Call the Fire Brigade!

Two days! Two days! That was how long I'd been back in the Land of the Living (well, if you can call the people at school living - more like the Land of the Undead!) before I was barred! Can you believe it?



Honestly! I spent the whole weekend going on at Dad to let me go back to school before I died a slow and lingering brain-death and, against all odds, he agreed with me! (Stand back in amazement that my dad and I agree on ANYTHING!) Then, to be fair to him, he did his bit to get me rehabilitated into normal life by sucking up to The Crusher and .....



...Ta-da! Tuesday morning, there I was hobbling around the corridors of Archimedes High on my crutches. Ah - the smell of the bogs, the sounds of stampeding feet, the cries of anguish from Mr Kingston in registration - it was soooooooo good to be back.



Seema and Arlette were great at helping me around. Of course crutches, apart from being the most unbelievably uncomfortable implements of torture, are a complete fashion nightmare:

1) I've had to wear one of those disgustingly geeky backpacks to carry everything around in

2) I've had to have my blouse sleeves rolled down to protect my arms but my jumper sleeves rolled up because the arm grips are too tight to go round both. I look like some sort of nerdy farmer's wife.

And,

3) You should see the blue cotton shoe the hospital's given me to wear over my plaster - it's got velcro fastenings and everything! Gross!



But, apart from the clothing crisis, things were going pretty well. Daniel was being really sweet and carrying my things around when Seema and Arl weren't around and even the staff were being nice to me. But then - disaster!



We were in Science yesterday afternoon and I was a teensy bit late - because it takes me soooooo long to get up the stairs. Anyway, the lesson had already started when I got there. Mr Mukerjee was standing over a bunsen burner at the front and he waved for me to go and sit on the bench - right in front of him! I was like; durrr! No way am I sitting at the front! But he insisted.

Arl was with me so I lurched my way towards the front but, we were just passing Mr Mukerjee, when suddenly, my crutch caught the strap of Chelsea Riordan's bag which was sticking out from under the bench (she's such a creep, she always sits at the front).
`Aaaagh!' My crutch slipped sideways and I reached out to stop myself falling on to my broken leg, but I accidentally grabbed the rubber tube of Mr Mukerjee's bunsen burner.

`Help!' I screamed, as it writhed and wriggled in my hand like a flaming snake, hissing and popping as I tried to control myself and it. Fortunately, I managed to steady myself on my other crutch but when I let go of the bunsen burner, I dropped it on to some papers on the front bench. And they caught fire! I couldn't believe it. How irresponsible - to leave papers on a bench next to a naked flame!

`Sorry, sir,' I said as I tried to put out the flames by banging them with my crutch, but all that did was flick some of the papers over on to the window sill where the spare overalls were heaped up in a pile. Ooops! The next thing I knew, they'd gone up too and then the blinds started smouldering and dripping red hot blobs of plastic on to some packets of paper towels and.... well, I'm sure you can imagine the rest.
And all that in a matter of seconds. Honestly! That place is a total fire hazzard.

Of course Angus Lyle thought it was his birthday, Christmas, Diwali and New Year all rolled into one! Which didn't help with the evacuation of the building. What with Angus jumping up and down and rubbing his hands and me hobbling on my crutches, it's a miracle we're not burned to a crisp.

So, after all that, The Crusher has banned me from coming back to school until my plaster's off. How mean is that?
And do you think I got any sympathy from Daniel? Oh no! He was all, `Well, when I broke my leg.....' Ggggrrrr!