Trixie Fights For Furry Rights

“The title, for those of you who may not have heard the first time,” he continued, glaring at me, “is ‘The Pride of Bottomley’.”

Just to put you in the picture, this is not some weird school anti-thin-awareness project to get us all to be proud of having bottoms. It’s a project about the town we live in, which is called Bottomley. You might wonder how anybody could hope to get taken seriously in life coming from a place called that, and I would agree with you, but that’s another subject. You probably know the kind of school project I mean. It’s one of those no-brainers where they get you to walk up and down the high street with a calculator, count the number of lorries going past and divide them by the number of fish and chip shops, that kind of thing.

“Why doesn’t Warty give us something interesting to do, like the Amazon Rainforest?” I muttered as we filed out after what felt like hours and hours.

“Yeah, or how many heads got cut off in the French Revolution?” said Sumil, bashing Dennis with his school bag. Dennis bashed him back. It’s the way boys show they’re friends.

Me and Dinah and Chloe headed for the quiet corner, but my archenemies Ghastly Grey Griselda and Orrible Orange Orson had got there first and were busy tormenting small shy Year Threes. They’d emptied out their bags on to the ground and were making stupid jokes about the contents.

“EEeww, a HANKY! Is that for mopping up when you wet yourself?”

“Yeeech, a MARMITE SANDWICH! Marmite’s made from dog poo, you know!”

That kind of thing.

“We ought to help,” said Chloe, stepping behind me and Dinah. Dinah’s almost taller than Grey Griselda and Orange Orson put together. And Chloe, for that matter. So we went over and glared at them.

“Haven’t you got anything better to do?” Dinah asked sarkily, drawing herself up to her full supermodel height.

“Like using old ladies as footballs?” I added.

Ghastly Grey Griselda and Orrible Orange Orson grumbled a bit but slouched off. We shooed the Year Threes away and sat down.

“Ohmigod, I can’t believe your mum’s going to sell the puppies,” Dinah said. “Doesn’t she have a heart?”

“It’s made of stone,” I said gloomily.

Griselda and Orange Orson hadn’t gone far. Griselda has big flapping ears that always hear anything you don’t want her to. She started carrying on at us, though obviously ready to run if Dinah or me took a step in their direction.

“Sell those mongrels? You’d be lucky to get a fiver for the lot!” she hooted. “Unless you’re selling them to make school dinners…”

We took a step and they ran for it.

“She’s got a point though,” Dinah said. “No offence, but don’t people only pay money for pedigree dogs?”

“That’s not the point,” I said furiously. “The point is my mum wants to get rid of the puppies. So she’ll advertise them and then people will come and take them away. Anyway they’re not mongrels, they’re crossbreeds.”

“They don’t look very cross to me. They look cute,” Chloe said.

For someone who’s a definite brainiac, Chloe has some strange gaps in her education.

“I’m sure you could sell them. Their dad is very posh, isn’t he?” she continued.

This was true: the puppies’ father, Lorenzo, the Dog-Next-Door and the love of Harpo’s life, is a red setter of amazing pedigree and Mrs Next-Door is always boasting about the prizes he wins at posh dog shows.

“Do you think puppies really get turned into food?” I asked, feeling a jelly-leg attack coming on. Griselda always manages to say the one thing that really gets to you. I have no regrets about that hot chilli sauce I put in her stupid lunch box with fairies on. Or the big fat slug. I hope it ate her stupid sandwiches.

“There are countries where people eat dogs, and ants too, covered in chocolate,”’ said Chloe, quickly checking her matchbox and looking at her pet ant anxiously. “I don’t think we do it here…”

“But we’ve got no idea what they put in hamburgers or sausages,” I said.

“Please, no lectures about how we should all be vegetarians,” said Dinah. “But we’ve got to find a way of keeping the puppies safe. We have to have a brainstorm.”

Dinah goes on about this all the time at the moment, ever since our headteacher Mrs Hedake told us how a brainstorm works. Apparently, if you have a problem, you should get a big bit of paper and just write the first words that come into your head. Then after five minutes you will have a solution. Hedake said it was better still if you did it with a friend because they would have different ideas. Of course, all the Year Sixes giggled and nudged about what kind of words they would write down, but Dinah was convinced. She had used it that very same evening for persuading her dad to let her stay up and watch a scary film.

So me and Chloe and Dinah sat under the tree in the playground and scribbled away.

This is what we wrote:

We got stuck after that. When I looked up there was a tall, lonely looking girl I hadn’t seen before moping about on the other side of the tree, looking at me in a shy but friendly way.

“Hi,” she said, smiling hopefully. She had the most enormous braces I’ve ever seen on her teeth. It was like looking at the front of a car.

“Hi. Are you new?” I said.

“Yeah, we’ve just moved here,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Brainstorming,” said Dinah, not looking much like somebody who wanted to be a friend.

“What’s that?” asked the girl.

“It’s where you say the first things that come into your head and it gives you the answer,” Chloe explained.

“I’ve tried doing that in exams,” said the girl, rather sadly. “But I don’t think it works. What are you doing it about?”

“Saving my puppies from being made into coats or sausages,” I said. “Any ideas?”

“Oh, yes!” said the girl. “I love animals! My dad’s got an amazing dog who does tricks—”

“Send the lickle puppeees to the science lab, make them smoke fags till they gags, then their fluffy tails won’t wag!” interrupted the voice of of Orrible Orange Orson, who had sneaked up on us again.

I lost my rag and went for him. Dinah and Chloe hauled me off.

“Who cares anyway?” laughed Orson, dusting himself down and backing away. “They’re only dumb animals.”

“You should know!” I yelled after him.

He turned round and gave me a sign that I can’t repeat in a family book, but Dinah and I gave it him back, and Chloe half did, before going red and putting her hand in her pocket instead.

“What a loser,” I said, panting. “He’s never even seen my puppies. Why doesn’t he get a life?”

“That is his life,” Dinah said. “He’s very happy with it.”

“Where’s that girl gone?” said Chloe, looking around. “She seemed nice.”

“I think Orson scared her off,” Dinah said. “Who wouldn’t run away, seeing his ugly face? Anyway, where were we?”

I looked glumly at the brainstorming.