The Harry Hill Appreciation Society: Chapters 1 & 2:

1 Yeti Another Bad Day

You know how adults are always going on about your school days being the happiest days of your life? Well, I don’t think they should do that. It could give a kid a very warped view of adult life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy enough at school, it’s quite good really, if you don’t count the bullying, the unrequited love and the homework. But telling kids that this is as good as it gets is bad psychology in my opinion. Adults should be saying stuff like, ‘Wait ‘til you’re a grown up: no school, no homework, no detention. Yaaay!’ Well, OK maybe not the yay bit, but you get the picture. Adults need to be more positive. Couldn’t they just pretend there was something to look forward to in the sixty odd years we’ll spend not being in school. That way you wouldn’t feel like finding your old teddy bear and hiding under the duvet when things get tough. Like today.
There I was walking down to art class minding my own business and very possibly laughing to myself when disaster struck. Just in case you think I’m some kind of laughing freak, I should explain that when I grow up I’m thinking of becoming a comedian like Harry Hill (except maybe not bald) and I need to get in lots of practice so I tell myself jokes all the time. So there I was chuckling away and dawdling down to art when I felt a sudden, potentially fatal constriction of my airways. A yeti had its hands around my throat and was shaking me. Eddie Lyttle. I want to apologise here and now to yetis everywhere. You get a bad press and I hate to be the one to add to it but Eddie Lyttle is this great big fat bully who wears his hair down the front of his face so you can’t see his eyes and goes around terrorising normal people who cut their hair because they actually want to see where they are going. If The Yeti wore glasses, like me, he’d appreciate his eyesight more. Eddie got christened The Yeti the day he was chasing me and my best friend Ang (weird name, I’ll tell you later) through the park. We managed to get away and when we were safe Ang turned round and yelled, ‘Bog off you big fat yeti’. Then we fell about laughing because y, e, t and i suddenly seemed like the four funniest letters in the alphabet, and the name stuck. The nickname yeti is appropriate on another count: if you rearrange the letters of Eddie Lyttle’s name it actually spells yeti! Cool or what? The rest of the letters spell delltd which doesn’t mean anything and isn’t cool, but hey! you can’t have secret messages hidden in things all of the time. That would be too obvious.
Anyway, back to being strangled. I don’t even know where The Yeti came from. I didn’t see him sneak up on me. A stealth bully, that’s him. Which is pretty impressive because he is only fourteen and already he is nearly six foot tall and he’s about six foot wide as well, so stealth operations are a big deal for him. Still, he managed it this time. I had no idea he was there.
‘What you laughing at?’ he grunted.
Why do bullies always grunt? Is it something they learn in bully club?
Rule one: on no account speak clearly so that your victim might understand you and give you what you want. Grunt at all times to prolong the agony.

It’s psychological warfare, that’s what it is. I considered telling him that his grunting tactic was probably illegal under the terms of the Geneva convention which we were learning about in History, but he was squeezing my neck so tightly that my tonsils were in danger of coming out my nostrils, so a history lesson was really out of the question.
‘Agh, lugh, aah monchk, bachk,’ I said instead, which translated from the original Chokingese means, ‘Lunch money’s in bag. Take it.’
Bully club must also offer lessons in elementary Chokingese because The Yeti knew exactly what I was saying. He let go of me, plundered my rucksack, shoved my lunch money into his pocket and trudged off, leaving me late for art class.

2 Beautiful Knuckles

‘You are late,’ the art teacher said.
Have you noticed how teachers are masters of stating the obvious? I knew I was late. No need to rub it in, Miss Franks, I wanted to say but had more sense. You get detention if you say what you’re really thinking. I should know, I did it loads of times in first year until I finally got the message.
‘You are making a habit of this,’ Miss Franks said. ‘Do you know what the word habitual means?’
I was fairly sure I knew this one, ‘Er, to make a habit of?’ I said in what should have been my normal voice, but the words came out in this high pitched squeal, like some kind of high frequency signal intended to search out dolphins and other marine life. My voice was always doing that these days. Girls’ hearing must be on the same frequency as dolphins because Lucy Wells burst out laughing at me, and then her annoying friend Holly Cooke joined in too. Pretty soon everyone was having a good old laugh at my expense but it was Lucy Wells’ laughter that stung. She is this blonde goddess who inhabits my art class. You should see her; she is perfection. She has beautiful hair and beautiful teeth and beautiful eyes and beautiful ears and beautiful hands, even her knuckles are beautiful. And even when she is sniggering at you for being late and getting told off, she has a beautiful laugh. Oh yeah, and one other thing: she hates me.
Ang says I am suffering from unrequited love. He said that Mrs Gray the English teacher read a poem about it last Thursday when I was off, and that it means loving someone when they don’t love you back. Sounds bang on to me. Wish I’d heard that poem. Just my luck; the one day the teacher does something interesting and I’m not there. And wait for it, Ang said that one of poems they read was about a girl called Lucy! Can you believe it? It’s a sign. It must be. Think about it: love, me, poem, Lucy. It all adds up. We were meant to be together. And where was I when all these momentous goings on were going on? I was wif my mummy getting new specs. She is always babying me like that. I could have got my specs on my own but she wouldn’t let me because she was afraid I would get big black framed glasses like Harry Hill (which I would have). What a waste of a day. I missed this amazing poem that was clearly speaking directly to me, about me and for me, and I didn’t get the frames I wanted. Just my luck.
Ang is the only person who knows about Lucy and me. I know, I know, there is no ‘Lucy and me’. Yet. But a boy can dream can’t he? I told Ang about her one lunch time after I thought she’d smiled at me. Turned out she was smiling at the guy behind me, who is a year above me.
‘Behind you and above you?’ Ang laughed. ‘That could prove tricky.’
‘It’s a spatial challenge,’ I said.
‘A spatial challenge for a spatial boy,’ Ang said.
‘Aww,’ I said, ‘you’re spatial too.’ And we both fell about laughing.
That’s the great thing about Ang, even when you are suffering from unrequited love syndrome, he can still cheer you up.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Miss Franks said. ‘You look like you’re in a world of your own.’
‘Yes. No. I am.’ I said. I can be very articulate when I try.
‘That’s three weeks in a row,’ Miss Franks went on. ‘I’m sorry Philip, but I’ll have to give you detention again. It’s policy.’
And I think she was genuinely sorry because she didn’t look really cross. She is one of those teachers who give you the impression they can actually remember what it was like to be young, which is quite an achievement when you consider how old most of them are.
‘I’m sorry Miss Franks,’ I said. ‘I got held up.’
‘Literally,’ I whispered to Ang as I slid on to a seat beside him.
‘The Yeti?’ he whispered back.
I nodded, ‘He ransacked my rucksack.’
‘He rucksacked your ransack?’
‘No, he sackranked my sugrag.’
‘Your sugrag! The big pervert!’
Then we both burst out laughing and we both ended up with detention which, as my mum likes to say, wiped the smiles of our faces PDQ (Pretty Damn Quick for those of you who have been living under a rock and know nothing.)