Face-licking.

Lavinia.

I know she only wants to be pretend friends with me because she likes Alex.

So what is normal?

I can’t mention my home life.

Oh, I know, I can read my A Midsummer Night’s Dream and then I could talk to him about that. I could even drop in a line casually mentioning my doing the play and how it would be good to get his ideas.

Right, here we are.

In the SparkNotes about the play it says the major themes are love’s difficulty, magic, and dreams.

Spooky.

That’s me and Alex.

I woke suddenly when it was still dark because I’d fallen asleep and had a nightmare. Harold had knitted me some tights and I had them on when Charlie walked into my squirrel room and said, “I’ve got a girlfriend. Do you want to see her?”

And he got a small blond girlfriend out of his pocket. Then Dr. Lightowler flew in, onto the top of the wardrobe, and said, “Look at her uncontrollable legs.”

Then Cain and Alex came through the window and Cain said, “Show us the knees, soft lass, I feel like licking them.”

I shouted, “I can dance! I can dance!”

And I tried to dance and found that Harold had knitted the legs of my tights together.

Eat the boat!

I MUST HAVE DRIFTED off to sleep properly because suddenly it was gone eight and I had to race around to get to Dother Hall in time. I put on my new yellow lacy corker holder and a yellow jumper that Georgia helped me to get.

The jummie is quite clingy.

Good. That’s good. And my hair is bouncy and perky. And shiny. If I wear a skirt with dark tights it makes my legs look almost normal length. I made sure my tights weren’t knitted together.

I thought everyone had gone when I went downstairs because it was all quiet. I made for the door with my breakfast banana. (I don’t mean the banana was walking along with me, I just mean … anyway, it wasn’t a walking banana.)

But then Dibdobs popped out unexpectedly from the cupboard under the stairs.

She beamed at me.

Her beaming can be quite alarming first thing in the morning.

She blinked at me through her glasses. She is the smiliest, oddest person I have ever met. I like her though. Sadly she wasn’t on her own in the cupboard.

She smiled and said, “Great news, Lullah. We started to knit the Christmas hats last night. We are hoping the whole village can have one. The twins are modeling theirs.”

Max and Sam came out of the cupboard in their knitted antler hats. As she pulled them out of the door, Dibdobs said, “What color would you like, Lullah?”

I was a bit late as I ran across the green. It was overcast and looked like rain. Ruby was just setting off up the hill to her school with Matilda. Matilda had a rain hat on. Ruby saw me running and yelled over, “Ay, Loobylullah, you really jiggle when you run! Ta-ra, see you later.”