She was very much like your textbook granny:
Thick glasses.
White hair.
Hearing aid.
False teeth.
Hairy chin.
Mauve cardigan.
Used tissue tucked up sleeve.
Smell of cabbage.
A packet of Murray Mints close by.
Floral-print dress.
Tan tights.
Burgundy slippers.
Ben’s dad worked as a security guard at the local supermarket. The highlight of his twenty-year career thus far was stopping an old man who had concealed two tubs of margarine down his trousers. Although Dad was now too fat to run after any robbers, he could certainly block their escape. Dad met Mum when he wrongly accused her of shoplifting a bag of crisps, and within a year they were married.
Ben’s mum worked at the local nail salon, ‘Gail’s Nails’. Because there weren’t many customers, Mum and the other lady who worked there (unsurprisingly called Gail) spent most days doing each other’s nails. Buffing, cleaning, moisturising, coating, sealing, polishing, filing, lacquering, extending and painting. They were doing things to each other’s nails all day long (unless Flavio Flavioli was on daytime TV). That meant Mum would always come home with extremely long multi-coloured plastic extensions on the end of her fingers.
He was a big, soft, marshmallow of a man and although he loved selling sweets, he loved eating them more. After the rush of sugar following a mid-afternoon scoffing session, he would often fall asleep at his counter…
Alfie always looked forward to seeing Raj. The newsagent knew how poor he and his dad were, and being a kind-hearted man he would often give Alfie a treat to take home. A melted ice lolly, a chocolate bar that had been slightly nibbled by a rodent, or a bag of jelly babies that Raj had accidently sat on so all the tiny tots were now flattened. Raj wasn’t a wealthy man, and couldn’t afford to give anything more. But to Alfie and his father they were like gifts sent from heaven, and the difference between going to bed hungry or not.
Mr Snood taught Drama. He was a bald and bespectacled man who always wore a black polo neck jumper, black jeans and black shoes. If he stood next to the black curtain in the assembly hall, it looked like there was a giant boiled egg floating through the air. Snood lived and breathed Drama. Drama was his love. Drama was his life. Drama was his Drama. Snood taught his subject with a ferocious sincerity.
In her job as a social worker, Winnie was well-practised in people not wanting her around.
Busybody.
Meddler.
Pest.
Stirrer.
Do-gooder.
Nuisance.
Troublemaker.
Botherer.
Bossy-boots.
Biscuit thief.
Winnie had been called them all, and worse. Much worse. As a result, she had developed a very thick skin, and was well-used to people slamming the door in her face…
Her collective clothes, bangles and make-up were sporting more shades of colour than would be found in even the widest set of colouring pencils.
The first thing you noticed about Miss Root was her teeth. She had the most dazzling white smile. Whiter than white. Like a fluorescent light. Her teeth were absolutely flawless. So flawless they couldn’t possibly be real. The second thing you noticed about Miss Root was that she was impossibly tall. Her legs were so long and thin, it was like watching someone walk on stilts…
Miss Root’s hair was white-blonde, and arranged in a perfectly lacquered ‘do’, usually only spotted on the heads of Queens or Prime Ministers. The ‘do’ was shaped much like a Mr Whippy ice cream, minus the flake, of course.
In a certain light she looked very old. Her features were narrow and pointy, and her skin pale as snow. However, the dentist had painstakingly painted on so much make-up that is was impossible to tell how old she really was.
50?
90?
900?
If there was ever a competition to find the man most completely unsuited to being a headmaster, Mr Grey would win first prize. Children scared him, teachers scared him, even his own reflection scared him. If his job didn’t suit Mr Grey, his surname definitely did. His shoes, his socks, his trousers, his jacket, his hair, even his eyes were all shades of grey.
Seemingly shy, no one had heard her speak, despite her having been at the school now for a whole term. Most of the time Gabz hid behind her curtain of dreadlocks, not making eye contact with anyone.
Before ill health forced him out of work, Dad was a coal miner. A great big bear of a man, he had loved working down the pit and providing for his beloved son. However, all those years he spent down the mine took a terrible toll on his lungs. Dad was a proud man, and didn’t let on about his illness for many years. He worked harder and harder to dig more and more coal, even taking on extra shifts to help make ends meet. Meanwhile his breathing became shallower and shallower, until one afternoon he collapsed at the coalface. When Dad finally came round at the hospital the doctors told him he could never go down a mine again. Just one more lungful of coal dust could finish him off. As the years passed Dad’s breathing worsened… Soon Dad could only get around in a wheelchair.
Alfie hated going to the dentist. As a result the boy’s teeth were almost all yellow. The ones that weren’t yellow were brown. They bore the stains of all the goodies that children love, but dentists hate. Sweets, fizzy drinks, chocolate. The teeth that were neither yellow nor brown simply weren’t there any more. They had fallen out. One had bitten into a toffee and stayed there. Assorted fruit-flavoured chews had claimed others…
That’s because this twelve-year-old boy hadn’t gone to the dentist since he was very little…
Alfie’s was a family of two. Just him and his father. The boy’s mother had died giving birth to him. He had never known her. Sometimes he felt sad, as if he missed his mother, but then he would tell himself, how could he miss someone he had never met?
Miss Windsor always started the class in French. It gave the false impression that the pupils were all fluent French speakers.
Mac was one of the fattest boys in the school, and endured the unwelcome celebrity that went with it…
Unlike most of the pupils, Lisa called Mac by his name, rather than his nickname, “Big Mac and fries”.
Lisa James.
Only the most beautiful girl in the school.
She was super-cool too, and somehow she always made her school uniform look like it was a costume in a pop video. Even though they had never spoken Dennis had a really big crush on Lisa.
Not that anything would ever happen though – her being two years older and six inches taller made her literally out of reach.
Darvesh was Sikh. As he was in the same year as Dennis and at only twelve he didn’t wear a turban yet. He wore a patka, a bobble-hat-type thing that kept his hair out of his face. That’s because Sikh men aren’t supposed to cut their hair. There were lots of different types of kids at school, but Darvesh was the only one who wore a patka.
The headmaster, Mr Hawtrey, hated children. Actually, he hated everybody, probably even himself. He wore an immaculate three-piece grey suit, with a charcoal-coloured tie and dark-framed glasses. His hair was meticulously combed and parted, and he had a thin, black moustache. It was as if he actively wanted to look sinister. And he had a face that someone who has spent their whole life grimacing ends up with.
A permanently grimacing one.
The shop was run by a very jolly man called Raj, who laughed even when nothing funny was happening. He laughed when he said your name as you walked through the door – and that was just what he did when Dennis went into the shop….
Raj was a wonderful businessman and very skilled at getting you to buy things you didn’t really want.
Dad was fat.
Really fat.
Dad worked as a long-distance lorry driver. And all that sitting down and driving had taken its toll, only stretching his legs to go to the service station café and eat various combinations of eggs, sausages, bacon, beans and chips.
Sometimes, after breakfast, Dad would eat two packets of crisps. He just got fatter and fatter after Mum left.
Dennis and John sort of loved each other in that way that they had to because they were brothers. But John tested this love quite often by doing things he thought were funny, like sitting on Dennis’s face and farting. If farting had been an Olympic sport (at time of writing I am told it isn’t, which I feel is a shame), he would have won a number of gold medals and probably received a knighthood from the Queen.
Strauss was a portly man, which thick-framed glasses and a shock of wiry black hair. On his upper lip sat a bushy moustache, not unlike a big hairy caterpillar. He very much looked the part of a detective, and could have stepped straight out of a crime thriller. A long brown crumpled mac was worn over an even more crumpled grey suit that seemed at least a size too small for him. His outfit was topped off with that detectives’ favourite, a brown felt hat.
