I am studying again! Well, obviously I’m not, I’m writing this, but I’m meant to be studying. The problem is that I have now read so much about the Reformation my eyes are starting to glaze over, so I need to take a break from my academic labours. But I will still be technically working, because I’m going to come up with a list of what we need to do to make Hey Dollface the best band in Dublin.
1. Practise loads.
We have been practising as much as possible recently, despite the difficulties of getting out to Alice’s place, because we had to make up for lost time. It’s now three months since Alice fell off a chair at Vanessa’s ridiculous birthday party and fractured her wrist. Which of course meant she couldn’t play the guitar and the band had to go on hiatus for ages and ages.
Of course, after Alice fractured her wrist, we had the whole school musical thing to occupy us, but even taking part in the greatest production of Mary Poppins ever didn’t make up for the fact that we were missing out on weeks and weeks of practising. A few months ago I thought we’d be, like, total band experts by summer. But Cass still sometimes gets the rhythms wrong in her keyboard basslines, and I still have moments when I sort of forget how to play the drums at all.
Weirdly, Alice, the one who was actually physically unable to play her instrument for weeks and weeks, makes fewer mistakes than either of us. Maybe she was just, like, saving her musical strength during all those weeks in a cast. Anyway, she is very devoted to the Hey Dollface cause and has made lots of time to practise since the cast came off, which is particularly good because she is the only one of us with a boyfriend and she doesn’t get to see him during the week. There are some people who would ditch their old friends at the weekends when a new love came along, but not Alice. She is a good friend AND a good bandmate. Of course, her boyfriend, Richard, aka Bike Boy, understands because he is in a band too. They respect each other’s work.
Sometimes I sort of wish I had a boyfriend too, but, actually, it is quite peaceful not having a distracting boy to think about. For ages I was thinking of lovely Paperboy, then he moved to Canada, and I was thinking about him in a sad way, and then I was thinking about John Kowalski from the musical, and then I realised that he was a selfish smelly fool and not worth thinking about at all. And since then there have been no boys at all. I was worried it might be a bit boring without somebody to think about and be excited about seeing. But actually it is a relief. I can think about lots of other things, like books, and the story I’ve started writing, and how we’re going to play loads of gigs this summer and become the greatest band ever. Well, you never know. As Alice said, ‘We’ve got to have ambition.’
Which brings me on to number two on our list.
2. Play gigs. Preferably loads of them.
To be honest, I thought we’d have played more gigs by now, because when we finished the musical we were sure we were going to put on a show with Bad Monkey. But by the time Alice’s wrist was better it was so near the summer tests that none of us had time to organise a gig (or, rather, our evil parents won’t let us) so it somehow hasn’t happened yet. The problem is that, as we are all under eighteen, we have to arrange an afternoon gig, and that is easier said than done. I think it’s very unfair that we can’t play gigs in the evening. Mum explained that venues don’t want to host under-eighteens nights because that means they have to close the bar and they generally make most of their profits selling booze, but I think they should be noble and sacrifice a few euro for the sake of the future of music.
But we’re going to manage to play a gig somehow. Whenever I remember the (very short) bit of the Battle of the Bands when it all seemed to come together and the crowd were all cheering and dancing, I feel all tingly and sparkling inside. It made all the annoying practising bits when I couldn’t play the drums properly worthwhile.
And, well, that’s it. I suppose it’s not really much of a list if there are only two things on it. But anyway, it’s a mission statement: practise lots, and play gigs. And maybe get, like, a manager who could sort all that out for us. Although I don’t think that’s very likely.
Right, back to my studies again. I know that in a few weeks I’ll be able to relax in the evenings and read anything I like, but that seems a very long way away right now.
God, I can’t wait until school is over and I don’t have to see anyone from that ridiculous place (apart from my actual friends) for three months. Today Miss Kelly started grilling us on where we were going on holidays.
‘I hope none of you are going to be getting in an aeroplane, girls,’ she said sternly. ‘The more people fly, the quicker all the oil runs out.’
‘Where are you going on holiday, Miss Kelly?’ said Cass, who has always been very good at distracting teachers. It is one of her main talents. She has often wondered if she could use this skill in some sort of career.
‘I’m cycling to the south of France with a group of friends,’ said Miss Kelly, proudly. ‘One hundred per cent pedal powered!’
We all stared at her.
‘But, um, what about the sea bit?’ said Cass.
‘Ah, we have to resort to a ferry from Rosslare to Cherbourg,’ admitted Miss Kelly. ‘But that’s much less environmentally damaging than getting a plane. And if I didn’t get ferries, I’d never be able to leave the country. I see it as my duty as a geographer to see the world.’
Which is fair enough, I suppose. But still, I think it’s a bit much of Miss Kelly to be giving out to us about our holiday destinations as well as giving us horrible geography exams.
I suppose it wasn’t all bad today, though. My parents deigned to let me go over to Cass’s house after school. I’m still jealous of her bedroom; it’s so much cooler than mine. I am going to have to make my parents let me do mine up this summer, it’s ridiculous having such a babyish room when I’m practically fifteen. I can even do it myself. How hard can it be to paint over some wallpaper? All I need is some paint and a ladder. And a brush, obviously.
Anyway, Cass and I lay on her bed and ate some Pringles and had deep conversations about LIFE and love.
‘You haven’t heard anything from you-know-who, have you?’ said Cass.
‘Which you-know-who?’ I said. Because I genuinely didn’t know.
‘John,’ said Cass.
‘Oh, him,’ I said crossly. Not that I was cross at Cass. Just at the thought of John. ‘No, I’d have told you if I had. I thought I saw him on Griffith Avenue the other day but it was someone else.’
‘Someone less of a stinker, probably,’ said Cass. ‘And what about …’
I knew she meant Paperboy. It doesn’t hurt so much thinking about him anymore, not like after he went to Canada and I was a hollow shell of a girl. I know he isn’t coming back, and I know we’re not getting back together, and I don’t really mind.
But there is a part of me that feels all sad whenever I think about him. Every so often I hear a song that reminds me of when we were going out or even of the time before that when I really fancied him and got all excited whenever he called to our house to collect the money for the papers. And it’s like something washes right over me and I’m back there for a second. But then I have to go back to the boring old present day. I didn’t want to go on about this too much to Cass. I do remember the days when I kept moping about Paperboy’s disappearance, and it started to drive my friends mad because I didn’t really pay attention to anything either of them said. So I told her that I’d heard from Paperboy last week and he was fine.
‘But I still feel weird when I get a mail or a message from him,’ I said. ‘And whenever anything really reminds me of him I feel a bit sad. And I really, really don’t want to know if he’s going out with someone else. Does that mean I’m still moping?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Cass. ‘I think it would be weird if you’d, like, totally forgotten about him. And I think maybe you always feel a bit odd when you hear someone you used to go out with is going out with someone else. It doesn’t mean you’re still mad
ly in love with him or pining after him or anything like that. It’s just normal.’
Cass may not be personally experienced in the ways of love, but she is certainly full of wisdom. Sometimes, anyway. And then we stopped talking about love and talked about ways we could earn money over the holidays in order to pay for a practice space. Cass suggested we could make sweets like fudge and sell them at farmers’ markets.
‘There’s one in Saint Anne’s Park in Raheny on Saturdays,’ she said. ‘We could take our wares there and sell them among the farmers.’
This seemed like a very good idea.
‘Ooh, yes,’ I said. ‘And we’d stand out because we’d be the youngest people there, and everyone would be really impressed. And we could call our sweet company Hey Dollface and sell the sweets at our gigs!’
‘Yes!’ said Cass. ‘And the whole thing would hardly cost anything. I mean, I bet we could get little bags or boxes in a supermarket for a euro or two. And then the ingredients wouldn’t cost very much. What do you need to make fudge?’
‘Um … I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Sugar, probably.’
‘Vanilla essence,’ said Cass knowledgeably. ‘And … um … butter? Maybe eggs?’
And then we realised that neither of us have ever made fudge before. Or any sweets. In fact, the only sugary foodstuff I’ve ever made was a slightly soggy lemon drizzle cake over the Christmas holidays. But, as I told Cass, it was quite delicious even if it was soggy (and despite the fact I got slightly nervous whenever I turned on the electric hand mixer in case I lost control of it and it sliced my fingers off, even though Mum kept saying that wasn’t going to happen).
‘Can we actually sell soggy cake, though?’ said Cass. ‘Or whatever the fudge equivalent of soggy cake is?’
‘Well, I bet we’d get the hang of it with a little bit of practice,’ I said. I mean, how hard could it be?
I mentioned my and Cass’s plans to become artisan farmers’ market sweet makers to my mother, and she LAUGHED. She does nothing but crush my dreams.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said when she’d stopped laughing. ‘It’s just that I think you might need a bit more practice before you can sell sweets at that market. And possibly some sort of food production licence.’
Honestly, the way she goes on about how much she and Dad spend on me and Rachel, you’d think she’d welcome my plans to earn my own money, but no! Talent and initiative are not encouraged in this family.
My father has abandoned us! But only for a few days. He has gone off to a conference in Oxford. Dad is an academic, which in his case means he is basically a fancy history teacher, and every so often he goes off to England or New Jersey or Istanbul for conferences where he meets lots of other history teachers, and they all stand around talking about Early Modern European History, which is Dad’s supposed ‘speciality’. And what they call Early Modern European History isn’t very modern at all. It’s, like, six hundred years ago, which makes no sense. But I shouldn’t expect something to make sense if my dad, a man who once played the part of a dancing pirate on stage while wearing gold harem pants, has anything to do with it.
He’s gone to some college in Oxford called Shrewsbury which used to be an all-female college. As I am in an all-girls school and never get to meet any boys ever I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go to an all-girls college afterwards (unless they liked girls, obviously), but when I said this to my mum she said that women’s colleges had a fine tradition in educating girls and that actually girls sometimes do better when there are no boys around, which is fair enough. But I still think I would like to go to a college with boys in it. I know I said I quite like not having a distracting boy in my life right now, but I have to admit that sometimes I worry that I’ll never go out with anyone ever again. And the chances of that happening would be higher if I went straight from an all-girls school to an all-girls college.
Anyway, Dad is going to spend a few days at Shrewsbury listening to all his history mates blathering on about wars and other such nonsense. He is flying into London, and Rachel started giving him a list of things to get her in the duty free, including a replacement for the amazing Chanel lipstick that suits everyone and which I am fond of borrowing myself without telling her (which is possibly why it’s run out and she needs a new one).
‘And who, pray tell, will be paying for all this?’ he said.
‘Early birthday present,’ said Rachel hopefully.
‘No,’ said Dad. But he took the list anyway so I bet he’ll end up getting her one thing. I hope it’s the lipstick, for selfish reasons. He turned to me. ‘Do you want anything from England, Bex?’
Perhaps he is not so bad after all. Right now I can’t help thinking he is being nicer than my dream-crushing mother.
But, of course, as soon as he made this kindly offer I couldn’t think of anything I wanted so I said I’d text him. I need to take advantage of this unusual generosity so I will have to have a think.
I don’t believe it. I think Vanessa and Karen might have solved our band issues! Apart from finding us a manager, obviously. But the practising and the gigging and stuff. In fact, they might have solved our entire summer. In theory I feel I should thank them but I can’t bring myself to do it.
It happened during the morning break today. We were sitting around in our classroom talking about our plans for the summer, which in most people’s cases were non-existent, apart from Emma who’s going to the Gaeltacht with her best friend from home. Vanessa was sitting around the next desk with what I am appalled to say is now her gang − her old sidekick Caroline, of course, and now Karen ‘Bitchface’ Rodgers, my nemesis. She and Vanessa have become all chummy since they both got starring roles in the musical. Luckily, Caroline and Karen’s friend Alison have sort of teamed up. Both of them are nicer than Karen and Vanessa and, in fact, would be completely fine if they just stopped hanging around with them. So we hoped that they would break away completely and form a gang of their own. But sadly that hasn’t happened yet, and the four of them are hanging around together.
ANYWAY. Emma was talking about going to the Gaeltacht, and Ellie said, ‘I wish you could go to, like, summer art college instead of Irish college.’ And then Vanessa, who never minds interrupting other people’s conversations (although of course I am glad she did in this case), said, ‘God, haven’t you heard of the North Dublin Arts Camp?’
And we all stared at her in surprise, because we hadn’t.
‘What’s that?’ said Ellie.
‘I can’t believe you don’t know about it,’ said Vanessa, smugly. ‘I’ve had my place in the drama group booked for weeks. So has Karen.’ And both of them looked so pleased with themselves I thought I was going to get sick.
‘But what is it?’ said Cass, through what I could tell were gritted teeth.
‘It’s, like, a summer school for, like, teenage actors and artists and musicians and stuff,’ said Vanessa. She said it was in the big college down the road, and that it started in June. ‘You don’t stay overnight, but you go in every day and have workshops and put on, like, shows and exhibitions.’
‘Me and Bernard – that’s my boyfriend – are going to get to act together at last,’ said Karen. ‘He’s doing the acting school too.’
I felt as if a light bulb had lit up over my head. Not at the thought of Karen’s stupid boyfriend Bernard − who she met when he was employed to play a fairy-tale prince at Vanessa’s party and who we’ve all heard enough about over the last few months − but at the words ‘musicians’ and ‘shows’.
‘So what sort of musicians can do it?’ I said. ‘Like, classical musicians?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Karen loftily. ‘I only care about the theatre.’
But then Vanessa said, ‘God, Karen, you don’t pay attention to anything’. Which was a bit rich, coming from her. I don’t think she’s ever consciously listened to anyone else in her life. ‘They’re doing some sort of thing for, like, bands,’ she continued. They’re calling it a rock
school. They’re going to put on, like, little gigs and stuff.’
Cass and Alice and I looked at each other. I knew we were all thinking the same thing. We had a half day today (hurrah) because the teachers were having some sort of meeting (probably plotting all the horrible tests they’re going to give us), so Alice was going round to Cass’s house to wait for her lift. I went there too so we could all look up the camp online. And it was true, there was a rock school! Where proper grown-up bands would come in and, like, coach you! And you got to learn how to record and put on shows and everything! It was like the answer to our prayers.
‘We must go to this!’ said Cass. ‘I just hope it’s not too late.’
‘Let’s all ring our parents and see if they’ll let us go,’ said Alice, sensibly. ‘And then we can book our place right now.’
So that’s what we did. Luckily, I had enough credit on my phone (for once). I was sure that Mum would make a fuss, as she normally does everything she can to stand in the way of my happiness, but to my surprise she didn’t.
‘Well, that does sound like a good idea,’ she said. ‘It’s quite good value too. And it’ll save me and Brenda giving you and Cass lifts. I’ll have to check with your dad, though.’
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ I said. ‘You’re the best mother in the world!’ Which is not what I think most of the time, but I did mean it when I said it. Anyway, she rang Dad in Oxford, and, luckily, he wasn’t listening to people blathering on about history at the time and could answer his phone. Then she rang me straight back.
‘Your dad says yes,’ she said. ‘Now don’t say we never do anything for you.’
I ran into Cass’s kitchen, and her parents and Alice’s parents had all said yes too (though Cass’s mum said that if she did badly in her summer tests she was still going to have to go to a maths school. I don’t think this will happen, though, as Cass has actually been studying quite hard and, really, she’s pretty good at maths when she actually tries).