Here’s my first attempt at a silly short for a flash friday writing project - given to me by Woodrow Phoenix were:the object (Statue of Liberty) and a location (platform 2 (eastbound) Moorgate Station. I wrote it in 45 mins and decided to publish it with minimal edits, just some basic proofs. I also didn’t check any of my facts!

The invitation …

Growing up I always wanted to be French, I think it was all to do with our French exchange student Amelie, and the way Steven Locock became soft and smiley when she walked into the classroom. He had a party and it wasn’t even his birthday and he invited her first and as an afterthought, because I was standing there looking so hopeful and worried, he nodded and said, “ yeah mate you should come yeah? Bring your sister”.

I was crushed and elated in the same moment – squashed to the flatest plane of my existence by the opposing forces of delight and fury. My bloody sister, not bloody likely! Bad enough I had to share the perfect Steve with this snooty French trollop, I wasn’t about to invite my Farah Fawcettly gorgeous sibling, effortlessly cute and boyfriend magnetty she didn’t need the invite. I needed the invite and I realised watching Steve turn his whole body towards this French siren, I needed all the help I could get.

While I’m making calculations about the likely impact of lying to Steve about why my sister can’t come, and then lying to my sister about where I might be going and why I might need to borrow her new neon blue sequinned boob tube. Amelie continues to be French.

Frenchying about in her little sweater and matching headband combo. I bet her knickers match her bloody frenchy socks too, even they are just perfectly off. They aren’t little girl ankle socks or the sexy over the knee style that everyone who reads Jackie magazine is wearing, except me because my dad won’t let me he says, it looks too tarty.

I don’t stand a chance. I’m 15, I hate my sister and my dad, and my teacher landed me with the most beautiful French exchange student in the history of gorgeous frogs who ever came over here and stole our boyfriends. Worse - my ‘husband to be’ wants to kiss her, I just know it – and my socks are all wrong.

French conversation lessons …

On the way home I ask Amelie if she would help me, she looks a bit puzzled. I don’t usually speak to her at all let alone attempt French conversation, but desperate times call for foreign vocabulary – so I set out on a sentence that I have no idea how to end in French.

“ Amelie, vooolay voo aidez moi fare bo?” I ask hopefully, the puzzled look doesn’t unsquiggle, one jot, so I try again.

“ J’aim Steve Locock, je vur be gorgeous pour le party – will you aidez moi?” Nothing. Just one of those comedy shrugs, they all do when they think we’re weird and daft.

So I try one more time– “weel you ‘elp me? Kees steeven?”

A smile dawns across Amelie’s beautiful French fiz and for the first time I think maybe she’s not too unforgivably gorgeous to risk being friends with. I resolve to be nicer and if she helps me look half as good as she does, Steven Locock won’t stand a bloody chance…

Fancy dress is hard to do…

Turns out the party has a theme. Sort of entente cordiale, you can dress up as a famous French person or in the colours of the French Flag.

Amelie whips up a super cute red, white and blue stripped skirt. She decides I will go as the statue of liberty. I am beginning to doubt my new best friend’s best intentions.

I am not 100% convinced but Amelie tells me she was a gift to the American people from la belle france and she represents everything good and noble about partnerships and besides all I’ll have to do is wear a sheet and carry a couple of props.

Amelie decides that she will make the whole outfit red, white and blue to cover all the bases.

I am going to Steven Locock’s party, the love of my life, the future father of my 3 children (2 boys and a girl, called Poppy, Storm and Legend.) dressed like a Frenched up roman goddess ice-cream seller. How? How can this work?

Amelie pouts a little and explains. ‘You are not mignon huh? You must be funny, erm GRANDE! “

Right, right I’ll make him fall in love with me by making a complete French tit  of myself gotchah! Good plan Frenchy!

“Can’t I go as a member of the French resistance?” I whine. I was thinking maybe my dad’s mac tied tight, with a beret and I could nick a pair of my mum’s stockings.

The secret truth of Frenchies.

“Couldn’t you show me how to paint my lips cherry red and smoke a cig without coughing up my guts and squinting?” I wheedle.

“Non, non, non! Everyone will go as a resistance fighter this is unique eh? You will be eyes on yours. You will be win ze prize and Steven will av to kees you!” Amelie was not to be argued with on this point – that much was clear.

It was a good point after all,  but my hopes of learning the secret French trick for being compellingly arch were fading. You can’t pull off aloof, when you’re sporting a cardboard head dress and carrying your mum’s kitchen scales.

Amelie is adamant, and I am beaten - so I allow her to transform me into lady liberty, and I practice leaning forward to be kissed without loosing the headgear or the last two shreds of dignity I plan on hanging onto.

The journey …

Three hours later I’m struggling onto platform two at Moorgate station. Amelie looks chic, composed and fully loaded. Her pretty French flag skirt is made up of row upon delicious row of ruffles and it ends just at knicker level. Her socks are just so – she’s replaced the head band with a series of little ruffle rosettes pinned into her perfectly French, French cut and with a flick of a mascara wand and a slick of her ‘your lips are suddenly shiny’, shiny lip roller ball doodad from Harrods – she looks every inch the boyfriend stealer I now suspect her to be.

I on the other hand am pressing myself against the advert for wrigleys spearmint gum and hoping that when the eastbound train finally arrives there’ll be space to stand in the doorway without risking scraping the face off a fellow passenger with the corners of my headdress. I look ridiculous.

I feel appauled and yet I didn’t change the plan. My dad smiled when I came in to show him my costume and beamed, “Faint heart never won the fancy dress prize old girl” and something about his tone made me feel that I should dress up in a silly costume one last time for my dad.  So he could believe his little girl is still a little girl and not quite yet turned into a sex pot, boy chaser like the little minx from Marseilles who’d taken over his bathroom with pots, and smells.

So for my dad  and because I couldn’t  fight Amelie, the exquisite coquette, on her own turf - I donned an old grey sheet and smeared my face with an unstable concoction of charcoal mixed with Nivea cold cream and bravely set off to face my inevitable teenage humiliation. Maybe if I get it over with early on in my teenage career the rest will be easy? Fat chance!

We got into the train and there was definite snickering. The headdress really was very big by the time we’d finished it.

Usually in London, you can get by unnoticed even if you’re riding a bloody elephant down the mall, well maybe not an elephant, but a llama wouldn’t attract too much attention… but this Saturday evening, spectacles were clearly in short supply and the sight of two teenage girls, one dressed like an tiller girl from the Folis Bergere and one got up like an extra from a bad travel shop display, was enough to cause a stir.

People were actually talking to each other on the tube – and asking us stuff. Amelie who didn’t ‘get’ the whole ‘you never EVER talk to anyone on the underground’ thing was happily chatting away telling some old geezer the full sorry story about my desperate bid for happiness.

Now I am mortified, uncomfortable and humiliated. Hatrick – what’s hatrick in French?

The arrival …

When we get to the party, other guests are arriving in gaggles and cliques. Amelie was right, 60% of them had dug out a beret and a polo neck jumper and the others had just put on stockings and frilly knickers and come as can can girls.

Amelie and I do stand out and I make the final humiliating discovery that after getting though the doors sideways the only place I can stand without stabbing people in the eye with my head dress, is smack in the middle of the sitting room – great… Stick a bowl of pnuts in my hand and I can be useful as a canapé dispenser.

Amelie is beside herself ‘ oh zis eez so great, superb! You are centre of everyone no?’ she cooed. ‘Steven will see you and you will win and the kiss will be see for everyone’.

‘Oh God. Oh God.  Oh God!’

The denouement …

Nothing to be done, stand in the middle of the room and sip the nasty ‘everything in the bowl’ cocktail I am handed and hope someone will talk to me. They don’t.

I scan the room by turning slowly on the spot, careful not to make any sudden moves that might end up with someone in casualty. I can’t see Steve. I can see Amelie.

She’s pinned some chap to the wall with her patented French knee between the legs move, while apparently casually chatting – while really her victim is helpless to escape without making a bit of a tit of himself, tussling with her besocked limbs – which by now have wrapped around his outstretched leg. This is the most extraordinary balancing act seen outside Billy Smarts Circus.

Whoever it is they don’t seem too distressed, I notice a hand sneak around her teensie, weensie galic waist. By now I’ve gone a full half turn and there’s nothing for it but to continue on my way around, or risk everyone noticing that I am staring at my exchange pal getting frenchy with …. my husband to be. The bastards!