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Source ISBN: 9780007545254

Version: 2015-06-05

To Carole, because without her I’d just be an embarrassing dad without a book.

And thank you to Nicola, because without her I wouldn’t have a title for this book. Which would be embarrassing.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

RE YOU SURE NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO see this video?” asked Penny Posnitch doubtfully.

“I’m not an idiot,” said Nat. “I’m not my dad.”

“Will you hurry up? My arms are getting tired,” complained Darius.

“Just hold the camera straight and press the record button when I tell you,” snapped Nat.

The three of them were in Nat’s back garden. It was a lovely warm afternoon at the end of the school holidays. The sun was shining, the flowers were out, Dad was upstairs trying to write Christmas cracker jokes and shouting rude words at his laptop, and the three friends were making a dance video.

The dance video was going very badly.

And so was Dad’s joke writing; every so often they would hear him yell: “Oh heck, that’s not funny. I’m doomed …”

“I wonder if he needs a hand,” said Darius, putting the camera down. “I’ve got a great joke about a monkey who needs to go to the toilet.”

“The ‘monkey who needs to go to the toilet’ joke is not a joke anyone wants in their cracker while they’re eating their Christmas pudding,” said Nat. “Can we please do our dance video?”

“I want to hear the monkey joke,” said Penny.

Nat started hopping up and down. “I’ve been trying to make this video all morning,” she shouted. “Will you both CONCENTRATE.”

“I only came round to show Nathalia the new Dinky Blue, Girl Guru episode online,” grumbled Penny. “And now I’ve been roped into this.”

“She’s rubbish,” said Darius, making sick noises. “You should watch Doom Ninja Pete instead. He blew up a pig last week.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Penny, who was an animal lover.

Darius started doing his impression of a pig blowing up in slow motion, until Nat ran over and started throttling him.

“Pick-up-the-camera-and-film-us-doing-the-dance …”

“OK,” he squawked.

“Play the song on the phone, Penny.”

“I can’t remember the dance move after the song goes: ‘Baby baby oooh baby’,” said Penny.

“Which ‘Baby baby oooh baby’?” asked Nat. “She sings ‘Baby baby oooh baby’ about a ZILLION times. The song is CALLED ‘Baby baby oooh baby’.”

“Er – the first time,” said Penny.

“That’s the START of the song,” shouted Nat in frustration. “I’ve shown you the moves about a thousand million billion times at least and I’m not even exaggerating. What is the matter with you? It’s step left, arms cross, turn, arms up, bend, slide and wiggle. Got it?”

“You’re not a very good dance teacher,” said Penny sulkily. “You’re always shouting.”

“That’s how good dance teachers teach dance,” shouted Nat.

“Do you want me to film this bit?” asked Darius, filming that bit.

“Of course I don’t want you to film this bit; stop filming this bit,” said Nat.

“When I saw Flora Marling’s dance video there was no one shouting,” grumbled Penny.

“That’s because Flora Marling is flipping perfect, we all know that,” said Nat. “So this dance video has to be better than perfect.”

“You can’t be better than perfect,” corrected Darius, who was filming with one hand while picking his nose with the other.

“I’m not doing anything while he’s doing THAT,” said Penny, pulling a face.

Eventually Nat got Penny to concentrate and Darius to wash his hands and after a few more shouty rehearsals, she and Penny were doing the dance.

Nat was especially proud of a new move she had invented called the Prancing Pony. It was super-tricky and Penny had already got it wrong once and ended up in a hedge.

But finally it was going well.

“… Up and hop and jump and slide and hop,” whispered Nat, reminding Penny what to do, as they reached the tricky bit. To her delight Penny was doing it BETTER THAN PERFECTLY when …

“I’ve gotta go,” said Darius, putting the camera down on the ground. “See you.”

“WHAT? We haven’t finished, you total chimp,” said Nat.

“Then you shouldn’t have taken so long, Buttface,” said Darius. “I’m busy.”

“Doing what? Where are you going?” Nat asked, infuriated, but she didn’t get an answer because at that moment Dad appeared from the house.

“Just thought I’d see if you were OK,” he said. “I was watching you jiggle about and it looked like you’d swallowed space hoppers.”

“THAT’S IT!” yelled Nat, throwing herself on the grass. “I can’t work like this.”

“Ooh, you taking selfies?” said Dad, picking up the camera. “Urgh, why’s this camera all sticky?” Darius, standing by the back gate, grinned.

“We are NOT taking selfies,” said Nat. “And I don’t even know how you know about selfies, you’re so old.”

“What are you up to then?” said Dad, adding jokingly, “I hope you’re not thinking of putting anything on to the online inter cyber-space web.”

Nat hadn’t been intending to put her dance video online, but she didn’t want to be told she COULDN’T.

“Can if I want,” she said. She wasn’t usually this rude, but was hot and tired and frustrated and scratchy.

“Stop showing off in front of your friends,” said Dad gently, which was one of the MOST ANNOYING THINGS HE COULD SAY. It was up there with:

You’re only grumpy because you’re tired.

You’re only grumpy because you’re hungry.

You’re only grumpy because you’ve found Nan’s false teeth in the biscuit tin again. AFTER you’ve eaten a digestive.

“I am NOT showing off, baldy,” said Nat, showing off, “but if I wanted to, I could put this dance routine online and get a million hits and make us rich and famous and THEN you’d be sorry.”

“You’re very grumpy,” said Dad. “You must be tired. Or possibly hungry. Or have you been in the biscuit tin?”

“You said you wouldn’t put this video online,” hissed Penny. “I don’t want anyone else to see it. You promised.”

“I’m not saying I’m GOING to put it online, I’m just saying I COULD,” said Nat stubbornly.

“Online is a very dangerous place,” said Dad, patiently. “Do you remember when you and Daddy had that talk and Daddy said it was like a big nasty dark cave with monsters in it and you said it sounded very scary and you promised to stay outside the cave forever and ever?”

“Yes, when I was SIX, Dad,” shouted Nat. Penny sniggered. Nat felt herself getting red in the face.

“Every flipping day,” she yelled, waving her arms about like mad, “you always EMBARRASS me. People are watching, Dad. Can’t you be NORMAL?”

She did one last furious high hop, but landed awkwardly on a damp patch of grass. Her feet shot out from under her, her legs went straight up in the air and she landed heavily on something. Something alive.

There was a pause. Then a look of horror. Then she yelled:

“AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGH!”

There was something buzzing in her pants! It was as cross as any bee could be. Especially a bee that had then been happily slurping pollen off a flower when it was rudely sat on.

Nat ran around the garden smacking herself on the bum like she was trying to ride herself to victory in the Grand National. Finally, inevitably, she felt the sting.

“OOOOOH!” she yelled in pain. “EEEEEE!”

With that she dashed out of the garden.

And into … fame.

AT DIDN’T BECOME FAMOUS IMMEDIATELY–no, it took her the whole weekend.

And of course it took the power of what Dad annoyingly called the ‘inter cyber-space web’ to do it.

Nat was blissfully unaware of the fuss she was causing online. This was because, for a start, she had no idea that a video of herself WAS online. But, as it turned out, it was, and it was getting more online by the minute. People like sharing. And they especially like sharing funny videos of furious girls running around gardens shouting: “Can’t you be normal – aaaarrrgh, ooooh, eeeee!”

All it needed was someone to put it online in the first place …

Then, over the next couple of days, while her video was being chuckled over by more and more people, Nathalia was actually totally OFFLINE. Mum had just come home after two weeks working abroad so Nat had loads of catching-up with her to do. She never even noticed when the battery on her mobile phone ran out.

And so she missed A LOT of texts from her classmates. Which was even worse than it sounds, because Nat was always desperate to get texts from her classmates. No one ever texted her. Nat had given her mobile number to literally EVERYONE she knew, but the only messages she ever received were from the phone company, trying to sell her a new phone.

But now, waiting for her in the cyber-darkness, were loads of them.

Texts like:

OMG!!! LOL. ROFL.

And

YOU ARE SOOOOO FUNNY.

And

HAVE YOU SEEN YOURSELF??????

And

U. R. A

Meanwhile, most of Nat’s catching-up with Mum was spent clothes shopping while telling Mum how utterly rubbish Dad had been recently.

The Atomic Dustbin – Dad’s horrible old camper van – had broken down twice picking her up from school and once when he’d volunteered to take the hockey team to an away match.

“We were so late the other team was allowed to start without us and we were ten-nil down before we even got on the pitch,” she complained, making Mum giggle.

Then she revealed Dad had made them pork pie and chips for tea THREE times last week. And it would have been four times but Bad News Nan had come round, insisted they had a proper meal with vitamins, and then ordered pizzas because cheese counted as veg, near enough.

Mum’s shoulders shook with laughter as they picked out tops.

“He does look after you pretty well though,” chuckled Mum in the changing rooms. “I mean, compared to being looked after by a trained gorilla.”

“Why are those girls staring at me?” said Nat, noticing a gaggle of gigglers, pointing and sniggering in the shop doorway. “Are my pants showing?”

Mum came out of the changing room and raised her eyebrows at the girls, who took the hint and ran off. Nat LOVED the way Mum could do that. She had seen Mum reduce grown men to quivering jelly by the simple raising of her fearsome eyebrows. Including the policemen who were always telling her off for driving much too fast in her little red car.

Dad couldn’t scare anybody, thought Nat. He only makes people laugh, the big dope. Even when he’s TRYING to be fearsome.

Nat sometimes practised raising her eyebrows at Darius when he was being especially annoying, but he just laughed and said it made her look cross-eyed.

“Can’t you be NORMAL?” shouted one of the girls outside, and the others shrieked with laughter as they took off through the shopping centre, smacking themselves on the bum.

What a weird bunch of girls, thought Nat, but within five seconds she had forgotten all about them because Mum said she’d buy her a new pair of flip-flops.

But a similarly strange thing happened as they were choosing a DVD to watch that night. Nat was having a good-natured argument with Mum as to whether they watch a big disaster movie (Mum’s choice) or a film about girls who win a singing competition and sing a lot (Nat’s choice). Dad wasn’t there; he was just going to have to watch what he was told.

Nat suddenly became aware of a couple of boys over by the comic book films who were sniggering and looking over at her. She glared at them and they slunk off.

“People are watching,” one said, for no apparent reason, then fell about laughing.

But yet again, Nat soon forgot all about it when Mum suggested they could go to the shop that sold bath bombs next.

It was only late on Sunday night, in bed, snuggled in and smelling of crème-brûlée bath bomb, that Nat plugged her phone in and was instantly greeted by a million pings that told her SHE HAD MESSAGES.

I’m popular! she thought. I’m finally popular! Go me.

But then … she read them.

“What have you done you’ve ruined my life I can’t bear to look I’m going to kill you and I’m not even joking,” yelled Nat, thundering down the stairs in search of Dad.

Dad was sitting on the sofa with Mum, just about to pour himself a glass of wine. When he saw the furious expression on Nat’s face, he poured a very big one.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed, love?” he said nervously, seeing his doom approaching in the shape of a twelve-year-old in a purple tiger-striped onesie.

Nat waved her phone under his nose.

“You’ve done something stupid and horrible and embarrassing, haven’t you, Dad?”

Dad coughed and fidgeted. Next to him, Mum was starting to raise her eyebrows.

“Is this about the funny video by any chance?” he asked, trying to sound as if he wasn’t actually IN MASSIVE TROUBLE.

“What video is this, Ivor?” asked Mum, quietly. There was only one thing scarier than Mum shouting, and that was Mum being quiet.

“Ah yes, it’s probably easier if I show you …” began Dad, with a nervous chuckle. He picked up his laptop from the floor and opened it. It shone into life.

“Do you like my new screensaver?” he asked, trying to change the subject. “It’s us at Legoland just before I knocked over Big Ben and got banned for life.”

“I DON’T CARE – WHAT DID YOU DO?”

“I made myself a website,” announced Dad, clicking the keys. “I’m taking Christmas crackers into the twenty-first century.”

On the screen, a cartoon cracker snapped open and out fluttered a joke.

“That’s the joke about the monkey needing the toilet,” gasped Nat. “Which means Darius flipping Bagley made this website for you. I knew YOU couldn’t do it. You don’t know anything about computers.”

“I do,” said Dad defensively. “I designed the whole thing.”

“Where’s this video?” snapped Mum. Dad moved the mouse over to a drawing of a large pile of rubbish.

“It’s here in this area called The Jokeheap,” explained Dad excitedly. “I can put all sorts of funny things here. Darius showed me how. It’s like my comedy scrapbook.”

“Or a dump,” offered Mum, “where visitors can rummage about in the rubbish of your mind.”

Dad clicked a bit more and fresh images rose from the rubble.

“Look, I put a video of a dog who sings the national anthem in there, and the one where that boy tries to skateboard on ice. And, um—”

“AND THE VIDEO OF ME DANCING AND SHOUTING AT YOU!” shrieked Nat in horror as her face rose up from the jokey rubbish dump.

“Oh no, not all of it,” corrected Dad. “Only the funny bits. Which is mostly you jumping up and down and shouting – in a cute way, obviously.”

“People are watching …” said Video Nat, “… can’t you be normal?”

A memory struggled to the surface of Nat’s brain as Video Nat ran around smacking herself and making silly noises. Why were those words so familiar?

“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” said Dad. “I’ll take it down. Anyway, not many people will have seen it yet. Look here, I’ve got a counter on my website. It shows I’ve only had ten hits. And five of those were me, checking on how many hits I had.”

Mum put her head in her hands. “It only takes one person to see it and share it,” she said. Dad looked blank. Mum pushed him off the laptop and tapped some keys.

“Look,” she said. “Here in the comments bit.”

“I never read the comments,” admitted Dad, “because people can be very rude about my jokes.”

“Shut up and listen,” said Mum. “There’s a comment from ‘CatLover 34543’ who says:

All the jokes here are rubbish, but I love the video of the funny little ‘Can’t you be normal’ girl. I’m sharing this with EVERYONE I know. And I know loads of people.

“No problemo, I’ll just email her and ask her to delete it,” said Dad. “She seems like a nice person. She loves cats.”

“Don’t you know ANYTHING, Dad?” said Nat. “I had this talk with you about online safety, didn’t I?”

“Umm …” said Dad.

“Tell him, Mum,” said Nat, throwing her arms up in despair.

“Once something is on the Internet, it’s ALWAYS THERE,” said Mum, as if she was explaining something to a small and particularly dense child. “Surely even you can remember that?”

“And now loads of people have copied the video and shared it all over town,” said Nat. Suddenly, with a sick horror, she realised where she had heard those words. In the shopping centre. From COMPLETE STRANGERS. That video must have spread far and wide.

“I’m doomed. I can never go out again!” she said tearfully. “And yes, Dad, you ARE a complete idiot.”

F COURSE, NAT KNEW SHE WOULD HAVE TO LEAVE the house again. But she was determined to put it off for as long as possible. There was one more week of holidays left and she spent most of it sulking at home. NOW she was getting plenty of texts; she just didn’t want to read them. She prayed this would all be over and forgotten about by the time school started again.

“Stop hiding in your room,” said Bad News Nan one morning, popping her head round the bedroom door and scattering biscuit crumbs as she spoke. “You’ll get rickets without enough sunlight. Terrible, is rickets. You get horrible bendy legs. Doctors thought I had it once, but turns out my stockings were too tight.”

Nat wriggled further under the covers.

Bad News Nan sat heavily on the bed and looked around for something to munch. When she couldn’t see anything, she put her false teeth back in her pocket, as she only ever used them for eating.

The dog, who was hiding with Nat, emerged from under the bed and started nibbling at Nan’s trouser pocket.

He loved sucking her false teeth.

They were so tasty.

Nat peeked out from under the covers. The dog with Nan’s teeth WAS hilarious, after all.

“You had a great-auntie who suffered with her nerves,” Bad News Nan droned on, not noticing the snuffling dog. “Great-auntie Primula. She took to her bed one Christmas after her pudding set fire to the living-room curtains. Refused to move out of her room again, even when she got the boils.”

“Boils?” asked Nat, interested.

“Pustules, really. Oooh they were big enough to make the doctors weep,” said Bad News Nan with relish. “Record-breaking, they were. She made the local papers with them. People felt sorry for her, but not me. I think she just liked the attention.”

Nat wasn’t sure that anyone would want to be famous for having pustules, but she didn’t want Nan to think she was trying to get attention. She was in bed trying to AVOID attention.

“I’m getting up now, Nan,” she said, just as the dog made a grab for the gnashers. He ran off with them clattering around in his mouth. Nan said a rude word and leapt up as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very quickly, and the pair of them thudded down the stairs.

It’s not fair, thought Nat, getting dressed. I’m way less bonkers than anyone else in this family, and it’s ME people are laughing at …

When Nat at last emerged from her room, she was persuaded to go shopping with Mum and Bad News Nan. Mum wanted to buy vegetables, because Dad never bought any apart from potatoes, and Bad News Nan needed some ointment. When Nat asked why she needed the ointment, Nan told her. And then Nat felt a bit sick and wished she hadn’t.

In the shopping centre, Nat pulled the strings on her hoodie’s hood so tight around her face that she kept bumping into things. They went to their favourite caff and the only thing she would have was a milkshake, which she could drink by poking a straw through the tiny hole in her hood.

It was miserable, trying to avoid being laughed at. Mum kept reassuring her that people would forget about the video and move on to the next funny thing.

But as days went by, Nat’s angry outburst got more and more popular, and more and more shared. Like a snowball rolling down a massive mountain, gathering millions of snowflakes and turning into a horrible avalanche of frosty doom, EVERYONE was finding the clip hilarious and passing it on to their friends.

Perhaps it was Nat’s face, her wild flying hair, her little wiggly dance of outrage, her hoppy, bum-slapping dance, but something made people love it. And worst of all, she had come up with a phrase that people just liked using.

On Monday she heard the window cleaner over the road shout to his lad with the bucket: “Stop whistling. People are watching. Can’t you be normal?”

On Tuesday, Nat heard annoying local morning radio DJ Cabbage burble: “We’ve got a caller who says she’s just seen Prince Charles doing a hot wash down the launderette. All I can say to her is: ‘Doris, can’t you be normal?’”

On Wednesday Nat saw a comedian on the telly make fun of someone in the audience who was wearing an unfortunate pink tank top. “Why did you put that on?” he mocked. “People are watching …” The audience had started laughing even before he finished with …

“… Can’t you be normal?”

Nat immediately turned over to watch a documentary about a lost tribe in the Amazon. But even then she was half expecting one of the tribe to interrupt a war dance with: “Stop that, Dave, there’s a film crew. People are watching. Can’t you be normal?”

On Thursday, chat show host Dilbert Starburst said it about ten times all through his show and it got bigger laughs every flipping time.

And finally on Friday even the Prime Minister joined in the fun. He was teasing a politician from a foreign country at a big meeting. “Calm down, dear,” he said, in his usual smug voice, “people are watching. Can’t you be NORMAL?”

“Of course she can’t be normal,” muttered one of the Prime Minister’s crawly bum-lick friends, “she’s from Belgium.”

Oh great, so I can never go to Belgium now, thought Nat, watching the news. I bet the whole country will blame me for that comment.

Naturally Nat made Dad suffer for his online crimes. She couldn’t decide between shouting at him continually or refusing to talk to him, so she opted for a mixture of both, depending on whether she wanted him to make her a bacon sandwich, for example.

“Come on, love, you know I hate it when you’re cross with me,” he said on Saturday lunchtime as she tucked into one of his big, greasy, delicious bacon sandwiches.

“Which is odd, because you make her cross a lot,” said Mum, who had been NO HELP TO DAD all week.

“Well, you can stop being cross because I’ve found out how to make it all better,” said Dad, looking quite pleased with himself.

“You CAN’T make it better,” said Nat, who was actually starting to feel less cross with him and more sorry for herself. Besides, she had to admit Dad did make excellent bacon sandwiches. “It’s not a grazed knee that you can kiss better and put a plaster on.”

She was only using that as an example, but Dad suddenly looked guilty. “I’ve apologised for getting you stuck in that babies’ swing a thousand times,” he said, remembering a time when she had grazed her knee. “I thought you were too little for the big swings.”

“I haven’t heard this story,” said Mum quietly.

“Now be fair, Nat,” said Dad, very very quickly, “you only grazed your knee when the fireman who cut you out of the swing dropped you on the gravel. Technically that wasn’t my fault.”

He jumped up out of arm’s reach and plopped more bacon in the pan. Then he said, “Now who wants to hear about the brilliant thing Dad’s just done?”

“There is NOTHING you can say to make this situation better,” said Nat firmly, “except that we’re emigrating. At the very least I’ll have to change schools. Everyone used to make fun of me – mostly thanks to you, Dad – and it’s taken me ages to go from being laughed at to just being ignored. I was hoping this might be the term where I got popular. But no, I’m going to be back down in the ‘getting laughed at’ spot again.”

“Would a hundred pounds make you feel any better?” asked Dad, over the sound of sizzling bacon.

“Ivor, you can’t just give her a hundred pounds to make her stop shouting at you,” said Mum. “That’s a terrible idea, even for you.”

“It’s not FROM me,” said Dad, smiling, “it’s from the hair salon in town. They saw you doing that thing I’m not going to say because I don’t want to be shouted at again, and they want you to be a model for them, and it’s all thanks to Dad!”

“What if she doesn’t WANT to be a model?” asked Mum. “My little girl doesn’t need a load of people telling her how pretty and wonderful and beautiful she is, and giving her money just for being gorgeous, do you, Nat?”

There was a long pause, when all that could be heard was the sizzle of the smoky pan.

“Yeah, that sounds horrible,” said Nat slowly, thinking that it sounded rather nice, on the whole. “Although … maybe I should let poor old Dad try and make it up to me. It’ll make him feel better.”

Dad smiled. “They recognised you from the – the – you know, the thing, and left a message on the website saying that you were the perfect girl to advertise their new styling gel.”

“I’m not saying yes,” said Nat, “but is it cash and what do I have to do?”

Mum looked at the two of them. “You’re both as bad as each other,” she said with a sigh.

“Dad doesn’t get EVERYTHING wrong,” said Nat.

Then the smoke alarm went off as Dad set the pan on fire.

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