A Midsummer Tights Dream. Louise Rennison

      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

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