Title: Barbie Girl.
Point of View: Jenny
Timescale: Following Episode 13, ‘Rumble in the
Jungle’
Uncle George and Aunt
Liz wanted to know all about the trials we had gone through in
I told them the whole
story. Donna jumping
on the lion, Ross bull-fighting with the buffalo, Louise getting bitten by the
vampire but winning in the end, Gabriella shooting the gun out of the Texan
vampire’s hand – which was way cool! - and then the
strange test that the witch-doctor made Jack and Miss McStay do. I skipped the whole naked bit, even though it
had been interesting. I wasn’t going to
tell them about seeing Jack with no clothes on, so I said they had had to strip
down to their underwear, which wasn’t completely untrue because Miss McStay did
keep her panties on. Anyway, I think I’m
getting the hang of this ‘white lie’ thing now.
Especially since I got the ring.
I didn’t say much
about my own trial, just that I had to fight a sort of clay magic robot thing
and that it was winning until I changed the way I was fighting. I had been going to say more but they looked
upset about me being in danger, even though I must have won because I was here
telling them the story. So I rushed that
bit and went on to the next trial, which was Mr. Marwood and the gorilla.
I explained how the
witch-doctor had said that if we tried to tell Mr. Marwood
what to do he wouldn’t be able to hear us unless we sung real songs with the
clues in. Which was sort of weird, but
the whole trials thing was weird anyway.
Then he’d sent in the gorilla, and I told my aunt and uncle all about
what happened next.
“Gabriella started
singing ‘Me and you baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do
on the Discovery Channel’, which is from ‘Bad Touch’ by the Bloodhound
Gang. It’s about sex really, and
everybody looked at her strangely, and she went red and stopped singing. She said after the trial ended that she’d
just meant he should act like the people who do the programmes with gorillas,
she didn’t mean he should mate with the gorilla! But Mr. Marwood
didn’t know what she was getting at, and his eyebrows went up very high, and
then he looked at the gorilla and he looked very worried. It was a very big gorilla, and it was black
except for its back, which was white, and I know that means it was a dominant
male gorilla. I don’t think Mr. Marwood wanted to mate with it.”
Uncle George and Aunt
Liz were laughing when I told them about the song, and Uncle George spilled
some of his coffee out of his mouth, but they looked a bit worried by the
gorilla too, so I went on quickly.
“Then Mr. Marwood started backing away from the gorilla, looking
really nervous, and it was following him and getting aggressive. We were all trying to think of songs telling
him what to do to calm it down, and Miss McStay started singing a hymn, and he
just looked baffled. Then Jack smacked
his forehead and sang this song that I’ve heard on VH1 Classic, ‘Oh sit down,
oh sit down, sit down next to me’, and the others all joined in, and Mr. Marwood sat down.
The gorilla calmed down, and sat down as well, and it went ‘Uuugh. Uuugh.’ and poked at him with its finger.” I poked Uncle George and grunted at him, and
he laughed.
“And then what?” Aunt
Liz prompted.
“Well, Mr. Marwood poked the gorilla back, very carefully, and grunted
at it. Then it sort of settled down and
spread out, and it poked its fingers through his hair as if it was looking for
fleas, and he did the same to it, and after a minute the witch-doctor said he’d
passed the test and he sent the gorilla back to where it had come from.”
They laughed, and I
laughed too.
“Next Mr. Zabuto and Manuelita had to fight
this really powerful vampire girl, and Teresa had to sit and watch and not
interfere until she was told to. The
vampire lady sort of hypnotised them, and she was going to bite Manuelita, and then Teresa stood up and said ‘Get away from
her you bitch!’ just like Sigourney Weaver in ‘Aliens’, and she like totally
kicked the vampire’s ass.”
“So we were all
thinking that she’d failed her test because she’d interfered, which was a bit
of a downer but better than having the other two get eaten, and the
witch-doctor said to her ‘Who told you to interfere?’ And she said ‘No-one’, and he asked again
‘Who told you to interfere, Senorita dos
“The tests seem to
have been lessons rather than trials,” Aunt Liz mused.
“Yeah, Miss McStay
and Mr. Marwood said that as well,” I agreed.
“I wonder what your
test was intended to teach you?” Uncle George
pondered.
“Maybe
to think outside the box?” I suggested. I grinned at them, and they looked at each
other in a strange way. I couldn’t tell
what they were thinking, but they seemed happy and Aunt Liz gave my hand a
little squeeze. I continued my story.
“So then it was the
last trial, and Roxy had to go down an escalator to fetch a casket with the
rings in it. There was a sign saying
‘Dogs and Pushchairs must be carried’, which was totally weird because I had
told the gang a story about not being able to go up the escalator in Debenhams because I didn’t have a dog or a pushchair, which
was a joke, but this was like real and it was only a few days later. The witch-doctor had provided a dog and a
pushchair, and Roxy had to carry them, and the dog was this African village
dog, and it just totally hated this English girl and it was so not going to be
carried.”
I mimed Roxy
struggling with the dog and the pushchair, and went on.
“We couldn’t see down
the escalator, so the witch-doctor guy made a sort of energy screen up in the
air and it showed what was going on.
There was this big monster, Miss McStay said it was a troll, and it was
coming up the escalator, and it was carrying a dog and a pushchair too. Only its dog was like an Irish Wolfhound, image ucm.es/info/bamvet/irish.jpg,
and five times the size of Roxy’s dog, and it wanted
to bite the little dog.”
My aunt and uncle
looked startled, perhaps even upset, when I gave the full file reference for
the picture from which I had identified the troll’s dog as an Irish Wolfhound. I had made
a mistake. Humans wouldn’t do that. I stopped for a moment, not sure what to do.
“What happened next?”
Uncle George asked. He was smiling
again.
“Roxy went down the
escalator, and she had to run because it was coming up. She met the troll, and they had a fight. She hit him with her pushchair, and he hit
her, and she hit him, and then she dived between its legs and got to the bottom
of the escalator while the troll went on up to the top. She found the casket, and she came back up
the escalator, only now it was going down and she had to run up it, and the
troll was going down again, and it had its legs close together so she wouldn’t
be able to get between them again.”
“So they fought
again, only this time she tried to knock its pushchair out of its hands, and she
did it, and it vanished because it wasn’t carrying a pushchair any more. She got to the top, and we could all go to
meet her, and we’d passed the tests and we got these really cool magic rings.” I showed them the ring on my finger.
“Well, you’re not
invisible,” Uncle George said, with a big smile. “So what does it do?”
“Oh, they all do
different things”, I told them. “The
Watchers’ rings help them see better, and think
better, and know more stuff, and they can keep books out of the library for an extra
week before they have to pay a fine.”
They chuckled at this, but they looked a bit surprised too. Happy surprised not upset surprised.
“Ross and Donna got
rings that will make them better at fighting, and so did the Slayers. Louise got really mopey
because she’d had to do a test but she didn’t get a ring. Manuelita didn’t
get one either but she didn’t get so mopey. Jack got this way cool ring which lets him go
out in the sunshine without catching fire, and he shows up in mirrors now too,
and he said ‘Oh God, pet, I really do look like my passport photo’, and Miss
McStay laughed and she kissed him.”
“Jenny,” Uncle George
asked, “Why is it that you call James and Jocasta ‘Mr. Marwood’
and ‘Miss McStay’, but you call Jack Robson ‘Jack’? I’m not criticising you at all, I’m just
interested to know your reasons.”
I thought for a
moment before replying. “It’s because
he’s a vampire. Vampires just get called
by the one name. Spike,
Jack, Angel, Drake, Drusilla, Lyle,
I think they were
upset again for a moment, but Aunt Liz smiled again and asked me what my own
ring did.
“I don’t have to go
and throw it into a volcano,” I told them.
“Which is cool, because there are volcanoes out in Africa but not in
Yorkshire, so I’d have had to go all the way back there. Which would be silly.”
They laughed. I had prepared what I was going to say when
they asked me this question, but I still felt unsure. I hesitated for a moment then went on.
“It made me into a
real girl,” I explained. “Well, not all
the way, still carbon fibre and silicon chip girl here, but it helps me think
like a real teenage girl. Can I have my
belly-button pierced?”
“What?” Uncle George
exclaimed.
“Because Gabriella
has hers pierced and it is so cool. And
Roxy was going to have hers done, but she changed her mind when Michelle stole
her powers, only now she thinks she’s going to get it done after all. Donna had hers done too, but she only has a
little stud in it. I’m like going to be
the only one without a belly-button ring, and I’ll be totally out of it. And can I have a tattoo? It’s not as if I’m going to get any
infections or anything. And I can always
get it removed. It’s not like I’ll need
laser surgery or anything. Not anywhere
it will show at school. Please? And can I use your credit card online so I
can join the Good Charlotte fan club?”
Then they were
laughing, and I was laughing, and they were hugging me both at once, and it was
very nice. I love them both very
much. I know they told me I must call
them aunt and uncle, but really they are my mum and my dad. They made me.
And they love me. They really do.
Maybe I am a real
girl now. Maybe I really will get a
belly-button ring.
I wonder if Julius
will like it.
I think he would
enjoy hearing about what we did in
I wonder what it is
like to kiss a boy.
FIN