I wandered over to Carrie’s tonight ’cos Carrie’s mum Maria was having a party for Carrie passing her GCSEs. Carrie didn’t do quite as well as me, but she still got three A’s, which is well good ’cos she didn’t do nothing to prepare as far as I could tell.
Maria wanted to celebrate last week but then Carrie’s dad Barney got this big old contract fitting Jacuzzis all over Chigwell. This geezer called Malik who works in the city had got a ginormous cash bonus through so he’d bought EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY a Jacuzzi for their garden. Barney was over the moon. He’s not been home for days except to sleep. “You gotta make hay when the sun shines!” That’s what Barney Draper always says. “I ain’t gonna keep my little girl in daft shoes and lip gloss sitting about on my ’arris contemplating my navel!” he says.
I like Carrie’s dad a lot, he’s got all that cash but he ain’t posh or nothing. I mean, he might wear expensive shirts and flash his wallet a bit when he goes down to the dog races at Walthamstow but he ain’t up himself. I like Carrie’s mum, too. She’s a little bit posh, mind. “Posher than she ought to be!” my mother always says.
My mother’s got beef with Maria ’cos Maria was once a barmaid at the Goodmayes Social and always used to be proper brassic. Then all of a sudden she’s married to this plumber called Barney and Barney’s started up his own little business and they ain’t living in Dovehill Close no more, they’re living in Swansbrook Drive in a duplex and driving a car with a sunroof and instead of collecting one Victorian figurine at a time out of Star magazine, Maria’s got enough cash to buy the whole bloody lot in one go AND put them in their own revolving display cabinet with spotlights THEN place the cabinet beside a tropical fish tank. By the time Maria and Barney were building their own country-style mansion house on the other side of Goodmayes and calling it Draperville and putting up electric gates and doing their special charity Christmas light display, well my mother was so riled she couldn’t say Maria’s name without pulling a face like you would if you took a slurp out of a milk carton then realized the milk had turned to liquid stilton cheese.
So I’m sitting in the dining room at Draperville tonight and me and Carrie are eating massive pieces of triple chocolate truffle cake that Maria got made by this cake-maker she knows in Epping Forest who makes cakes for celebrities—like folk in EastEnders—for birthdays and all that. She once made the Queen Vic totally out of nougat, sponge, icing sugar, and gumdrops. It was on the front of the Ilford Bugle. Anyway, Carrie’s cake was in the shape of an open book to symbolize all the hard study Carrie had put into passing her GCSEs which sort of made me laugh ’cos what would have REALLY symbolized Carrie passing her GCSEs would be a cake with marzipan figurines of Carrie snoring on her bed with Butterz to Babe in Thirty Days over her face while I read Jane Eyre beside her shouting, “Carrie! Wake up, you lazy cow!”
“Well, I’d just like to raise a toast to my daughter,” Maria was saying. “I’m so proud of what you’ve done, love. And so proud that you’re carrying on at school to get some A-Levels!”
“’Ere, and not only A-Levels,” butted in Barney all proud like. “Then off to university to do a business studies degree or something! Before you know it you could be running the whole bloody company! Give your old dad some time off with his newspaper!”
Maria and Barney both looked quite choked up then.
“Yeah,” Carrie said, then she gave them both a kiss and we all raised our glasses of Moet and Chambum champagne, which is this well posh stuff that Barney always gets out on special occasions which is well dear but always makes my breath taste like sick.
“Cheers everybody.” Maria smiled, showing her sparkly white teeth that she’s just had Da Vinci veneers put on.
“Up yer bums!” shouted Barney, raising his glass.
Me and Carrie went upstairs afterward and we lay on her bed and watched Yo Momma! on MTV and Carrie pulled out my “straggler” eyebrows and pushed back my cuticles with a hard stick. And let’s just say she weren’t as lively as I’d be if Barney Draper had just said I could have his whole bloody company. Maybe she’s on her period.