A Midsummer Tights Dream

Cover

Title Page

Back on the Showbiz Express

Winter of Love

I’m not an Ice Cream, I’m a Human Being!

There’s no People like Show People

Eat the boat!

Human Glue

Calf Love

Don’t Forget Your Bottom

My Corkers are on the move

He’s a Rusty Heathen Crow

The Ladder of Showbiz

Goodbye to a Tree Sister

The Hamster Slippers of Life

A Naturally Cracking Kisser

Tunnelling for his Life

Return of Cain the Bad

Warming up my Bottom

The fall of Dother Hall

A Midsummer Tights Dream

Acknowledgments

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Performing Arts College, here I come again! Hold on to your tights!! Because I am holding on to mine, I can tell you. Which makes it difficult to go to the loo, but that is the price of fame!!! And fame is my game!

Once more I am chugging back to Dother Hall. Or ‘the theatre of dreams’ as Sidone Beaver, the principal, calls it. I am truly on the showbiz express of life.

Well, the stopping train to Skipley. The Entertainment Capital of the North. Or home of the West Riding Otter, as some not showbiz people call it. I don’t think they mean that only a big fat otter lives in the town, although you never know!

Hooray and chug-a-lug-a-doo-dah!!!!

I feel like shouting out to the heavens. I think I will. I can now because the grumpy woman with the stick got off at the last stop. Oh the Northern folk with their jolly Northern ways. She was so grumpy about her gammy leg. She said the stick had worn down on one side so that she fell over in strong winds. I didn’t ask her any of this, she just told me. But hey-nonny-no, as Shakespeare said. I am going to pull down the window and shout out loud:

“The name is, Tallulah. Tallulah Casey!!!! And I’m back. I’m moving up! Moving on up! Nothing can stop me! Yes, I used to be shy and gangly with nobbly knees and no sticky-out bits. No corkers. I was corkerless. I didn’t even wear a corker holder. But now even my corkers are on the move!!!”

Especially when the train keeps stopping unexpectedly. What now? Maybe the West Riding Otter is on the line. The tannoy is crackling but I can only hear heavy breathing and snuffling. Lawks a mercy, the wild otter has hijacked the train!

He wants to make people understand that otters have feelings too, they’re not just furry fools—

Ooomph.

Oooooh blimey, I nearly shot into the opposite seat then because we’re lurching off again.

Woo-hoo!

Anyway, I’m being giddy about the otter. He can’t really be driving the train because he couldn’t reach the driving wheel. Unless he’s got stilts. And it doesn’t say Skipley is the home of the West Riding Circus Otter. With his big shoes.

I don’t care about the otter driver! Live and let live I say.

Uh-oh, the tannoy is crackling again.

“Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen, I momentarily lost hold of my pie. Next stop Skipley.”

We’re just passing Grimbottom Peak. Brr. It looks so dark and forbidding up there. I’m surprised it’s not pouring down with rain and… it is pouring down with rain.

Crumbs, it’s like the lights have been turned off. You can hardly see Grimbottom. The locals say that when daytrippers are up there the fog can come down in minutes. Mr Bottomley at the post office once told me and Flossie:

“One minute t’daytrippers are up there on’t top, playing piggy in’t middle like barm pots. The next it’s so dark they can’t even see t’ball. And it’s in their hand. Hours later the grown ups stumble home but the little’uns are nivver seen no more. Sometimes late at night tha can hear ’em up there wailing, ‘Mummeee… Dadeeeee…’ All them lost bairns, speaking from beyond the grave.”

Flossie said, “That’s rubbish. There’s a massive wild dog up there called Fang. Half dog, half donkey, and it comes out in the fog and takes the children and raises them as its puppies.”

In my opinion, even though I haven’t known her for long, my new friend Flossie is what is commonly known as ‘mad’.

But mad or not, I am really really excited about seeing her and my new mates again. Vaisey and Flossie and little Jo and Honey, who can’t say her ‘r’s, but knows everything about boys. She says she always has “two or thwee on the go”.

We can go into the woods near Dother Hall again, to our special place! And gather round our special tree. Our special tree where we met the boys from Woolfe Academy when they surprised us doing our special dance that Honey taught us. She said we had to be proud of all of ourselves, even the bits we didn’t like. It was a “showing our inner glory” dance. Or “inner glorwee” as Honey called it. Which in my case was hurling my legs around shouting, “I love my knees, I love them!!!”

Not quite as embarrassing as Vaisey waggling her bottom at the tree, but close.

The Woolfe Academy boys, well Charlie and Phil, call us the “Tree Sisters”.

Charlie said to me… Well, I won’t think about Charlie. Not after what happened after he kissed me.

Where was I in my performing life? Oh yes, when I got to Dother Hall I couldn’t do anything. The others could sing and dance and act but all I could do was be tall and do a bit of Irish dancing.

I was convinced that I would never be asked back and that I would never wear the golden slippers of applause. Things changed when Blaise Fox, the dance tutor, saw my Sugar Plum Bikey performance. My ballet based on The Sugar Plum Fairy only done on a bicycle. The one when my ballet skirt got caught in the back wheel, and I accidentally shot off my bike and destroyed the backstage area. I remember what she said.

She said: “Tallulah Casey, watching you is like watching someone whose pants are on fire.” Then she asked me to play Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights at the end of last term. And the rest is showbiz legend.

Heathcliff’s Irish dancing solo was a triumph!!! And also, not so easy in tight trousers.

I still don’t know why she cast me as Heathcliff though.

Perhaps I really do look like a boy?

If I look down and squint my eyes a bit I can definitely see pimply bumps in the corker area.

No one can argue with that. The front of a jumper never lies.

My jumper is one of the ones Cousin Georgia and her Ace Gang chose for me. It’s green and she says it goes with my eyes and gives me je ne sais quoi.

Well, she actually said, “It says ‘ummmmmmm’ but not ‘oooohhhh, look at me, I’m a tart’.”

Nearly at Skipley. I’m so excited. This is going to be my Winter of Love, I can tell.

When I stayed with Cousin Georgia on my way back from summer school it was brilliant. I haven’t really spent a lot of time with her before because of being in Ireland and having crap parents who actually do stuff. Not just bake tarts or DIY like everyone else’s parents. Not good old boring stuff. My mum goes off and paints and my dad goes off exploring to find endangered things. He collects molluscs mostly but I think last time he found a rare hairy potato. He’s like a cross between David Bellamy and… a Labrador. That is not a proper dad in anyone’s language.

That’s a Labradad.

Hee. I think that might very nearly be a joke.

I’m going to put it into my performance art notebook that I will be keeping.

I’ve got a special new notebook with a black glossy cover and some plums on the front of it.

It’s really arty, and er… fruity.

I’ve already made my first entry.

It says:

Winter of Love.

I’ll just add my “Labradad” idea.

Labradad. A portrait of a dad who is half pipe smoking bloke and half Labrador. He’s confused between the two worlds. Between pipes and sticks. I’m thinking an improvised dance piece. Perhaps the Labradad fetching sticks. Or pipes?

Or ducks?

Hmmmmm.

I love my parents but they’re not normal. Or around much. But they have let me come back to Dother Hall – even though I’m not allowed to board.

It was great staying with Cousin Georgia. It was brilliant on the boy front as well.

She got her Ace Gang round to teach me “wisdomosity” and also “snogging techniques”. We all tucked up in her bed, which was cosy.

Georgia said, “Have a jammy dodger and give us the goss snogwise.”

All the gang were wearing false beards to help me get into the mood.

So… I told her about going to the cinema in Skipley with some boys from Woolfe Academy. I told her about my first kiss. With floppy Ben. And how it was like having a little bat trapped in my mouth.

Her Ace Gang looked at me. Then Georgia said, “Are you a fool with just a hint of an idiot thrown in?”

Then they gave me their wisdomosity about boys. And snogging.

Gosh, Georgia knows a lot.

About varying pressure of the lips, what to do with your tongue, (don’t waggle it about like a fool), the scoring system for snogging, (Number 1 to Number 10, I can’t remember all of them but I do remember Number 4 is “a kiss lasting over three minutes without a break”. You need a mate for that one, so that they can time it for you.).

Honestly. I couldn’t believe it.

I’m dying to try out my new skills.

The amount she knew, she must have spent most of her time doing snogging research.

I said that to her and she said, “I did, my strange gangly coussy. But I have put aside snogging to teach you the ways of boydom. I do it because I luuurve you. But not in a lezzie way.”

Which is good.

I think.

What is a “lezzie way”?

I think it’s to do with girl snogging.

But I didn’t ask.

Oh chuggy-chug-chug. Come on, train!!!

I wonder what time the rest of the Tree Sisters will arrive tomorrow? I can ask Honey about the lezzie thing, she will know.

Oh, here we are at the train station. Hurrah!!! There’s its sign swinging in the biting gale force wind. Just as I remember:

Skipley Home of the West Riding Otter.

Hang on a minute, some Northern vandal has painted a “b” and a “y” over the otter bit. So now it reads:

I have just got off the showbiz express and now I am getting on the bus of hope. Which will transport me to… The Theatre of Dreams.

I can see the bus driver through the closed door, sitting in the driver’s seat. I recognise him from last term. I wonder if he recognises me?

As I hauled my bag on board up the steps he put the pipe to one side of his mouth and shouted, “Stop messing about and get on if you’re getting on, merry legs. It’s bloody parky with that door open.”

I said, “Why did you call me merry legs?”

He said, “Because you’re lanky and your legs are all over the shop.”

I paid my fare and he said, “Come back to prat around like a fool at Dither Hall again, have you?”

Before I could say, “It’s Dother Hall, actual—” he accelerated off so violently that I shot down to the end of the bus and almost ended up in a small child’s pushchair. Luckily there wasn’t a small child in it, just a pig.

The woman with the pushchair said, “Mind my pig.”

I am huddled up well away from her, but I think I can still smell pig poo.

We bumped along the road to Heckmondwhite. The driver is careering along sounding his horn whenever there is anything in his way on the road. Pedestrians. Bicyclists. A cow pat. But he slowed down behind a lollipop lady who was walking home. With her sign. She tried to let him pass but he cheerily waved her on and drove slowly behind her. Then for no reason when we got to a sharp corner he revved up and blasted his horn and she fell into a hedge. He was laughing so much I thought he might swallow his pipe.

I couldn’t help being excited. This is like a postcard of a winter scene in Yorkshire. There is even some snow on the top of Grimbottom Peak. And I shivered as I thought about Fang up there. Raising his fictitious children as fictitious puppies.

We arrived at the bus stop in Heckmondwhite just as it was getting dark. In my Dother Hall brochure it says, “Heckmondwhite has its own ‘zany’ cosmopolitan atmosphere.”

I don’t know that most people would call a village green and a post office and a pub called The Blind Pig “zany”. Unless you counted the knitted flags over the village hall.

I bet the Dobbins, my substitute parents, have got something to do with that.

Maybe I should just nip quickly over to the pub and see my fun-sized friend Ruby and my four-legged mate Matilda, her bulldog? I could give her the lipstick I’ve bought her. Not Matilda, Ruby. Dogs don’t wear make-up. But what they do wear is the little ballet tutu I have got for her from ‘Pets Party’ shop. I hope it will go round her waist. She is quite porky in the middle.

And anyway, even if Rubes was out I could leave the presents with her older brother Alex. Alex the dream boy. Alex with his long limbs and his longish thick chestnut hair. And his two eyes. And his back and front… and everything. And we could chat about performing arts. He’s gone off to Liverpool to do rep there and I could chat about my performance plans. Maybe discuss my Labradad idea.

Maybe not. I don’t want him to think of me as a bloke with a pipe fetching sticks.

Yes, I could pop to see Ruby. And whilst I was popping about maybe Alex her very gorgeous brother would pop up and that would be poptastic and I could say, “What a surprise, Alex, I was just popping by to…”

“Lullah! Lullah, yoo-hoo, it’s me!!!! And the twins!!!”

Dibdobs. In her Brown Owl uniform, coming towards me. No, not just coming towards me. Skipping towards me.

The twins were wearing knitted yellow knickerbockers.

I bet Mr Dobbins (Harold) knitted them at one of his “inner woman” groups. Harold goes to a men’s group and they try to find their hidden feminine side.

Uuuumph. As I have said before, I am sure Dibdobs has got a “hugging” badge. She’s got badges for everything else, moth conservation, vole watching, pond life, etc.

She almost crushed me to death with her bosom and her badges. And her new whistle.

I couldn’t actually see anything when she was hugging me, but I could feel hugging going on around my knee area as well.

That would be the twins, Max and Sam.

They love my knees.

Probably because that is as far up as their toddler arms can hug.

I don’t get a lot of hugging at home.

My little brother Connor likes kicking mostly. I hugged him when I left and he said, “Don’t be so gay”. Grandma does a lot of patting. But quite often she’s off target with that and thinks she is patting me when actually it’s the cushion next to me.

Dibdobs was talking really loudly and quickly like she does. She’s so keen on everything.

It’s nice really. Just odd.

“Oh, Lullah, it’s sooooooo lovely to have you back. I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you. Haven’t we, boys?”

The boys stood there blinking from underneath their pudding basin haircuts.

And sucking their dodies.

They don’t get any less odd.

Dibdobs said, “The boys have made something for you. Haven’t you, boys?”

She adores the twins, she thinks they are covering up their cleverness. She thinks they are like tiny little brain surgeons in tiny twits clothing.

Max and Sam blinked at me. And kept on sucking.

Then Max (or Sam) took his dodie out and said, “Sjuuuuge one for ooo.”

I said, “Oh, well, that’s nice I…”

Dibdobs said, “Tell Lullah what you’ve made for her.”

Sam said, “Sjuuuuge.”

Dibdobs started slightly losing her rag. “Yes, yes, it is quite big… but TELL Lullah what it is.”

Sam blinked and looked a bit cross, like he had suddenly realised he had a Brown Owl for a mother. He put his hands on his hips and stamped his foot and said, “SJJJJUUUUGEEE.”

And Max shouted, “BOGIES!!!!”

Dibdobs went even redder.

She bent down so she could look them both in the eyes and said sternly, “Now, that is a silly, silly word, that big boys don’t say any more.”

Max and Sam blinked together and smiled. Great Jumping Jehovah, they look like sock animals when they smile.

Dibdobs took their hands and we all walked back to the house. She was chatting on sixteen to the dozen. But I could still hear Max and Sam softly singing, “Bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie.”

Dibdobs said, “Harold is so looking forward to seeing you, he’s out tonight with the interknitting group. After the success of the communal skipping rope, you know, the skipathon when the whole village skipped?”

Oh yes, I remembered that.

She was chattering on.

“Well, he’s got big plans for knitting the village together for Christmas. Won’t that be fun?”

When we got back to Dandelion Cottage the twins present turned out to be some bits of feather stuck into a potato.

Max said, “Fevver man for ooo.”

Lovely.

Also there was a postcard addressed to me care of the Dobbins. It was from Honey! It just said:

Dear Tallulah,

Something WEALLY exciting has happened!!!!

See you when I get there on Wednesday and tell you all about it!!!

Honey xxx

It didn’t really say “weally” on the postcard, but I could hear her voice in my head.

I wonder what she means?

Maybe she’s got five boyfriends now?!

I took my luggage (and “Fevver man”) up into my room while Dibdobs went to make some tea.

So here I am back in my old squirrel room. Sitting on my wooden bed with the squirrel carved into the bedhead. With my feather potato. I’ve brought back my squirrel slippers; the ones that Dibdobs gave me when I first came. She said they were to make me feel at home.

Which they would have done, had my home been in an oak tree.

I put the squirrel slippers into the bed for company. Well, one looks like a squirrel and the other one looks like a hamster. My brother, Connor, set fire to one of the tail bits so it’s just a stump.

I looked around at the familiar carved wooden wardrobe (acorn theme) and the wooden dressing table (with the carved squirrel legs) and the wooden, well, everything really. You name it, if it was in the room, it was wooden.

But wood was OK. Everything was OK.

I put my case on the bed and started to unpack. Georgia and her Ace Gang helped me choose cool things to suit my shape. Like dark tights and bright little skirts. And hats. The Ace Gang said I needed to de-emphasise my bad bits (nobbly knees) and emphasise my good bits (catty eyes and nice swishy black hair). Georgia said to distract boys from my knee area I should swish my hair almost constantly. (Although not to fiddle with my fringe, because she personally thought that was a killing offence.)

I hung all my stuff in the wooden wardrobe.

I even have a special underwear drawer. With bras in it. Oh yes!!!

Yes, I now officially wear corker holders.

And what’s more, I have corkers to put in them!!

I’ve got the tiniest corker appliances you can get (30a) but I have high hopes for a growth spurt when I start tap dancing my way to the top of the showbiz ladder. Not that I can tap dance but I could do something on the ladder, I’m sure. It’s just a question of finding it and not falling off the ladder in the meantime. Even though you can’t see the ladder.

I’m putting my new shiny, fruity performance art notebook under my pillow for when I come up with more whizzo creative projects. I can’t wait to see Dr Lightowler’s face when she has to hand me my golden slippers of applause!

She doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. It was after I did my owl laying an egg mime in her class. I think she took against me then.

Maybe she thought I was pretending to be her. She said I was silly, and shouldn’t be at Dother Hall.

She’s in for a surprise when she gets to see how unsilly I can be.

I’m going to put my corker measuring tape in my corker-holder drawer, next to my corker holders.

I wonder if my corkers have grown since I last measured them?

I did a sneaky measuring in the lavatory on the train, which is only about three hours ago, but growing could happen any time, couldn’t it?

It could happen the minute after you took the corker-measuring tape measure away.

Anyway, I am not going to risk doing a measure, it would be just my luck for the lunatic twins to come barging in.

Last term, unfortunately I tried my method in front of the window. And Cain Hinchcliff was out there in the undergrowth, snogging some village girl, and he’d seen me, seen me doing my method. He’d seen me rubbing my corkers with my hiking socks on my hands.

To make them grow.

My corkers not the socks.

The socks were huge.

Best not to think about it.

I shivered at the memory.

Still, that was all in the past.

Dibdobs shouted up, “Tea’s ready!!! Boys!! Tallulah! Split splat!!!”

I shook my hair and gave it a bit of a va-va voom.

When I opened my door, there they were. The twins. Blinking and sucking on their dodies. As if they knew that I had nearly measured my corkers.

Perhaps they have a corker-sensing gene.

Perhaps all boys do.

What a horrific thought.

After tea (local eggs and a local sausage), I said, “I’m just going to pop to The Blind Pig to see Ruby and then we might pop and visit the owlets.”

I’ve entered the “popping zone” again. I like it. It’s very me.

As I went out of the door Dibdobs said, “Put this hat on in case of rain. It’s my camping hat.”

I said, I’ll be all ri—”

But she was ramming the waterproof hat on my head, completely squashing my va-va-voomed hair. I’d have to not take it off now in case of hat hair.

Dobbins said, “Oooooh, look at you!! You’re gorgeous. You’ve grown! Oooohhhhh.”

And she hugged me again.

And so did the boys.

It’s very hard to walk when you’ve got three people doing hugging.

Was it going to happen every time I went out?

Maybe the right thing to do was to hug them back and then they would let me go.

But that made it worse.

Dibdobs started hugging more tightly and I think she might have been crying.

I got away at last by saying, “Bye then!!!”

I was only going three feet across the green, what if we went on a school trip?

The Blind Pig was all quiet when I got to it. The sign (a pig in dark glasses with a white stick) was creaking in the cold wind.

I remembered last sitting here.

On the wall next to the pub.

With Alex.

Dreamy Alex.

He’d looked at me and smiled his smile. It was the best moment of my life so far. We were so close. I wanted to say so much. I wanted my eyes to speak the words I couldn’t say. Which actually might have been a bit of a surprise to both of us. If they had done.

So I said to him, “My knees are too far up.”

Why?

Why would you say that?

And then he had wanted to look at my knees and the whole thing had gone wrong, leaving him thinking I was just a stupid little kid. With out-of-control legs.