashion, because ATTENTION.
It really was a miracle she could get her head through the doorway in the morning.
I’ve recently started chatting fairly regularly to Mrs Hazell – she’s not much older than I am and we talk about Gay Best Friends, being single for ages, and uni. I feel like I can tell her things about what’s going on in my life (not too much though, she is a teacher after all!) and she’ll be frank and honest with me. It’s great – like having an older sister who’s been there and can give me advice.
I’m not sure the inner workings of my brain were what Mrs Hazell had signed up for when she agreed to teach Latin A-level. Aimee dropped it after AS-level and because she played the flute in the orchestra and was in the choir, was forever being summoned by our megalomaniac music teacher to practise something RIGHT NOW, so I had a lot of classes on my own from the spring term onwards.
She certainly taught me the gentle arts of Sarcasm and Not Giving A Fuck, and I owe her a great deal for how I handle myself even now.
She also got me to think about further ahead than the immediate future:
We don’t live too far from one another, and I keep meaning to write to her and see if she wants to go out for coffee or something.
I’ve also started learning to drive and have had four lessons – it’s difficult, because I’m little, but it’s also exciting to be in control of a car.
I’m glad I’ve documented at least some of learning to drive, because it’s a YUGE rite of passage when you’re 17 and I was unutterably crap at it at first. I eventually got better but the vast majority of the problem I had was in being so tiny and needing a suitably tiny car.
I’m very much against the Iraq War, mainly because I’m against armed conflict and because I’m scared of nuclear bombs and chemical warfare – I don’t want to be a statistic! I accept that Saddam is a dictator and needs to be removed, but I think he’s fled the country and is now in Libya. It’s going to be a long war, I think.
Still worrying about the state of the world. I spent most of the rest of my time at school after 9/11 convinced we were going to be reduced to nuclear ash, so fuck knows what I’d have been like if I could have remembered the Cold War.
After we have three weeks of Easter holidays I’ve got my French oral exams and I’m so scared. What if I don’t pass? Madame will kill me!
If you’re worried about not passing, stop writing drivel in your diary – even if it is in French – and do some studying maybe?
Nathan has stupid hair now. Someone should shoot his hairdresser, it looks like he’s had a fight with the lawnmower! It still doesn’t stop him being very attractive, or stop me liking him or wanting to shag him. He doesn’t like me very much because of what’s happened in the past, but I regret nothing. Except the incident with Dr Flanagan and her Dancing Teeth, that wasn’t fun.
Thank fuck I have at last acknowledged that no, Mr O’Brian doesn’t like me, never will, and I will never get to touch his bits (as much as I clearly still want to). He must have been so done with my shit by now.
The haircut was about the time his floppy 90s fringe, which was a big part of what made him so attractive to me, was cut off and I was HEARTBROKEN about it.
This week I want to go shopping and chill out. I’m worried about SARS at the moment – it’s like the Spanish flu after the First World War and I don’t want to die a virgin with no A-levels.
I’m just going to leave this bit from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole right here:
I shouldn’t worry though because I won’t be going on a plane again this year and I live far enough from the airport.
OK, sure, glad we cleared that one up. I lived on the flight path for three airports so fuck knows how I thought that would keep me safe.
Ridiculous Teenage Diaries 