Lowewood Academy

I know I’m going to sound like Victor Meldrew now, but…..I don’t beeeelieve it! I really really don’t. Life is SO unfair sometimes!

Last year, at Christmas, I spent most of Christmas with a black eye that I was given as an early Christmas gift, courtesy of Jessica Davies, the bloody little guttersnipe. We had a fight because I grassed up her precious mate, Beth Somerton, for drinking herself senseless the night before she made such a tit of herself at the Formingham show. I hate to say it, but she did comprehensively thrash me (her yob roots coming out no doubt) and I was quite pleased that Dan and Jason broke the fight up before she did any more damage.

So the whole Christmas social season was a write off.

Now – with one of the most important social events in the Lowewood calendar tomorrow – Lord Fawcett’s soiree for the sixth forms – I’ve got another bloody black eye! Except this time, it’s my left eye, not my right and I got it from the bloody new girl, Laura Featherstone, someone of a stratum of society that should know better than to give people black eyes by whacking them in the head with doors!

(more…)

Someday he’ll come along - the man I love
And he’ll be big and strong - the man I love
And when he comes my way – I’ll do my best to make him stay….

The mirror ball turned lazily as the saxophone took over from my singing. I looked across at Christian, noting the way his hair fell over his eyes when he as concentrating. I loved this song! Plus Christian was pretty hot as well and I loved to think about him whilst singing it, making my yearning show in my voice.

I was back from poor Mr Courtney’s funeral, and as a result of his kind action in joining me in Wales, I was even more in love with Christian. The Black Cat Club was, as was usual for a Saturday night, packed. Every seat in the house was taken, with plenty of people standing. The Saturday night cabaret, with its mix of song, big band dance and disco music was wildly popular and the club itself was the last name in luxury with the drinks expensive and the women who drank them more so. It was housed in a Queen Anne house just of the beaten track but inside owed more to Chicago speakeasy with lots of mirrors, red velvet banquettes, silver curtains, booths, tiny cocktail tables, little lacy chairs and a small dancefloor. The stage was actually quite small and on Friday and Saturday nights, a stage apron was added to extend it into the middle of the cocktail tables. This gave me, the singer who worked on Fridays and the solo instrumentalists the opportunity to strut down the apron in the livelier numbers, taking us right into the middle of the club-goers. It was open seven days a week, served food-to-die-for and had performances every night – jazz, comedy, cabaret, even burlesque on occasion. I also knew, courtesy of big Louis that it was available for private hire and those occasions could get very very rude.

(more…)

OMG! I just saw Angus slipper somebody for real! First time I saw him acting all prefectorial, and I swear, he was as effective as Jason or Richard at their worst. Only, I can see why he did it, and it was fair enough. Believe it or not, it was all on account of Jessica – although she’d be as surprised about it as anybody.

So OK, Lexi Marchand wanted to get onto the paper staff. We didn’t really need any more people, but Angus says – fine, write me a sample piece, 500 words, on class and opportunity in Lowewood. She sits on it for a couple of weeks, and we all pretty much thought she’d given up on her reporter’s career. But she did come back to Angus in the end.

She had chosen to opine that Lowewood is a breeding ground for social climbers. And illustrated it by Jessica’s example: not only did Jess get into the school in the first place despite her “modest origin”, but now she has supposedly used her “sad family circumstances” (that would be the death of her guardian) to “climb the social ladder” (that would be, become Lord Fawcett’s ward). The essay made it sound like Jess had personally shoved her guardian in the lake, and then flung herself in Lord Fawcett’s path, begging to be taken in.

(more…)