Cava-Sue and Lewis left for Vietnam today. It’s weird ’cos I’m missing Cava-Sue already and only two days ago I was thinking what a right pain in the ass she was, wiffling on about the awful human rights violations of the Vietnamese people and how some poor peasant folks in Nam Pam Lang have no access to information and I was sitting there thinking, “Flaming hell, they’re not going to know what’s hit them when you get there with your big clacking gob.”
Then suddenly, her and Lewis have packed their backpacks and gone. All the talking about it is finally over. Cava-Sue has gone off following her dream. It’s really made me think about my dream. I still don’t really know what it is.
We had a little going-away party for Cava-Sue and Lewis in our house yesterday and because everyone had been giving me proper earache about inviting Joshua (including Joshua himself) I let him come over. To be honest, I was proper paranoid about asking Josh to my house ’cos ever since I heard his mum say that nasty thing which I don’t even know for sure was about me, well it makes my face go proper hot.
I haven’t been wearing my gold hoops at all recently. Or my charm bracelet. And I even feel a bit weird in my hoodie ’cos I keep thinking, “Does this make me look like a chav? Am I a chav? Am I? No, I ain’t a chav! Chavs are people like those little hoodrats who hang round the park and those rudes who jack folks’s phones outside Ilford station! I’m not like that! Am I?”
But then I think what I might look like to a woman who has friends called Jocasta, who has enough money to have a stupid hot cupboard instead of an oven and sponsor kids in Burkina Faso and give her son his own bathroom and suddenly I feel all terrible and a bit, well… a bit like a chav.
So I bring Joshua back to my house on Thundersley Road and I’ve spent months being proper vague about where it is ’cos I didn’t want him to just show up, but now here we both are walking down the road together and I’m totally noticing all the stuff I never even noticed before, like the broken sidewalk and the white dog poos and the road sign with grafitti willies on it and the way Bert at number 89 hangs his underpants up on a line in his garden and how everyone has Staffy dogs. Then we walk past Uma’s house with the fridge in the garden and Joshua snorts and says, “I suppose that saves space in the house!” And I cringe a bit and say, “That’s Uma’s house.” And Joshua goes, “Oh, that makes sense.”
In our house, my mum, my dad, Murphy, Clement, and Nan were all there laughing and talking and eating a buffet from Tyson’s that Mum had just bought and shoved out on plates. And they’re all drinking Peach Lambrella wine and little stubby bottles of German beer and listening to Dad’s Chas ’n’ Dave record and being silly and noisy. And it’s weird ’cos now I’m noticing stuff like the wear on the hall carpet and the chipped paint and the way our house smells a little bit of the dog and the way there’s framed photos of us all everywhere and how no one is using a plate for the buffet and how everyone is shouting and not listening to each other’s answers and how bloody small the house is. And to be honest I think Joshua is pretty stunned by everything ’cos he hardly says a word and at one point when my nan got up and started singing I could swear he was trying not to stop himself smirking.
My nan asked Josh what he was studying and he said English, Politics, Geography, and Critical Theory and everyone went, “Wooooooh! Clever clogs!” like it was something amazing, then Nan asked him what he wanted to be and he said, “Well I’ll be off to Oxford University next to study Diplomacy and International Relations I hope. If they’ll have me.” And no one said nothing to that ’cos I think they were too gobsmacked.
I don’t know if Joshua enjoyed the party. My mum said afterward he never ate none of the buffet. I said, well, Joshua’s mum never lets him eat nothing with additives or non-organic so he probably didn’t reckon his delicate stomach would stand the fried cheese or the reconstituted seafood ring. My mum said something quite rude then about shoving the fried cheese where the sun don’t shine for all she cares, but I think she was quite tipsy and emotional.
I miss Cava-Sue. I hope she stays in touch.