She’ll be like, ‘Scarlett, I’ve been so unfairly suspended. Can you sort it?’
‘You shouldn’t disobey the law.’
‘Oh come on, Scarlett, it’s not the real law, it’s Animal Jam law! Send them an email please.’
She is such a little character and she is like me in so many ways. She is quiet and shy until you get to know her properly and then she opens up. She loves facts and conspiracy theories, she strongly believes in time travel and she loves drag queens. Some of my best friends are drag queens – Tess Tickle (Mr Tickle), Emma Royd and Cara O’Hara – so she has grown up around drag. When we have our sister nights we binge-watch Disney, Goosebumps and RuPaul’s Drag Race. I recently got a little bit of stick because for her eleventh birthday I bought her a life-size cut-out of RuPaul, a Michelle Visage book and T-shirts and hoodies that say things like ‘Sashay away’, ‘RuPaul for President’ and ‘May the best woman win’. People said it was inappropriate that Ava even watched drag queens. My reply to that? ‘What, you’ve never seen a pantomime at a young age?’ We all encourage Ava to never judge anyone. She loves the glitter, glamour and how fun drag is. I love that she understands that it is OK to be the real you. Whether that’s drag queen, lesbian, gay, transgender or just a kid who loves conspiracy theories like her sister.
Every day I tell her, ‘Be a colourful Fruit Loop in a world full of Cheerios.’ In the words of RuPaul:
‘If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you
gonna love somebody else?’
Chapter Nine
DO YOU NEED A BAG WITH THAT?
Asda’s Merthyr Tydfil store sells the most white socks in the whole of the UK – one pair every six minutes. (Maybe there’s a lot of people who dress up as Michael Jackson in town, who knows?)
In 1644, Oliver Cromwell’s parliament ‘banned’ Christmas – or at least celebrating it – saying that the day should be spent in fasting and remembering the sins of those who had previously turned the day into a feast. (Bet yule never knew that.)
Coronation Street villain Richard Hillman drove his wife Gail into a canal right outside Asda’s Ashton-under-Lyne store, sparking an influx of visitors.
I have had a lot of jobs. From putting the penny sweets into mix-up bags, to retail, to watching the television, to selling mobile phones, to working nine to five in an office. One of the best jobs I had, which I loved, was being a checkout operator at Asda. I got to sit in the swivel grey chair behind my own little counter. I was eighteen and I got £7.80 an hour, which is amazing. Also we lived opposite – actually across the road, literally thirty-two seconds away exactly – from Asda. Plus I suit the colour green.
That’s the main reason why I went for the job – that and the fact that I got 5 per cent off all the shopping for me mam and dad, so I scored extra Brownie points with them, especially at Christmas. If you’re doing a big shop, that’s quite a lot of money, that is.
You had to be eighteen for the job as I wanted to have the power to serve people alcohol. I never really fancied working on stacking shelves or the meat counter; I prefer sitting down to standing up. Plus I’d be nibbling at the pork pies all day. So on my eighteenth birthday I handed my CV in. They sent me an application form a couple of days later. I filled that out and made the next stage: the team interview. We were split into teams and got to talk a bit about ourselves. All the time there are officials there with their Asda badges on, making notes and stuff. It’s soooo nerve-wracking!
Then they put loads of spaghetti and marshmallows in the middle of the table. They said, ‘Right, in teams of four, you’ve got to make a structure with these materials.’
And I was like, ‘How is this going to show them if I’m good at the job or not?’ I thought it was going to be like how fast can you put ten tins of beans in a carrier bag and stuff, but it wasn’t. They must have been looking to see who was a good listener and who was good at leading a team. I passed that stage as well.
Then I had to go for a solo interview. Honestly, it was like they were picking someone to be their new chief executive rather than a checkout girl, the amount of interviews I had to do. My mam would be like, ‘How’s it going?’
‘Well, I’m through to the next stage.’
‘Jesus, it’s like The X Factor! It’s like you’re through to boot camp or judges’ houses!’
Then they’d ask you to sell them a pen at the interview. They put a pen on the table, and they went, ‘Right, can you sell me this pen?’
I’d watched a lot of TV in my time, so immediately I knew what to say. I went, ‘Right, can you just sign here?’
They couldn’t because I’d already picked up the pen.
‘Ah, course you can’t ... What you need is this pen!’
It was like a scene from Wolf of Wall Street. I thought I’d definitely got the job. From there, I was just on a high from the interview. I went home, and I was really confident. I was like, ‘I’ve nailed it, Mam, honestly, this time next week I’ll be filling those carrier
