Read Online Swallowing Grandma by Kate Long - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Long
Tags: General Fiction
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hobbies were collecting buttons, horse-riding, and bulimia. She’d been bulimic since she was seventeen, and it was a load of bull that it made you ill. Her friends thought she looked great, and in any case it was her life and her body and if that’s how she wanted to run the show, who had the right to tell her otherwise?
There were links to My Button Collection and Some Great Pics of Horses, and Cherry’s Guest Book . In spite of myself, I had to check out the button page. Possibly what we had here was somebody even sadder than myself. I mean, buttons? Poll’s got about five hundred of them in a tin under the stairs, mainly boring old shirt ones of Vince’s.
Turned out she meant badges, which wasn’t quite so nerdy. I have over 2,000 buttons! I have catalogued them as follows: Animals, Brand-Names, Drugs, Humor, Miscellaneous, Music, Places, Political, Portraits, Religious, Vintage.
I skipped to the Guest Book.
Congrats, Cherry, on your great site. You tell it like it is. I use a toothbrush! was the first entry I read, from The Kookie Monster. Cherry had replied: Yeah, I tried that one time, but it scratched my throat.
You weren’t using the bristle end were you?!!! The Kookie Monster had typed.
Doh! Was Cherry’s response. Trust me to get it wrong! Ha-ha, only joking, stay Cool! There was an emoticon of a laughing face next to some kisses.
In the next thread, Genius-Girl was tickling her tonsils with a ruler because she didn’t like to smell vomit on her hands afterwards. Kind of appropriate as I’m a math grad.
Anni86 was still living at home with her parents, but she’d come up with a brilliant excuse for hogging the bathroom. I say I’m using a face-pack and don’t like to be disturbed for twenty minutes. Then I turn up the radio real loud. I always make sure I dab a little of the face pack round the sink or on the taps before I come out, and sometimes I leave a smear round my hair-line or jaw.
That is so smart. – Cherry
I’ll try that one myself. – Forestsprite
Has anyone here used a proprietary emetic? – Deepsouth
Too risky. You have no control over where you puke. People start asking questions. – Genius-Girl.
Wanna swap some buttons? Mail me with your wants list. – Maddyfan.
I unrolled the messages slowly, taking in the good bits. It was true what they said about the Internet, how it opened whole new worlds.
Thanks a bunch, girls, I could have added. It’s been a real eye-opener. – Barm-cake.
I closed the site and heaved myself out of the swivel seat. With luck, racing from Chepstow would still be on for another hour.
*
Sometimes think I lost my virginity under a horse-chestnut tree, by moonlight. That there was moss under my head, and the leaves rustled as we moved together. Shadows played across his closed eyelids; I couldn’t stop looking at his beautiful sad face. ‘Your hair’s the colour of conkers,’ he whispered. The rain began to patter on the leaves as he entered me, but I didn’t feel it on my skin till afterwards. He whirled the stars around the sky the way a child waves a sparkler. There was no pain. ‘I shan’t go to university,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave you now.’
Chapter Seven
I reckon Poll’s got an eating disorder, of sorts. That larder’s stocked for a siege, terrorist attack, deadly virus outbreak, asteroid collision, economic collapse, etc. Cissie says it’s to do with the war and being forced to make three square meals a day out of potato peelings and thin air. She tells tales of having to make tea-substitute (grate a pile of carrot onto a baking tray and dry it out on a low heat) and jam-substitute (mix in a pint of appropriate-coloured jelly and re-pot) or almond substitute (crack open a prune stone and dig out the kernel). She’s cooked with blackcurrant leaves, onion skins, dandelions and nettles; she knows a recipe for fatless pastry, can bottle fruit without sugar, and scramble one egg to feed two people (add
There were links to My Button Collection and Some Great Pics of Horses, and Cherry’s Guest Book . In spite of myself, I had to check out the button page. Possibly what we had here was somebody even sadder than myself. I mean, buttons? Poll’s got about five hundred of them in a tin under the stairs, mainly boring old shirt ones of Vince’s.
Turned out she meant badges, which wasn’t quite so nerdy. I have over 2,000 buttons! I have catalogued them as follows: Animals, Brand-Names, Drugs, Humor, Miscellaneous, Music, Places, Political, Portraits, Religious, Vintage.
I skipped to the Guest Book.
Congrats, Cherry, on your great site. You tell it like it is. I use a toothbrush! was the first entry I read, from The Kookie Monster. Cherry had replied: Yeah, I tried that one time, but it scratched my throat.
You weren’t using the bristle end were you?!!! The Kookie Monster had typed.
Doh! Was Cherry’s response. Trust me to get it wrong! Ha-ha, only joking, stay Cool! There was an emoticon of a laughing face next to some kisses.
In the next thread, Genius-Girl was tickling her tonsils with a ruler because she didn’t like to smell vomit on her hands afterwards. Kind of appropriate as I’m a math grad.
Anni86 was still living at home with her parents, but she’d come up with a brilliant excuse for hogging the bathroom. I say I’m using a face-pack and don’t like to be disturbed for twenty minutes. Then I turn up the radio real loud. I always make sure I dab a little of the face pack round the sink or on the taps before I come out, and sometimes I leave a smear round my hair-line or jaw.
That is so smart. – Cherry
I’ll try that one myself. – Forestsprite
Has anyone here used a proprietary emetic? – Deepsouth
Too risky. You have no control over where you puke. People start asking questions. – Genius-Girl.
Wanna swap some buttons? Mail me with your wants list. – Maddyfan.
I unrolled the messages slowly, taking in the good bits. It was true what they said about the Internet, how it opened whole new worlds.
Thanks a bunch, girls, I could have added. It’s been a real eye-opener. – Barm-cake.
I closed the site and heaved myself out of the swivel seat. With luck, racing from Chepstow would still be on for another hour.
*
Sometimes think I lost my virginity under a horse-chestnut tree, by moonlight. That there was moss under my head, and the leaves rustled as we moved together. Shadows played across his closed eyelids; I couldn’t stop looking at his beautiful sad face. ‘Your hair’s the colour of conkers,’ he whispered. The rain began to patter on the leaves as he entered me, but I didn’t feel it on my skin till afterwards. He whirled the stars around the sky the way a child waves a sparkler. There was no pain. ‘I shan’t go to university,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave you now.’
Chapter Seven
I reckon Poll’s got an eating disorder, of sorts. That larder’s stocked for a siege, terrorist attack, deadly virus outbreak, asteroid collision, economic collapse, etc. Cissie says it’s to do with the war and being forced to make three square meals a day out of potato peelings and thin air. She tells tales of having to make tea-substitute (grate a pile of carrot onto a baking tray and dry it out on a low heat) and jam-substitute (mix in a pint of appropriate-coloured jelly and re-pot) or almond substitute (crack open a prune stone and dig out the kernel). She’s cooked with blackcurrant leaves, onion skins, dandelions and nettles; she knows a recipe for fatless pastry, can bottle fruit without sugar, and scramble one egg to feed two people (add
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