Today we did our first “Increase the Peace” assembly for Year Sevens.
I had been PROPER DREADING it all weekend. So much so that when Wesley took me to Fat Freddy’s Foodstop at Romford Plaza this Saturday night I could hardly eat my buffalo wings or nothing and I didn’t even smile when the waitresses were juggling stuff and tap dancing between courses which is the best thing about Fat Freddy’s Foodstop (well, so Wesley reckons).
“It ain’t just a restaurant, it’s like seeing a show or something, innit,” Wesley always says when we go. To be honest, I don’t really like it. I just feel a bit sorry for the folks who work there. At least Mario just lets me serve fried egg rolls with my gob shut and I don’t have to do two bloody verses of “Genie in a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera to get my tip. Wesley got a bit huffy when I told him that. He gets a bit huffy with me a lot these days.
“You weren’t even watching them proper!” Wesley said. “You’re always miles away these days, innit!” This made me a bit cross.
I felt like shouting, “Well maybe if you’d spent two hours after school watching Sean Burton running round in a neon crop-top and mascara carrying a bread knife shouting stuff like, ‘Ooooh, take that bruv! Ya just got merked!’ while Saf rolled about on the floor laughing not looking dead at all and Carrie painted her nails and read US Weekly, well YOU’D WANT TO BE MILES AWAY TOO!” But I didn’t say that I just shrugged and said I was sorry.
Anyway, after all that, our assembly sort of went OK. Well more than “sort of.” Mr. Bamblebury reckoned it was “a roaring success.” Basically, we turn up in the hall at 9:30AM today and the Year Seven kids all arrived at once and started sitting on the floor with their legs crossed looking proper excited. The Year Sevens are well tiny and quite sweet. I don’t ever remember me and Carrie being so small and cute-looking but we must have been I suppose.
We turned all the lights off and it was totally dark and silent aside from the odd fart and giggle, then we put on the Wootbouy video for them all to watch. They all watched it proper quietly without saying a single word to each other and by the bit where it got all heavy with the blood and folks dying and stuff I looked at the front row and some little girls were almost crying and the boys looked proper scared.
Then we put the lights back on and we did our little play and everyone—Saf, Luther, Joshua, Sean, and Carrie—all tried proper hard to do it well and no one forgot their lines and none of the little kids seemed to notice how flouncy Sean is or that Joshua sounds posh like Prince Harry or that Luther would be more dangerous as a gang member if he ditched the knife and just sat on people and squashed them with his big bum instead.
Then Joshua stood up and said a little speech about how amazing Sixth Form is and all the little girls in the room just stared at his face and wide shoulders with their mouths wide open listening to every word like they were proper madly in love and then he got them to shout “LET’S ALL INCREASE THE PEACE!” all at the same time together and he asked if they would ever get involved with gangs and violence and they all shouted “NOOOOOOOO!” and he asked whether they’d try to stay on in Sixth Form and they all said “YESSSSSSS!” then they all left to go to class and Mr. Bamblebury looked proper happy and said he was “over the moon with this very valuable work.”
So I got home tonight and I felt sort of happy for a bit then I put on the news and it said that some kid over in Streatham had been stabbed to death after school tonight by four other kids on the number 45 bus in what was being described by police as a “post-school scuffle.”
I sat for a bit and cuddled Penny and I thought about how mental everything is in this world and felt a bit sad ’cos in the grand scheme of things me and Joshua and Carrie and the gang probably hadn’t increased much peace at all.