A Midsummer Tights Dream
It’s the hotly anticipated sequel to the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, WITHERING TIGHTS – laugh your tights off as Tallulah Casey and her bonkers mates return for a new term at Dother Hall performing arts college. Boys, snogging and bad acting guaranteed!Yaroooo! Tallulah’s triumphant Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering Heights’ the comedy musical was enough to secure her place at Dother Hall performing arts college for another term. She can’t wait to see her pals again, Charlie and the boys from Woolfe Academy and maybe even bad boy Cain…Could the bright lights of Broadway be calling? And for who? Find out in the next Misadventures of Tallulah Casey.Praise for WITHERING TIGHTS:"I don't know how, but Louise Rennison has done it again. Tallulah is even funnier, warmer, and sweeter than her cousin Georgia Nicolson. I fell in love with Withering Tights, and you will too!" – Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries and Abandon series
Читать A Midsummer Tights Dream онлайн беплатно
Contents
Title Page
Back on the Showbiz Express
Winter of Love
Iâm not an Ice Cream, Iâm a Human Being!
Thereâs no People like Show People
Eat the boat!
Human Glue
Calf Love
Donât Forget Your Bottom
My Corkers are on the move
Heâs a Rusty Heathen Crow
The Ladder of Showbiz
Goodbye to a Tree Sister
The Hamster Slippers of Life
A Naturally Cracking Kisser
Tunnelling for his Life
Return of Cain the Bad
Warming up my Bottom
The fall of Dother Hall
A Midsummer Tights Dream
Acknowledgments
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Performing Arts College, here I come again! Hold on to your tights!! Because I am holding on to mine, I can tell you. Which makes it difficult to go to the loo, but that is the price of fame!!! And fame is my game!
Once more I am chugging back to Dother Hall. Or âthe theatre of dreamsâ as Sidone Beaver, the principal, calls it. I am truly on the showbiz express of life.
Well, the stopping train to Skipley. The Entertainment Capital of the North. Or home of the West Riding Otter, as some not showbiz people call it. I donât think they mean that only a big fat otter lives in the town, although you never know!
Hooray and chug-a-lug-a-doo-dah!!!!
I feel like shouting out to the heavens. I think I will. I can now because the grumpy woman with the stick got off at the last stop. Oh the Northern folk with their jolly Northern ways. She was so grumpy about her gammy leg. She said the stick had worn down on one side so that she fell over in strong winds. I didnât ask her any of this, she just told me. But hey-nonny-no, as Shakespeare said. I am going to pull down the window and shout out loud:
âThe name is, Tallulah. Tallulah Casey!!!! And Iâm back. Iâm moving up! Moving on up! Nothing can stop me! Yes, I used to be shy and gangly with nobbly knees and no sticky-out bits. No corkers. I was corkerless. I didnât even wear a corker holder. But now even my corkers are on the move!!!â
Especially when the train keeps stopping unexpectedly. What now? Maybe the West Riding Otter is on the line. The tannoy is crackling but I can only hear heavy breathing and snuffling. Lawks a mercy, the wild otter has hijacked the train!
He wants to make people understand that otters have feelings too, theyâre not just furry foolsâ
Ooomph.
Oooooh blimey, I nearly shot into the opposite seat then because weâre lurching off again.
Woo-hoo!
Anyway, Iâm being giddy about the otter. He canât really be driving the train because he couldnât reach the driving wheel. Unless heâs got stilts. And it doesnât say Skipley is the home of the West Riding Circus Otter. With his big shoes.
I donât care about the otter driver! Live and let live I say.
Uh-oh, the tannoy is crackling again.
âSorry about that, ladies and gentlemen, I momentarily lost hold of my pie. Next stop Skipley.â
Weâre just passing Grimbottom Peak. Brr. It looks so dark and forbidding up there. Iâm surprised itâs not pouring down with rain and⦠it is pouring down with rain.
Crumbs, itâs like the lights have been turned off. You can hardly see Grimbottom. The locals say that when daytrippers are up there the fog can come down in minutes. Mr Bottomley at the post office once told me and Flossie:
âOne minute tâdaytrippers are up there onât top, playing piggy inât middle like barm pots. The next itâs so dark they canât even see tâball. And itâs in their hand. Hours later the grown ups stumble home but the littleâuns are nivver seen no more. Sometimes late at night tha can hear âem up there wailing, âMummeee⦠Dadeeeeeâ¦â All them lost bairns, speaking from beyond the grave.â
Flossie said, âThatâs rubbish. Thereâs a massive wild dog up there called Fang. Half dog, half donkey, and it comes out in the fog and takes the children and raises them as its puppies.â
In my opinion, even though I havenât known her for long, my new friend Flossie is what is commonly known as âmadâ.
But mad or not, I am really really excited about seeing her and my new mates again. Vaisey and Flossie and little Jo and Honey, who canât say her ârâs, but knows everything about boys. She says she always has âtwo or thwee on the goâ.
We can go into the woods near Dother Hall again, to our special place! And gather round our special tree. Our special tree where we met the boys from Woolfe Academy when they surprised us doing our special dance that Honey taught us. She said we had to be proud of all of ourselves, even the bits we didnât like. It was a âshowing our inner gloryâ dance. Or âinner glorweeâ as Honey called it. Which in my case was hurling my legs around shouting, âI love my knees, I love them!!!â
Not quite as embarrassing as Vaisey waggling her bottom at the tree, but close.
The Woolfe Academy boys, well Charlie and Phil, call us the âTree Sistersâ.
Charlie said to me⦠Well, I wonât think about Charlie. Not after what happened after he kissed me.
Where was I in my performing life? Oh yes, when I got to Dother Hall I couldnât do anything. The others could sing and dance and act but all I could do was be tall and do a bit of Irish dancing.
