My Secret Diary Read Online Free PDF

teacher.'
    'Good-morning-Miss-Crowford,' we mumbled.
    She was small and dark and quite pretty, so we
could have done a lot worse. I hoped she might
teach English, but it turned out she was the gym
teacher. I started to go off her immediately, though
she was actually very kind and did her best to
encourage me when I couldn't climb the ropes and
thumped straight into rather than over the
wooden horse.
    Miss Crowford let us choose our own desks. I
sat behind a smallish girl with long light-brown
hair neatly tied in two plaits. We all had to say our
names, going round the class. The girl with plaits
said she was called Christine. I was predisposed to like girls called Christine so I started to take proper
notice of her.
    Miss Crowford was busy doing the Jolly-Teacher
Talk about us being big girls now in this lovely
new secondary school. She told us all about the
school badge and the school motto and the school
hymn while I inked a line of small girls in
school uniform all round the border of my new
and incomprehensible timetable.
    Then a loud electronic bell rang, startling us.
We were all used to the ordinary hand-bells rung
at our primary schools.
    'Right, girls, join your groups and go off to
your next lesson,' said Miss Crowford. 'Don't
dawdle! We only give you five minutes to get to the
next classroom.'
    I peered at my timetable in panic. It seemed to
indicate that group one had art. I didn't have a
clue where this would be. All the other girls were
getting up purposefully and filing out of the room.
In desperation I tapped Christine on the back.
    'Excuse me, do you know the way to the art
room?' I asked timidly.
    Chris smiled at me. 'No, but I've got to go there
too,' she said.
    'Let's go and find it together,' I said.
    It took us much longer than five minutes. It
turned out that the art room wasn't even in the
main school building, it was right at the end of the
playground. By the time we got there I'd made a
brand-new best friend.
    Coombe had only been open for two years, so
there weren't that many girls attending, just us
new first years, then the second and third years.
We barely filled half the hall when we filed into
assembly. It was a beautiful hall, with a polished
parquet floor. No girl was allowed to set foot on it
in her outdoor shoes. We had to have hideous rubber-soled
sandals so that we wouldn't scratch the shiny
floorboards. We also had to have black plimsolls for
PE. Some of the poorer girls tried to make do with
plimsolls for their indoor shoes. Miss Haslett, the
head teacher, immediately protested, calling the
offending girls out to the front of the hall.
    'They are plimsolls ,' she said. 'You will wear
proper indoor shoes tomorrow!'
    I couldn't see what possible harm it would do
letting these girls wear their plimsolls. Why were
they being publicly humiliated in front of everyone?
It wasn't their fault they didn't possess childish
Clarks sandals. None of us earned any money. We
couldn't buy our own footwear. It was a big struggle
for a lot of families to find three pairs of shoes for
each daughter – four pairs, because most girls
wouldn't be seen dead in Clarks clodhoppers
outside school.
    However, the next day all the girls were wearing
regulation sandals apart from one girl, Doreen, in
my form. She was a tiny white-faced girl with bright
red hair. She might have been small but she was
so fierce we were all frightened of her. Doreen
herself didn't seem frightened of anyone, not even
Miss Haslett.
    Doreen danced into school the next day, eyes
bright, chin up. She didn't flinch when Miss Haslett
called her up on the stage in front of everyone.
None of Doreen's uniform technically passed
muster. Her scrappy grey skirt was home-made and
her V-neck jumper hand-knitted. She wore droopy
white socks – and her black plimsolls.
    Miss Haslett pointed at them in disgust, as if
they were covered in dog's muck. 'You are still
wearing plimsolls, Doreen! Tomorrow you will
come to school wearing indoor shoes , do