Startled by His Furry Shorts Read online

  Louise Rennison

  Startled by His Furry Shorts

  Confessions of Georgia Nicolson

  In memory and love of Dezza the Vicar

  Contents

  A Note from Georgia

  Living in Fiascoland

  On the Brink of Madnosity

  Back in the Cakeshop of Agony

  Motto of the Day: Girdey Loins

  Mate of the Century

  Macpants

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Other Books by Georgia Nicolson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Big luuurve to my family and friends, old and new. (Look, I’m not saying some of you are old, I’m just saying that some of you are newer than others…er…but not in a less old way. Oh look, I just love you, right?)

  Enormous panty splitting thanks to my editors and publicists and designers and salespeople at HarperCollins in Billy Shakespeare land and Hamburger-a-gogo land.

  Thanks as always to the Empress.

  But mostly thank you to my lovely, lovely readers (which now even include some vatis, which is a bit alarming).

  A Note from Georgia

  Dear worldwide chums and chumettes,

  (Hang on a minute—when I say “worldwide” I don’t mean “enormously fat,” I merely mean internationalwise.) Where was I before you got the wrong end of the stick? Oh yes, do you know how much I love you all? A LOT, that is how much. I do, it is le fact. Why else would I spend so much time rifling through my creative drawers (oo-er) writing another diary?

  Actually, as I say to anyone who will listen (i.e., no one), I am practically a saint in human form. But there is very little thanks in it. For instance, the other day I helped a little old lady across the road. I didn’t have to—in fact I was in a tearing dash on my way to get new lip gloss. But I did, and do you know what she did? She hit me with her umbrella. She said she didn’t want to cross the road, she was waiting for her friend to pick her up to go pole dancing.

  That is the kind of world we live in.

  The elderly insane, like Elvis Attwood, parents, etc., say that young people only care about lipstick and snogging. I say hahahaha. If they would take the trouble to read works of geniosity like mine they would soon realize that we do many useful and creative things. Who invented the terms “piddly diddly department” and “poo parlor division” that are used in schools all over the world? Before I bothered to invent “nunga-nungas,” what fools we felt, calling our breasty substances…er…breasts. Do you see? I think you do.

  Good-bye and God bless you all.

  And also s’laters.

  P.S.

  And I invented nervy b. and f.t., and so on.

  P.P.S.

  And the Viking bison disco dance.

  P.P.P.S.

  I could go on but I feel slightly tired with creativitosity and I may…

  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  living in fiascoland

  saturday june 18th

  9:00 p.m.

  I can’t believe I am once more on the rack of romance.

  And also in the oven of luuurve.

  And possibly on my way to the bakery of pain.

  And maybe even going to stop along the way to get a little cake at the cakeshop of agony.

  Shut up, brain, shut up.

  9:01 p.m.

  Looking out my window at the stars.

  It says in my Meditation for the Very Backward book that it is soothing looking at the universe and stars and everything.

  Ommmm.

  9:03 p.m.

  The meditation book is wrong. God, stars are annoying. Winking and blinking like twinkly idiots. Why are they are so cheerful?

  9:03 p.m. and a half

  I’ll tell you why they are so cheerful, because they are not me. They know nothing of the call of the Horn and snogging. Has a Luuurve God ever said to one of them, “I will let you know in a week’s time if I want to go out with you or not”? No.

  Anyway, what are stars for actually? You can’t even read by them. They just hang about. Like dim torches.

  9:04 p.m.

  Hanging about is not exactly a job, is it?

  9:05 p.m.

  I am not as such feeling any calmer.

  9:10 p.m.

  Being in the bakery of pain is vair vair boring. Ten past nine on a Saturday night and I am in my bedroom. Alone. I am in the prime of my—er—hornosity and joie de vivre and nothing is going on. Nothing.

  It’s like the grave in this house I…

  Oh good. My darling little sister has kicked open my door and flung Angus at me.

  “HEGGGGOOO Gingey!!! We is back. Heggo!!! Watch my panties dance. Sex bum sex bum am a sex bum!!!”

  Oh dear Gott in Himmel. Angus was livid at being thrown and once he’d stopped doing that cat sneezing and shaking thing, he dug his claws into my ankle. Owwwwwww. Now I’m on the way to the cakeshop of aggers with a gammy leg. Hurray!

  Libby put her frock over her head and waggled her botty around like a pole dancer. Where does she see people doing these things?

  They’ve just come back from the lunatic asylum, i.e., Granddad’s sheltered housing, so it will be something she has seen there. I’ve seen the residents in their so-called communal “lounge.” They pretend to play dominoes, but secretly they practice being mad. And probably prance around in their incontinence knickers.

  Then Mum came mumming in and scooped up Bibbs. “Time for boboland, young lady.”

  Libby carried on singing and wiggling around in Mum’s arms, and then Mum noticed me. Being in my bedroom.

  “What are you up to, Georgia? Why are you in here?”

  I said, “Not that anyone notices, but this is actually my room. You know, for me to be in. I was in bed, as it happens.”

  Mum said as she went out, “Oh you must be sooo tired, all that lip gloss and mascara to carry round all day.”

  Vair vair amusing. Not.

  9:25 p.m.

  I’ve been in my bedroom more or less for forty-eight hours, give or take snack and loo breaks. Oh and a quick visit to the shops for essentials. Mascara. And a new nunga-nunga holder. And a copy of Cosmo. It is forty-eight hours since Masimo left me at my door saying he would let me know if he wanted me to be his girlfriend or not. Why did I admit I wanted him to be like my proper boyfriend? Why why?

  9:26 p.m.

  And also thrice why? Whyitwhyitwhy? Why couldn’t I have just been a callous sophisticate? I could for once have just shut up and been all full of casualosity and savoir whatsit.

  9:30 p.m.

  If I’d played my cards right I could have had loads of boyfriends. All at the same time. Masimo the Italian Stallion for a weekendy boyfriend, with a touch of Dave the Laugh (oo-er) for a rainy weekday. And also maybe even the former Sex God (whose name I’m not going to mention even beyond the grave) as a sort of Kiwi-a-gogo airmail boyfriend. But, oh no, I had to moan on about wanting to be Masimo’s one and only.

  9:40 p.m.

  I was so happy snogging Masimo under the stars on our date. Stars didn’t get on my nerves then. Nothing did.

  9:42 p.m.

  How come I am living in Fiasco land again? One minute he was snogging me under the twinkly twits, and then the next day he is off to Late and Live with Wet Lindsay, stick insect and drip. I am haunted by Old Droopy Drawers. First she enticed you know who, whose name I will never mention even beyond the grave, but as a clue his name starts with R and ends in obbie.

  Now she has slimed her way around Masimo. I hate her, I hate her.

  But that is life in a nutshell, isn’t it? Well, mine, anyway, all fabby and marvy and then all pooey and
merde.

  9:45 p.m.

  What was it Charlie Dickens said in his famous book Oliver Twit? Ah yes, “forsooth and lack a day all ye worlde is-eth a stage and verily we-eth are players in-ith it. Gadzooks.” Or was that Billy Shakespeare? Who knows? Who cares? What does it mean, anyway? And why do none of those beardy Elizabethan types know how to speak proper English?

  What does anything mean?

  midnight

  Oh I can’t bear this. How many hours is it until Masimo tells me his answer? Perhaps I should phone him and tell him that I didn’t mean what I said about him being my one and only one. I could say that he can go out with Wet Lindsay as well as long as he likes me.

  ten past midnight

  But that would mean I might snog him after she had snogged him and that would mean that I had practically snogged her. No one could live with that.

  12:20 a.m.

  I would rather snog Angus.

  12:26 a.m.

  I bet Angus is a much better snogger than her.

  Much better.

  12:30 a.m.

  He has certainly got nicer legs.

  12:31 a.m.

  Well, more of them, anyway.

  12:36 a.m.

  Everyone has gone to bed.

  12:38 a.m.

  And the kittykats are out. I can hear them yowling and spitting in the garden somewhere. Cross-eyed Gordy is practically a teenager in cat years now.

  I’ll bet he is doing keepie-uppie like Oscar, the so-called son of Mr. and Mrs. Across the Road, otherwise known as perv boy. No, what I mean is, Gordy will be pretending to do keepie-uppie but really keeping his eyes out for female- type kittykats.

  12:39 a.m.

  Actually Gordy would be much better at keepie-uppie and girl-spotting than Oscar because he could quite literally keep one eye on the ball and use the other one for spotting girlie kittykats.

  His spaggy eye would be a blessing in disguise.

  12:41 a.m.

  Oooh I can’t sleep. I must read a book of wisdomosity.

  12:42 a.m.

  It says in my (well, officially Mum’s) book How to Make Any Twit Fall in Love with You that if you pretend to feel how you feel, then you will feel like you feel.

  Pardon?

  12:45 a.m.

  For instance, it says, “If you go to a party and you feel shy, enter the room with a wide smile. Put your shoulders back, hold your head high! Let your arms hang loosely by your sides. Then, even if you don’t feel confident, no one will ever know!”

  Okeydokey, I’ll try that in the mirror.

  Wide smile, arms loosey loose and swing. Big smile, shoulders back, head high, swing swing. Loosey loose arms and swing swing.

  12:52 a.m.

  Yep, I definitely look confident. There is one tiny drawback, though, hanging my arms loosely and swinging them makes me look like an orangutan. An orangutan called Ralf, probably. And who wants a confident orangutan as a girlfriend? That is what I ask myself.

  12:54 a.m.

  Ralf the confident orangutan wearing Teletubbies pajamas.

  Which I only wore for comfortnosity. I had no idea I was going to have to go out to a party in them looking confident.

  Shut up, brain.

  sunday june 19th

  10:00 a.m.

  Same rack of love.

  Same oven of pain.

  Same bakery of…shutup shutup.

  I would usually consult with Dave the Laugh about the Luuurve God scenario. He is after all the official Hornmeister and pants King. It still makes me laugh like a drain when I think of him singing “The hills are alive with the sound of pants.” I would ask him to give me the benefit of his wisdomosity about boys and so on. But he’s gone a bit weird with all that “what if we should have really been together” fandango, so I feel a bit funny about seeing him again.

  11:00 a.m.

  Mutti popped her head round my door. “We’re going to Waterworld. Do you want to come?”

  I said, “Are you mad?”

  I said it in a polite and inquiring way, but she still went ballisticisimus.

  “You are so bloody rude.”

  I very nearly said that swearing shows a lack of vocabulary, but I didn’t because I am so vair vair tired.

  11:30 a.m.

  The Swiss Family Mad have “roared” off in the clown car, leaving me alone at Château Sheer Desperadoes.

  11:35 a.m.

  I’m going mad. I am going to have to phone the Big Knickered One, otherwise known as Jas, and hope she doesn’t ramble on about bat droppings.

  Phoned Jas.

  Jas was so much in Jas’n’Tomland that she didn’t even notice I was in the bakery of pain. She just went on rambling for Europe. “Oooh it’s so groovy that Tom’s back! I only saw him briefly yesterday. He is going to bring around his flora collection from Kiwi-a-gogo land in a bit and that will be soo…oh…”

  I said, “Indescribably dull?”

  She said, “I have to go now.”

  “Jazzy Wazzy, can I come and see you? I need your help.”

  “No.”

  jas’s bedroom

  lunchtime

  I am lying in between Jas’s sad collection of stuffed toys, mostly owls, whilst she ponces around in front of a mirror. What is she doing?

  I said, “Jas, it’s very distracting trying to tell you stuff, important stuff full of tragicosity about me your very bestest pally when you keep pouting like a goldfish. What are you doing?”

  “I’m practicing puckering.”

  “What?”

  “Puckering. I had, well, a bit of a problem vis-à-vis snogging with Tom last night.”

  Despite my world coming apart at the seams, I am always interested in snogging tales. “Tell me.”

  “Well, I was quite nervy at first when I was waiting for him.”

  “Were you doing your annoying flicky fringe thing?”

  “I don’t know; anyway, when he came in, I was sort of jelloid. But then it was alright because he got his whatsits out.”

  “Pardon?”

  “His, you know, snapshots from Kiwi-a-gogo land, so we looked at them for a bit. Until I felt calmed down. Actually there was a really cool one of Robbie….”

  Oh brilliant. On top of everything else I was now talking about someone I had vowed I would never talk about this side of the grave.

  I said, “Was Robbie playing the guitar and dancing with marsupials?”

  Jas wasn’t even listening. “Anyway, as we were looking at them, Tom got closer to me and put his arm around me. Then we, well…we, you know, started snogging and so on.”

  “And so on? Where is ‘and so on’ on the snogging scale? What number did you get to?”

  “Er…five and a bit of six. It was really groovy. I felt like I was all melting in to him and then…well…then I had sort of a lip spasm.”

  “A LIP SPASM?”

  ten minutes later

  Apparently she had been snogging away when she had suddenly had the lip spaz.

  She said, “I got a cramp in my lips and they sort of seized up.”

  “What does that look like?”

  And she showed me. Blimey. You know when you put food in a baby’s mouth and they don’t like it, and their eyes go all goggly and then their whole face goes into a spasm and the food comes shooting out of their mouth? Well, even if you don’t know, believe me, I do. Libby could make rice pudding reach the other side of the room.

  Whilst Jas was showing me her spazzy face, I said, “If you don’t mind me saying, Jas, that is not very attractive.”

  She said, “I expect it was snogging withdrawal. I hadn’t puckered up for ages, so…you know, being out of practice…but it won’t happen again.”

  “Good.”

  “Because I have an exercise regime now, shall I show you?”

  “No.”

  “OK. It goes pucker, relax, pucker, relax, pucker, relax, do you see?”

  I didn’t say anything, just lay there staring at h
er with big starey eyes like the rest of the owls as she pouted her lips and then relaxed them. She looked like a mixture of Mick Jagger and an idiot. Not necessarily in that order.

  She was in full ramble mode now.

  “And then for the pièce de résistance, it’s darty tongue, darty tongue.”

  God, it was horrible sitting there whilst her little tongue went in and out like a mad vole.

  Fortunately I was able to shove a midget gem in her gob so that I could tell her the sad tale of my Italian Stallion.

  ten minutes later

  She said (chewy chew), “So you said that he had to be your one and only boyfriend scenario or else that was it? Arrivederci, Masimo?”

  I said, “Yes, but…”

  “Well, what in the name of Slim’s outsize pajamas were you thinking of? Are you mad?”

  “No, I’m not mad, Jas, I just happen to have a friend who looks a lot like you who said, ‘Just be yourself.’”

  “What?”

  “You said being yourself and genuine was like having a generous nose. Like what I have got. The exact words used were: ‘Just because you have a generous nose, don’t go to the nose disguiser shop, let your own nose run free and wild.’”

  “What complete fool said that?”

  “YOU did, Jas.”

  “Did I? Well, yeah, but I didn’t mean it, did I? Clearly. That was in the sanctity of our own brains, wasn’t it? I mean, we were going to the PRETEND nose disguiser shop, I didn’t actually mean you should BE yourself. That is just stupid.”

  I really really could kill her. In fact, if I just attacked her stupid fringe suddenly, she might choke on her stupid midget gem and that would be good.

  Sadly Jas had got interested; now she said, “So let me get this right, he’s choosing between you and Wet Lindsay? Blimey, does she know that? Because if she does, you are dead as a doughnut. Deader.”

  Cheers.

  The doorbell rang downstairs and a minute later, Tom bounded into the room. He said, “Hey, Georgia…gidday, as our Kiwi pals say! Bonzer to see you!”