Withering Tights - By Louise Rennison Page 0,23
you do?”
Bob was twiddling with knobs and put his feet on the mixing desk. He was wearing leather Cuban-heeled boots. He put on his shades.
“The lot, the big boys – Floyd, Purple, Zep, Heap.”
We looked at him. Who were Zep Heap? Or did he mean Purple Zep?
He let us bang a drum and rattle some maracas. It was exciting when he showed us the sound booths and asked if anyone wanted a go. Vaisey and Jo sang a bit from Grease and Flossie and Honey did “Oo-oo-oooos” in the background.
“You’re the one that I want…”
“Oo-oo-oooo.”
They were good, actually.
Jo had to stand on a little box to reach the mike and Vaisey was moving her bottom around in time to the music.
Bob recorded it and then he did ‘multi-tracking’ so it sounded like fourteen people singing. This is more like it.
I said to the girls, “I feel like part of this great big crazy world of showbiz, now!”
Bob said as we left, “The Jones are coming in to lay down a few tracks. It’s not my sort of stuff, not heavy, just more indie landfill, but they’re local so…you might want to come on down, chill out and get your ears on.”
Get our ears on?
I said, “Did he say ‘chill out’? It doesn’t seem right coming from a man with a false ponytail.”
Anyway, I will not be going to see The Jones for love or money. In fact, if it is at all possible, I will never see any of the Hinchcliffs again.
Cain in particular.
We walked along to the small theatre space for the dreaded Dr Lightowler experience.
Dr Lightowler swished in in her cloak. I wonder if she has a summer cloak and a winter cloak?
As part of the background for our end of summer school performance of Wuthering Heights, Cloakwoman was telling us about the appalling life of the Brontës.
She said, “It’s hard for you spoiled modern girls to imagine the evenings in that forsaken place, Haworth Vicarage…Cooped up, imprisoned by the forces of nature, no escape, because of the weather, but also because they were women.”
Dr Lightowler was going on and on, swishing her cloak about as she talked. I wonder if she goes to bed in it?
“Now, girls, get up and start moving about in the space. Imagine that you are the Brontës. It’s a dark winter afternoon…” She snapped off all the lights and said, “I’ve got some torches here, girls, some of you come and take one and shine them in an improvised way.”
She put on a torch in the dark and handed more to Honey and Vaisey and some others I couldn’t see. She held a torch under her chin so it lit her up really weirdly.
She said in a spooky, guttural voice, “The light is gone by three, and the wind howls around the draughty cold house, making the candles gutter and cast strange shadowy shapes on the wall. Could some of you howl a bit?”
We howled like mad and she had to shout over the top of us.
“Girls, just light howling, please.”
I said, “Okey dokey, Dr Light-howler.”
Which Vaisey thought was funny, but fortunately the Doctor didn’t hear.
We toned the howling down.
Dr Lightowler went on. “Flossie, perhaps you are Emily huddling by the fire and trying to entertain your sisters. To take their minds off their bodies racked with consumption.”
Two of the girls formed a fire with their torches, and Flossie huddled by it, shivering and coughing. She said in a Texan drawl, “Now y’all girls, come here a cotton-pickin’ moment.”
Dr Lightowler said, “Emily is from Yorkshire, Flossie.”
Flossie tried again, “Ay up, lasses, come around t’fire and we’ll sing a song.”
Dr Lightowler came forward. “Milly, Tilly, be Anne and Charlotte.”
Milly and Tilly came and huddled alongside Flossie, warming their hands at the torch fire.
Dr Lightowler said to us in a hushed voice, “Perhaps they might make up little stories about the shadows? The rest of you girls be imaginary shapes guttering across the room. Girls with the torches, flicker them everywhere.”
Be an imaginary shape?
Honey and the rest started swooping and fluttering about.
Tilly cried, “Oh, Emily, Charlotte, what is that? Over there by the fire extinguisher…um, by the…loom…Why, is that an eagle? Er…hunting?”
And Flossie said, “Nay, lass, I think it’s a witch, high on a broomstick.”
I tried to join in, but I just felt like a twerp. Especially as when I did attempt to flutter about I caught myself in the midriff with the fire extinguisher. It crashed to the floor and Dr Lightowler gave