Cleo Howard was in the midst of her GCSE exams in June 1998. She still finds time to buy new trainers though…

Thursday 11^th June

It was Maths exam without calculator this morning and German writing exam this afternoon. On my way to the Maths exam I saw a single magpie. Nanny Howard always salutes these and says “Good morning Mr Magpie and how’s your lovely wife?” It’s bad luck not to greet a solo magpie she says. I sort of saluted by pretending to brush my hair out of my face and I said the good morning thing in my head. I need all the luck I can get to pass Maths. I answered all of the questions but some of my answers were guesses rather than actual worked out answers. I put an answer in for everything. There is no point in leaving anything blank.

I got some new trainers after school today. They are black and glittery Airwalk ones. Mum went mental because I put them on the table. She said you should never put shoes on the table. I said, yeah, I’d prefer pizza (we hardly ever have pizza, Terry buys Ian and Gav Dominos pizza all the time, I’d be happy with supermarket pizza, but Mum says she can’t see what the fuss is about and she pronounces it pitza). Mum said putting shoes on the table brings bad luck. I pointed out they were clean and in their box. She’s getting stranger. It’s like living in the dark ages with all this superstition.

Friday 12^th June

The front page of the Reading Chronicle didn’t read “Shoes On Table Revealed As Cause Of All World’s Ills” or “Man Who Used To Keep Shoes On Table But Now Doesn’t Wins Lottery!”

We have only got Science and Maths left to revise for. I went to Miss Selfridge with Jenni today. I got a psychedelic paisley print halter neck dress. It’s purple, blue and green and stretchy and you can’t wear a bra with it! I tried it on and showed Barry. He said I looked gorgeous! I remembered that I haven’t finished paying Mum back for my Ozzfest ticket yet.