A Midsummer Tights Dream
Louise Rennison
Dedication
Big love to all my fabby mates and family. A special thanks this time to my groovy little sister and mum, who read everything and also wouldn’t allow the hilarious Cain “dead rabbit crying” scene at the end, which I will never tell a soul about. But it would’ve been very, very funny for the rabbit to have pretended to be crying, I think.
P. S. Gillie, Lizzie, Clare, and Cassie, and all the lovely peeps at Aitken Alexander and HarperCollins (including the god-like Gillon Aitken), I’m really sorry for not going away—and staring out from the boardroom, day after day, like a big cuckoo in your office.
Big kiss to Jo and Matilda, hoofys all round.
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
BACK ON THE SHOWBIZ EXPRESS
WINTER OF LOVE
I’M NOT AN ICE CREAM, I’M A HUMAN BEING!
THERE’S NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE
EAT THE BOAT!
HUMAN GLUE
CALF LOVE
DON’T FORGET YOUR BOTTOM
MY CORKERS ARE ON THE MOVE
HE’S A RUSTY HEATHEN CROW
THE LADDER OF SHOWBIZ
GOOD-BYE TO A TREE SISTER
THE HAMSTER SLIPPERS OF LIFE
A NATURALLY CRACKING KISSER
TUNNELING FOR HIS LIFE
RETURN OF CAIN THE BAD
WARMING UP MY BOTTOM
THE FALL OF DOTHER HALL
A MIDSUMMER TIGHTS DREAM
TALLULAH’S GLOSSARY
OTHER WORKS
COPYRIGHT
BACK ADS
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Back on the showbiz express
PERFORMING ARTS COLLEGE, HERE I come again! Hold on to your tights! Because I am holding on to mine, I can tell you. Which makes it difficult to go to the loo, but that is the price of fame. And fame is my game!
Once more I am chugging back to Dother Hall. Or “the theater of dreams,” as Sidone Beaver, the principal, calls it. I am truly on the showbiz express of life.
Well, the stopping train to Skipley, the Entertainment Capital of the North. Or home of the West Riding Otter, as some not-showbiz people call it. (I don’t think they mean that only a big fat otter lives in the town, although you never know!)
Hooray and chug-a-lug-a-doo-dah!!!
I feel like shouting out to the heavens. I think I will. I can now because the grumpy woman with the stick got off at the last stop. Oh, the Northern folk with their jolly Northern ways. She was so grumpy about her gammy leg. She said the stick had worn down on one side so that she fell over in strong winds. I didn’t ask her any of this—she just told me. But hey-nonny-no, as Shakespeare said. I am going to pull down the window and shout out loud:
“The name is Tallulah. Tallulah Casey!!! And I’m back. I’m moving up! Moving on up! Nothing can stop me! Yes, I used to be shy and gangly with nobbly knees and no sticky-out bits. No corkers. I was corkerless. I didn’t even wear a corker holder. But now even my corkers are on the move!”
Especially when the train keeps stopping unexpectedly. What now? Maybe the West Riding Otter is on the line. The tannoy is crackling but I can only hear heavy breathing and snuffling. Lawks a mercy, the wild otter has hijacked the train!
I don’t care about the otter driver! Live and let live, I say.
Uh-oh, the tannoy is crackling again.
“Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen, I momentarily lost hold of my pie. Next stop Skipley.”
We’re just passing Grimbottom Peak. Brr. It looks so dark and forbidding up there on the crags. I’m surprised it’s not pouring down with rain and … It is pouring down with rain.
Crumbs, it’s like the lights have been turned off. You can hardly see Grimbottom. The locals say that when day-trippers are up there the fog can come down in minutes. Mr. Bottomly at the post office once told me and Flossie:
“One minute t’day-trippers are up there on’t top, playing piggy in’t middle like barm pots. The next it’s so dark they can’t even see t’ball. And it’s in their hand. Hours later the grown-ups stumble home but the little’uns are nivver seen no more.
“Sometimes late at night tha can hear ’em up there wailing, ‘Mummeee … Dadeeeee …’ All them lost bairns, speaking from beyond the grave.”
Flossie had said to Mr. Bottomly, “That’s rubbish. I think there’s a massive wild dog up there called Fang. Half dog, half donkey, and it comes out in the fog and takes the children and raises them as its puppies.”
In my opinion, even though I haven’t known her for long, my new friend Flossie is what is commonly known as “mad.”
But mad or not, I am really, really excited about seeing her and my new mates again. Vaisey and Flossie and little Jo and Honey, who can’t say her “r”s but knows everything about boys. She says she always has “two or thwee on the go.”
We can go into the woods near Dother Hall again, to our special place! And gather round our special tree. Our special tree where we met the boys from Woolfe Academy when they surprised us doing our special dance that Honey taught us. She said we had to be proud of all of ourselves, even the bits we didn’t like. It was a “showing our inner glory” dance. Or “inner glowee” as Honey called it. Which in my case was hurling my legs around shouting, “I love my knees, I love them!”
Not quite as embarrassing as Vaisey waggling her bottom at the tree, but close.
The Woolfe Academy boys, well, Charlie and Phil, call us the “Tree Sisters.”
Charlie said to me …
Well, I won’t think about Charlie. Not after what happened after he kissed me.
Where was I in my performing life? Oh yes, last summer when I got to Dother Hall I couldn’t do anything. The others could sing and dance and act, but all I could do was be tall and do a bit of Irish dancing.
I was convinced that I would never be asked back and that I would never wear the golden slippers of applause. Things changed when Blaise Fox, the dance tutor, saw my Sugar Plum Bikey performance. My ballet based on the Sugar Plum Fairy—only done on a bicycle. The one when my ballet skirt got caught in the back wheel, and I accidentally shot off my bike and destroyed the backstage area. I remember what she said.
She said: “Tallulah Casey, watching you is like watching someone whose pants are on fire.” Then she asked me to play Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights at the end of last term. And the rest is showbiz legend.
Heathcliff’s Irish-dancing solo was a triumph! And, also, not so easy in tight trousers.
I still don’t know why she cast me as Heathcliff though.
Perhaps I really do look like a boy?
If I look down and squint my eyes a bit, I can definitely see pimply bumps in the corker area.
No one can argue with that. The front of a jumper never lies.
My jumper is one of the ones Cousin Georgia and her Ace Gang chose for me. It’s green and she says it goes with my eyes and gives me je ne sais quoi.
Well, she actually said, “It says ‘ummmmmmm’ but not ‘oooohhhh, look at me, I’m a tart.’”
I can’t wait to get to Skipley. I’m so excited. This is going to be my Winter of Love, I can tell.
I stayed with Cousin Georgia on my way back from summer school and it was brilliant. I haven’t really spent a lot of time with her before because of being in Ireland and having crap parents who actually do stuff. Not just bake tarts or DIY like everyone else’s parents. Not good old boring stuff. My mum goes off and paints and my dad goes off exploring to find endangered things. He collects mollusks mostly but last time he found a rare hairy potato. He’s like a cross between David Bellamy and …
a Labrador. That is not a proper dad in anyone’s language.
That’s a Labradad.
Hee. I think that might very nearly be a joke.
I’m going to put it into my performance-art notebook that I will be keeping.
I’ve got a special new notebook with a black glossy cover and some plums on the front of it.
It’s really arty, and er … fruity.
I’ve already made my first entry.
It says:
Winter of Love.
I’ll just add my “Labradad” idea.
Labradad. A portrait of a dad who is half pipe-smoking bloke and half Labrador. He’s confused between the two worlds. Between pipes and sticks. I’m thinking an improvised dance piece. Perhaps the Labradad fetching sticks. Or pipes?
Or ducks?
Hmmmmm.
I love my parents but they’re not normal. Or around much. But they have let me come back to Dother Hall—even though I have to stay with the Dobbinses. My mum said I was too immature to board but she doesn’t seem to mind that I’m staying with a family where the mother is a Brown Owl and the father goes to “inner woman” groups. Which is not to mention the idiot twins.
It was great staying with Cousin Georgia. It was brilliant on the boy front as well.
She got her Ace Gang round to teach me “wisdomosity” and also “snogging techniques.” We all tucked up in her bed, which was cozy.
Georgia said, “Have a jammy dodger and give us the goss snogwise.”
The Ace Gang were wearing false beards to help me get into the mood.
So … I told them about going to the cinema in Skipley with some boys from Woolfe Academy and about my first kiss. With floppy Ben. And how it was like having a little bat trapped in my mouth.
The Ace Gang looked at me and Georgia said, “Tallulah, are you a fool with just a hint of an idiot thrown in?”
But they gave me their wisdomosity about boys. And snogging.
Gosh, Georgia knows a lot.
About varying pressure of the lips, what to do with your tongue (don’t waggle it about like a fool), the scoring system for snogging. (Number 1 to Number 10, I can’t remember all of them but I do remember Number 4 is “a kiss lasting over three minutes without a break.” You need a mate for that one, so that they can time it for you.)
Honestly. I couldn’t believe it.
I’m dying to try out my new skills.
The amount she knew, she must have spent all of her time doing snogging research.
I said that to her and she said, “I do, my strange gangly cousy. But I have put aside snogging to teach you the ways of boydom. I do it because I luuurve you. But not in a lezzie way.”
Which is good.
I think.
What is a “lezzie way”?
I think it’s to do with girl snogging.
But I didn’t ask.
Oh chuggy-chug-chug. Come on, train!!!
I wonder what time the rest of the Tree Sisters will arrive tomorrow?
Oh, here we are at the train station. Hurrah!!! There’s its sign swinging in the biting gale force wind. Just as I remember:
Skipley
Home of the
West Riding Otter
Hang on a minute, some Northern vandal has painted a “b” and a “y” over the otter bit. So now it reads:
Well, here I am, back where I really belong. I have just got off the showbiz express and crossed to the other side of the station and now I am getting on the bus of hope. Which will transport me to … The Theater of Dreams.
I can see the bus driver through the closed door, sitting in the driver’s seat. I recognize him from last term. I wonder if he recognizes me?
As I hauled my bag on board up the steps he put the pipe to one side of his mouth and shouted, “Stop messing about and get on if you’re getting on, merry legs. It’s bloody parky with that door open.”
I said, “Why did you call me merry legs?”
He said, “Because you’re lanky and your legs are all over the shop.”
As I paid my fare he said, “Come back to prat around like a fool at Dither Hall again, have you?”
Before I could say “It’s Dother Hall, actual—” he accelerated off so violently that I shot down to the end of the bus and almost ended up in a small child’s pushchair. Luckily there wasn’t a small child in it, just a pig.
The woman with the pushchair said, “Mind my pig.”
I am huddled up well away from her, but I think I can still smell pig poo.
We bumped along the road to Heckmondwhite. The driver is careering along sounding his horn whenever there is anything in his way on the road. Pedestrians. Bicyclists. A cow pat. But he slowed down behind a lollipop lady who was walking home. With her sign. She tried to let him pass but he cheerily waved her on and drove slowly behind her. Then for no reason when we got to a sharp corner he revved up and blasted his horn and she fell into a hedge. He was laughing so much I thought he might swallow his pipe.
I couldn’t help being excited. This is like a postcard of a winter scene in Yorkshire. There is even some snow on the top of Grimbottom Peak. And I shivered as I thought about Fang up there. Raising his fictitious children as fictitious puppies.
Winter of Love
AS THE SKY DARKENED and we bumped past isolated farms and little hamlets, we arrived at the bus stop in Heckmondwhite just when the street lamps were lighting up. In my Dother Hall brochure it says, “Heckmondwhite has its own ‘zany’ cosmopolitan atmosphere.”
I don’t know that most people would call a village green and a post office and a pub called The Blind Pig “zany.” Unless you counted the knitted flags over the village hall.
I bet the Dobbinses, my substitute parents, have got something to do with that.
Maybe I should just nip quickly over to the pub and see my fun-sized friend, Ruby, and my four-legged mate Matilda, her bulldog? I could give her the lipstick I’ve bought her. Not Matilda, Ruby. Dogs don’t wear makeup. But what they do wear is the little ballet tutu I have got for her from Pets Party shop. I hope it will go round her waist. She is quite porky in the middle.
And anyway, even if Rubes is out I could leave the presents with her older brother, Alex. Alex the dream boy. Alex with his long limbs and his longish thick chestnut hair. And his two eyes. And his back and front … and everything. And we could chat about performing arts. He’s gone off to Liverpool to do drama there and I could chat about my performance plans. Maybe tell him about my Labradad idea.
Maybe not. I want him to think of me as an attractive thespian.
Yes, I will pop to see Ruby. And whilst I am popping about maybe Alex, her very gorgeous brother, will pop up and that will be poptastic and I will say, “What a surprise, Alex, I was just popping by to …”
“Lullah! Lullah, yoo-hoo, it’s me!!!! And the twins!!!”
Dibdobs. In her Brown Owl uniform, coming toward me. No, not just coming toward me. Skipping toward me.
The twins were wearing knitted yellow knickerbockers.
I bet Mr. Dobbins (Harold) knitted them at one of his “inner woman” groups. Harold goes to a men’s group and they try to find their hidden feminine side.
Uuuumph. She almost crushed me to death with her bosom and her badges. And her new whistle. As I have said before, I am sure Dibdobs has got a “hugging” badge. She’s got badges for everything else, moth conservation, vole watching, pond life, etc.
I couldn’t actually see anything when she was hugging me, but I could feel hugging going on around my knee area as well.
That would be the twins, Max and Sam.
They love my knees.
Probably because that is as far up as their toddler arms can hug.
I don’t get a lot of hugging at home.
My little brother, Connor, likes kicking mostly. I hugged him when I left and he said, “Don’t be so gay.” Grandma does a lot of patting. But quite often she’s off target with that and thinks she is patting me when actually it’
s the cushion next to me.
Dibdobs was talking really loudly and quickly like she does. She’s so keen on everything.
It’s nice really. Just odd.
“Oh, Lullah, it’s sooooooo lovely to have you back. I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you. Haven’t we, boys?”
The boys stood there blinking from underneath their pudding basin haircuts.
And sucking their dodies.
They don’t get any less odd.
Dibdobs said, “The boys have made something for you. Haven’t you, boys?”
She adores the twins. She thinks they are covering up their cleverness. She thinks they are like tiny little brain surgeons in tiny twits’ clothing.
Max and Sam blinked at me. And kept on sucking.
Then Max (or Sam) took his dodie out and said, “Sjuuuuge one for ooo.”
I said, “Oh, well, that’s nice, I …”
Dibdobs said, “Tell Lullah what you’ve made for her.”
Sam said, “Sjuuuuge.”
Dibdobs started slightly losing her rag. “Yes, yes, it is quite big … but TELL Lullah what it is.”
Sam blinked and looked a bit cross, like he had suddenly realized he had a Brown Owl for a mother. He put his hands on his hips and stamped his foot and said, “SJJJJUUUUGE.”
And Max shouted, “BOGIES!!!”
Dibdobs went even redder.
She bent down so she could look them both in the eyes and said sternly, “Now, that is a silly, silly word that big boys don’t say anymore.”
Max and Sam blinked together and smiled. Great Jumping Jehovah, they look like sock animals when they smile.
Dibdobs took their hands and we all walked back to the house. She was chatting on sixteen to the dozen. But I could still hear Max and Sam softly singing, “Bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie.”
Dibdobs said, “Harold is so looking forward to seeing you. He’s out tonight with the interknitting group. After the success of the communal skipping rope, you know, the skipathon when the whole village skipped?”