MUM MADE ME GO ON AN INTER RELIGEOUS COOKIE PILGRAMAGE
by Donald Reed

I thought it were gonna be like a party, but it weren't. Mum said it were going to be a bit like a party, but sommat to do with art. I don't like art. But I wanna be a clothes designer when I leave school and you have to be proper good at drawing for that. So I do art at school to get better a drawing, but I don't like it when Mr Slaski (our art teacher) makes us talk about why people made famous pictures and trying to understand 'em and that, I just like the drawing

It weren't like a party, there were no pop or anything, there were these biscuits but they were at the end and even that were weird. It was sommat some bloke me mum knows were doing and it was called an Inter-releg-ious-art-disco or sommat, so you can see why I thought it were gonna be like a party.

I didn't want to go, but mum said I had to cos there was no way I was staying in on my own (our Gary were out playing pool as usual). I tried to argue with her but she wouldn't have it, said that I was too young to stay in on my own and there was no way I was doing it with that big dodgy family just moved in next door. For gods sake, I'm nearly thirteen and I'm not a bloody kid anymore. Anyway I don't think the big family next door are dodgy, I talked to the lad and the mum and they seem all right (even though mum said I wasn't to speak to em). They're not from round here and they probably won't stay long. That's what happens, they stay for a bit and the just like that they're gone and the guy who owns the house next door comes and puts all their stuff in bin bags in the alley and someone else moves in.

I tried to get mum to let me go to Jemma's house instead, but she said no, it was rude to visit without an invitation. For gods sake, an invitation! Jemma's me best mate, we're always hanging around together, Jemma's hardly gonna send round an invitation in an envelope is she? "Miss Jemma Smythe cordially requests your presence at her residence on Pedder street this Tuesday, the 28th. Where she hopes you will join her in listening to her Busted CD and swigging a bottle of Metz wot she has nicked off her mum‚" yeah right! But my mums funny like that, she's got all these weird ideas about the "right & proper" way to go about things. She thinks she's posh, but she's not, she works in Aldi‚s

So I had to go to the inter religious thingy anyway. It was freezing walking down the prom, proper freezing. I wished I still had the scarf I got for Christmas, but I lost it already, we were getting pissed on the back field and one of the lads threw it up a telegraph pole, it were proper funny at the time, but now I wished I had it.

It were just in someone's flat, the inter-religious thingy, I thought it would be in a church or something but it wasn't, just in this ordinary flat on the prom, bloody freezing prom

I'm not religious me, I believe in angels, like in the Robbie song, but I don't think about god and Jesus and all that stuff. This girl at our school, Nicola Tate, she's dead religious, and all her family are, but she doesn't go on about it or anything, she's just like a normal girl, except she doesn't drink and smoke and she's never been with a lad, not even a snog. But apart from that she's like a normal girl. Oh and she always does her R.E coursework, nobody else bothers, but apart from that she seems right normal. She's a Jehovah's Witness, whatever one of those is. My brother Gary was a witness once, he saw that woman who always feeds the pigeons and swears a lot get knocked over by a van, and he had to go to court to say what he's seen. But that's different, that weren't owt to do with religion. She wasn't dead, the pigeon lady, but she never came back to the street, don't know where she went though, a home or something I suppose.

Anyway our Gary's not religious either, he plays pool on a Sunday and always comes back pissed, which isn't very religious, he can draw though, dead good pictures, dead realistic, but only of motorbikes.

None of us are religious in our family, I don't know about me dad, but I doubt it, he was a bag head and me mum kicked him out when I was four. Our Shelly's only three and babies can't be religious can they?

Me mum pretends to be religious, she wears a silver cross that my auntie got her from Argos for her birthday. There's a picture of Mary holding Jesus on her bedroom wall, but she doesn't go to church, except when she's really sad, and then she doesn't go when the service is on with all the people singing and that. she goes when it's empty and just sits there on her own for ages. I know cos I followed her once.

When we got there, to the inter-religious thingy, it was really embarrassing, there were a few people standing around and I didn't know anyone and I didn't know what to do. It was just a flat but it was weird. In the kitchen, instead of pots and pans and stuff it were all white and there was all this big poetry stuff on the wall and a big model of a wedding cake, I don't see what weddings have got to do with religion. There was even one of those plaited rope barriers that they have in art galleries and that, and a "Do not touch" sign. But it wasn't proper art, like in the galleries. Proper art is like pictures and drawings that look like what they're meant to be, something you could put up in your house and look at it. I didn't understand the poem either, it didn't rhyme, but Miss Jackson who teaches English at our school says poetry doesn't have to rhyme so that's OK I suppose. There was stuff like that in the other rooms too, more weird stuff like dressed up dummies on a bed, there was one proper painting, really good it was, like a photo, of all these fella's all looking at something, but I don't know what it was. There was all this weird stuff going on in the front room, it freaked me out a bit. All these people were sitting around, still with their coats on, there were little kids mucking around on cushions, and a bloke in a long black cloak like a vicar‚s reading more poems (that didn't rhyme). He can't have been a vicar though the bloke, he was too young and he was wearing Addidas trainers. It wasn't very religious, I mean churches are quiet aren't they? You know people shush and take off their hats and that when they go into em don't they? But this place had disco lights and a smoke machine and you don't get that in church do you? I don't believe in god or anything but surely he wouldn't like that, I mean there was even a slottie, but instead of bells and fruits going round when you pressed play, it was all these religious things like crosses and stuff, now god surely wouldn't like that would he? I mean isn't there something in the bible about gambling being wrong? Anyway if you got 3 Christianities on the slottie machine you only won 50p; but if you got 3 Buddhas you won a quid. God's not going to be liking that, but I suppose Buddha would be chuffed.

My mum is always saying that god will punish you when you get to heaven if you do bad things, even saying "Oh God" and "Jesus Christ" which I do loads and nothing bad's happened yet. But I don't believe in god anyway. Or Buddha, not that I know much about Buddha and Muslims and that. I mean they talk about it in R.E. but I bunk off R.E. a lot cos you can get away with it. There's this Asian kid in our school and he wears this turban thingy all the time, I think that's something to do with religion, but I've never asked him, in fact I've never talked to him at all, even though he's in my art class. I know he gets picked on a lot because of the turban.

Anyway after they had some music and done a funny dance in the front room and more stuff you don't get in churches I think, we all had to do this thing with the biscuits. Everyone got one, shaped like a person, and you had to chose a religious thingy and stick it on the biscuit with icing.

You were supposed to take yer' biscuit on a pilgrimage to the other side of the room where there was all these models of churches and temples and stuff and this Scalextric track with Jesus and Buddha and that driving the cars. I mean for god's sake what was all that about then? I didn't really know what a pilgrimage was then, so I just copied everyone else, but I do now cos I asked my auntie and she said it's like when sick people go to Lourdes in France where there is this well and it's supposed to make you better, even when doctors can't. I don't believe that either.

One of the little kids didn't know what to do so I told her that, "You have to go over there and then you can eat it", but she couldn't get near to the models so she just ate the biscuit anyway. I don't think anyone noticed. After that was finished, I suppose it wasn't that bad really, just a bit weird and embarrassing at the start. But I was glad when it was over cos I wanted to go home and watch telly.

On the way home we didn't go down the freezing cold prom, for a treat Mum got a Taxi and we got fish and chips. Not the greasy ones from Sam's place near our house but Mum made the taxi go the long way round so we could get some nice ones from the Euston Road fisheries. That was a real treat that. We eat them at home but from the paper, not on plates. They taste better like that.

If there's another thing, an intereligeous thingy, I'm not going, I'm definitely going to sort out to go round to Jemma's. I told Jemma all about it and she pissed her knickers laughing and said my mum was a nut. But she weren't being nasty or anything. Anyway I won't go next time cos I don't like art & I'm defiantly not religious.

© Donald Reed 2003. if you would like to publish this story in another medium or elsewhere on the web