Although I kept myself to myself and didn’t really have a close set of friends, I enjoyed Timothy Hackworth Primary. I flitted from group to group at playtime and never really sat with the same person at dinner. Even though Rosie was my best friend we didn’t actually hang around together much in the playground. I also never had someone I could instantly run to when the teacher would say, ‘OK class, everybody get into pairs.’ Sometimes I would water all the plants in the junior building for the teachers during break and I would have a little chat in my head to the plants. It’s statements like that, when I look back, that make me now see why I didn’t have a squad.
I’d love to just sit in and read a book. Why would I want to be outside when it’s spitting with rain, playing bulldog, stick-in-the-mud, kiss, cuddle and torture or making daisy chains? I would much rather be reading about what trouble Tracy Beaker was getting herself into at the Dumping Ground. Jacqueline Wilson was who I wanted to be when I was older; I would read her books – The Illustrated Mum, The Suitcase Kid – over and over again. ‘Goosebumps’ books were my favourites on rainy days, like How I Got My Shrunken Head or Say Cheese and Die. Books and the characters in them were always my friends. I’d be transported into another world and for that half an hour I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could be beautiful, popular, confident, even a famous movie star.
Imagine my delight when at the age of six our school is introduced to this brand new event: World Book Day. Reading out the newsletter to my mam and dad over my shepherd’s pie at teatime, I explained that the whole school, even the teacher, was going to dress as any character from a book that we wanted. This wasn’t a mufti day where you would pay 50p and wear your own clothes; oh no, this was going to be so much better.
‘Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz?’ my mam suggested. Then my dad piped up, ‘Or she could go as a Disney princess?’ I just couldn’t decide. The date of World Book Day arrived and in true Moffatt form we were lastminute.com. I had no outfit and I was stressing out. Me mam had an idea. She came from the kitchen with a pair of black tights, some newspaper, my black school headband, a roll of black bin bags and some yellow gaffer tape. ‘You’ll go as a bee,’ she announced.
I was fuming. I know the expression ‘she could wear a bin bag and look good’, but come on mother, this was social suicide. Surely I couldn’t pull this off? Sweating I was, all padded out with newspaper tucked into a bin bag, held together by strips of yellow gaffer tape. Off to school I trotted with my character’s book in my hand: R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps’ Why I’m Afraid of Bees. I even came second and won a certificate for best dressed. See, old-school costumes are the best, none of this store-bought princess dress with matching head-dress malarkey.
Despite loving to learn, my favourite part of the day was still dinnertime. I bloody loved school dinners. Those handy little blue trays with a compartment for your drink, cutlery, main and dessert. Turkey Twizzlers, the cheapest baked beans they could find in tins the size of wheelie bins and potato smiley faces were my favourite. Followed by that chocolate cake that’s covered in sugar with the texture of a brick, with lashings of green minty custard. Jamie Oliver, eat your heart out. Kids these days don’t know what they’re missing now they have this Pasta King and salad bar shit going on. Just give them some of those 9p sausages and chunky chips, builds the immune system up. Never did any of us nineties kids any harm.
Remember school trips? I never went on any of the extravagant ones, but I did love a school trip. I remember being in Year 6 when it was the year of the millennium, 2000. The majority of the class were going to Paris. When it was announced, all the other girls, even at eleven years old, were talking about trying to sneak a glass of wine when the teachers weren’t looking and how they couldn’t wait to try authentic Paris pizza. I quickly pointed out that Paris wasn’t known for its pizza, it originated in Italy, and mentioned how I couldn’t wait to try their local delicacy of snails. After that conversation it seemed like everyone had already worked out the sleeping arrangements at the hostel (without me). So I decided it would be best if I didn’t go.
There was me and about eight others out of a year of sixty kids that didn’t go to Paris. So what did the school make us do while everyone else was enjoying the Arc de Triomphe and eating freshly baked pain au chocolat? We had to create a sixty-page project on France. Bit cruel when I look back now, sitting there in class with worksheets, having to cut out pictures of the Eiffel Tower and Pritt-Stick them onto the page while the pissed-off teacher who didn’t get to go on the trip moaned about how the other kids and teachers will now be on top of the real Eiffel Tower taking in breathtakingly beautiful 360-degree panorama views of all Paris. I honestly didn’t mind; my mam every night that week made me and my dad meals like mince and dumplings but with a French twist (baguette and
