The Friends Forever Collection

To make myself a bit braver I always remember Clover in Daisy and Clover. Clover has to go and visit her gran in a home, and she feels just the same as I do. When Clover’s gran doesn’t know who she is, Clover says, “I wanted to burst into tears and cry, ‘Gran, it’s me! Don’t you remember? All the things we used to do together?’ But I didn’t, because I knew it wouldn’t be any use. Gran had gone, and there was no way of reaching her.”

It is truly amazing how Harriet Chance describes every single thing I have ever felt or thought. Surely she must have been through it all herself? Or maybe she just has this incredible understanding of how it is to be a young person.

Some of the old ladies in Gran’s home are what Mum calls “real characters”. (What Gran would probably have called doolally.) There is one who is a particular friend of mine. Her name is Mrs Laski, but I call her Birdy as she is very tiny and fragile, and she speaks in this high twittery voice, like a bird. Me and Birdy have these long, interesting conversations together. Like Birdy might say, “It’s very whizzbang out there today.” That is one of her expressions: whizzbang. I don’t quite know what it means, but lots of things are whizzbang.

“Whizzbangs all over the place! They’re arriving in hordes! Did you find any?”

And I will cry, “Yes! I found loads!”

She likes it when I play the game the way she wants it played. She does not like it if I am stupid enough to say something such as, “Found any what?” That makes her cross. But so long as I answer intelligently, we can go on for ages! Birdy will ask me what colour they were, these things that I had found loads of. I will say, “Red! Bright red!” Then Birdy will say, “Not green?” – I mean, this is just an example – and I will say, “Well, maybe some of them were,” and she will nod and say, “I thought so! It’s the time the of year. Very whizzbang! They’re all on their way. Swarms of them!” And before I know it we will be in outer space, surrounded by aliens, all whizzbanging about in their flying saucers, on their way to earth to suck out our brains. Everything always comes back to the aliens sucking out our brains.

Harriet Chance has never written about anyone like Birdy. Maybe I should write and suggest it to her! Except that I once read she almost never uses ideas that come from other people. She says she has “a resistance” to them.

There is another old lady in Gran’s home whose name I don’t know so I call her Mrs Yo-Yo, because her favourite toy is a yo-yo. She yo-yo’s away like crazy! I know it is very sad, when maybe she has been something important in life, and had a job and brought up children, and now she does nothing but play with a yo-yo all day, but at least she is happy. She beams, and laughs, and skips. I would rather Gran played with a yo-yo than just sat in a chair doing nothing.

Mrs Yo-Yo wasn’t there that Sunday, but Birdy was. We had a bit of a chat about whizzbang dustbins full of aliens come to suck our brains out, then a woman that I think is her daughter came and took her away. She said, “She’s not on about aliens again, is she?”

I said, “Yes, they’re hiding in the dustbins,” and the woman looked embarrassed and said she was so sorry and that I wasn’t to take any notice. I don’t know what she said she was sorry for! I enjoy my conversations with Birdy. She has a really good imagination.

After she had gone, and Mum was sitting with Gran, telling her all the things that had been going on in our lives during the week (which was not a lot. Nothing as interesting as aliens hiding in dustbins) I settled down to finish my project for school. I’d done the review; now I had to do the biography. Biography of Harriet!

I’d looked her up on the Internet at school, and I’d also read about her in a book called Children’s Writers. Plus, of course, the little bits that publishers put at the front of books, like telling you where the author lives and how many children they’ve got. Plus an interview that she had done for a magazine which is in the school library. I knew everything there was to know! I could have written a whole book about Harriet. But our teacher had said not more than three hundred words, so I thought it would give me good practice in picking out the things which were most important. Otherwise I would just go on for ever! Annie had asked what was the least number of words, as she didn’t think she’d be able to manage more than about twenty. Other people were just going to copy out stuff they’d read. I don’t think there is any fun in that.

I settled myself at a little table in the corner and turned back the cover of my nice new writing block.

BIOGRAPHY OF HARRIET CHANCE

Harriet Chance was born in Epsom, Surrey, on 12th March 1962. She went to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She was very good at English, French and German, and very bad at maths and geography. She hated playing hockey. (Just like me!)

When she left school she went to university in London and did English. After that she went to teach at a school in Birmingham, where she met her husband and got married. She now lives in London with her husband and her daughter Lori, who is fifteen.

Harriet Chance started writing books while she was at school. When she was twelve she wrote a book called PAPER DOLLS, but she never tried to get it published. When she was at university she wrote some poetry which was not very good. While she was a teacher she wrote a book for grown-ups, but that was not very good either so for a while she gave up writing.

Then she got married and had a baby and didn’t work any more but she got bored just being at home all the time and so she started writing again.

Her very first book that was published was called PATSY PUFFBALL, but now she wishes she had never written it. She would like all the copies to be put into a shredding machine. She really hates that book!

Other books she has written include: CANDYFLOSS, VICTORIA PLUM, APRIL ROSE, SUGAR MOUSE and FUDGE CASSIDY. In all she has written fifty-four. Her latest one is called SCARLET FEATHER. It is about this girl called Scarlet whose mum and dad split up and Scarlet has to decide which one she will live with. I cannot say which one she chooses as the book is not yet published. But I can say that Harriet Chanceis my ACE FAVOURITE AUTHOR!

I had just written the last words and put a little squiggly bit underneath to show that that was The End, when an old lady I had never seen before suddenly spoke to me.

“And what are you writing?” she said. “Love letters?” My cheeks immediately went bright pink. (I don’t know why, but I am very easily embarrassed.) I said, “No, I’m doing a project for school.”

“What is it about? Is it about love?”

I shook my head, turning even pinker.

“Is it about boys?”

“N-no,” I said. “It’s about my f-favourite author.”

“Does she write about love?”

I shook my head again; more vehemently, this time.

“So what does she write about?”

“J-just … ordinary p-people,” I said. “And their p-problems.”

“Ah. An agony aunt! I used to read Enid Blyton. Do you read Enid Blyton?”

I said, “S-sometimes.”

“I used to read her all the time. Which ones have you read?”

“Um … F-Five on a T-Treasure Island?”

“Ah, yes! The Famous Five. What else?”

“N-Noddy?”

“Noddy? I should have thought you were rather too old for Noddy.”

“When I was l-little,” I said.

“Oh, my dear,” said this strange old woman, “you are still little! But too old for Noddy. Try The Secret Island. That was one of my favourites!”

With this she wandered off, and I was quite relieved. I didn’t mind talking to Birdy about aliens, but I don’t like the sort of conversations that make my cheeks go pink. It may be silly that they turn pink, but there is nothing that I can do about it. It is just something that happens.

I watched the old lady shuffle across the room. I wondered how old she was. I thought probably about eighty. I mean, she was really old. Older than Gran, even though Gran sat staring and this old lady could still walk and talk. To think that she was reading Enid Blyton over sixty years ago! Over seventy years ago. I tried to imagine how it might be when I was her age, tottering about in an old people’s home, asking young girls who had come to visit their grans if they had ever read Harriet Chance. I couldn’t! I just couldn’t imagine being eighty years old. But I could imagine people still reading Harriet Chance. I bet they’ll still be reading her in a hundred years‘ time!

“What was that all about?” said Mum, as we walked up the road to catch our bus back to town.

“She wanted to know what I was writing,” I said.

“And what were you writing?”

“My biography of Harriet!”

“Oh, yes … didn’t you say something about a new book being published?”

“Scarlet Feather,” I said; and I sighed.

“What’s the sigh for?” said Mum.

“It’s in hardback … it won’t be out in paperback for ages.”

“Well, who knows?” said Mum. She patted her bag. “Gran’s just given me your birthday present … so maybe you’ll be able to buy it?”