Big Day Out Read Free Page A

really bought them herself. I even pretended that Mum sometimes played at being my gran or even grandpa and I played at being her son or her little baby. I wrote that although we played these games it was just for fun. We weren’t lonely at all. We positively
loved
being such a small family.

    Mrs Mann positively loved my effort too! This was a surprise because Mrs Mann is very, very strict. She’s the oldest teacher at school and she can be really scary and sarcastic. You can’t mess around in Mrs Mann’s class. She wears these neat grey suits that match her grey hair, and white blouses with tidily tied bows, and a pearl brooch precisely centred on her lapel. You can tell just by looking at her that she’s a stickler for punctuation and spelling and paragraphing and all those other boring, boring, boring things that stop you getting on with the story. My piece had its fair share of mistakes ringed in Mrs Mann’s red rollerball, but she
still
gave me a ten out of ten because she said it was such a vivid, truthful piece of heartfelt writing.
    I felt a little fidgety about this. Vivid it might be, but truthful it
isn’t
. When Mrs Mann was talking about my small family, my friends Amy and Kate stared at me open-mouthed because I’m always whining on to them about my
big
family. Luckily they’re not tell-tales.

    Sometimes I get on better with all my Steps. My big stepbrother Jon likes art too, and he always says sweet things about my drawings. My big stepsister Alice isn’t bad either. One day when we were all bored she did my hair in these cool little plaits with beads and ribbons, and made up my face so I looked almost grown up. Yes, I like Jon and Alice, but they’re much older than me so they don’t really want me hanging out with them.
    The Halfies aren’t bad either. I quite like sitting Cherry on my lap and reading her
Where the Wild Things Are
. She always squeals when I roar their terrible roars right in her ear and Mum gets cross, but Cherry
likes
it. Rupert isn’t into books yet – in fact I was a bit miffed when I showed him my old nursery-rhyme book and he
bit
it, like he thought it was a big bright sandwich. He’s not really fun to play with yet because he’s too little.
    That’s the trouble. Mark and Ginnie and Jon and Alice are too big. Jess and Cherry and Rupert are too little. I’m the Piggy in the Middle.
    Hmm. My unpleasant brother Mark frequently makes grunting snorty noises at me and calls me Fatty Pigling.
    I have highly inventive nicknames for Mark – indeed, for
all
my family (apart from Mum) – but I’d better not write them down or you’ll be shocked.
    I said a few very rude words to myself when Mum and Graham said we were going for a l-o-n-g walk along the river for our bank holiday outing. It’s OK for Rupert. He goes in the buggy. It’s OK for Cherry and Jess. They get piggyback rides the minute they start whining. It’s OK for Mark and Ginnie and Jon and Alice. They stride ahead in a little gang (or lag behind, whatever), and they talk about music and football and s-e-x, and whenever I edge up to them they say, ‘Push off, Pigling,’ if they’re Mark or Ginnie, or, ‘Hi, Laura, off you go now,’ if they’re Jon or Alice.
    I’d love it if it could just be Mum and me going on a walk together. But Graham is always around and he makes silly jokes or slaps me on the back or bosses me about. Sometimes I get really narked and tell him he’s not my dad so he can’t tell me what to do. Other times I just
look
at him. Looks can be very effective.
    My face was contorted in a
dark scowl
all the long, long, long trudge along the river. It was so incredibly boring. I am past the age of going ‘Duck duck duck ’ whenever a bird with wings flies past. I am not yet of the age to collapse into giggles when some male language students with shades say hello in sexy foreign accents (Ginnie and Alice), and I don’t stare gape-mouthed when a pretty girl in a bikini waves from a boat