those magazines – they're only read by people like me – and Jenny gets a bit carried away and says that's true, we wouldn't be interested in Edie even if she were dead, and they stop talking to each other for a while and channel all communication through me.
This is not great for me because Jenny mostly wants to talk about boys. Definitely not smoky, green-eyed sex gods. Not those, oh no. Anything but those. But boys in general have suddenly become a bit of a pet subject. And Edie wants to talk about internet campaigning and her new project to help build schools for the Invisible Children in Uganda. She says her website's been getting thousands of new hits recently and (I quote) she wants to ‘harness its popularity to improve awareness of the plight of displaced children in areas of conflict’.
Which is great in theory. Fabulous and worthwhile and I'm really proud of her. I've even bought a bracelet to support the campaign. I'm just not very good at statistics and campaigning methods and international organisations. I try and concentrate but my brain starts clouding over and I find myself thinking about next term's designs for my pencil case or the ideal colour combination for my next pair of Converses. I wish I wasn't so superficial but it's obviously genetic, so I don't think it can really be my fault.
But I do discover one interesting thing. I happen to be googling Jenny one evening after homework (OK, insteadof homework – it's become a bit of a habit to watch the search results grow each week) and I notice that one of the most popular sites for people looking for stuff about Jenny is Edie's blog. It turns out that Edie's been describing Jenny's TV and magazine appearances alongside snarky comments about my outfits and general information about world peace and her own do-gooding.
I can't help wondering how many of the hits are down to Edie's limpid prose and biting political analysis, and how many are down to Jenny's taste in shoes.
I ask Edie about it as we're leaving school one day and she somehow manages to change the subject to how much publicity she's raised recently for Invisible Children, swiftly followed by the number of displaced people in camps in ten African countries. By the time she's finished quoting a series of very large numbers at me, I've forgotten what my original question was.
‘I need to do more, though,’ she says with a dramatic sigh. ‘I mean, if we could get a million signatures, say, on a petition, then the Prime Minister would have to take the problem more seriously. And he could raise it at the next G8 summit. And they'd have to do something.’
‘Do what, exactly?’
‘Give more money to people who are trying to put families back together. Stop supporting the governments who keep the conflicts going so they daren't return home. Build more schools. Just imagine: you spend years and years in a camp with hardly any food, no education,people dying around you. There's thousands of them living like that and hardly anybody's helping them. Just because they're not being shot at any more, it doesn't mean they're out of trouble.’
I try to look encouraging.
‘Oh, come on,’ Edie complains. ‘It's not that impossible.’
I must practise my encouraging look more.
‘You care, don't you, Nonie?’ she asks, looking doubtful for the first time.
‘Of course I care,’ I protest. ‘But I don't know these children. They're so far away.’
Edie looks irritated.
‘Huh! Jenny only has to put on a pair of silver shoes and half the country seems to know her.’
We're back on to that subject again. I make an excuse that I've got an essay on a Brontë to finish and head for home as quickly as I can. Edie goes on and on about saving the world, but if she carries on like this it's going to be practically impossible to save a friendship.
I t's not all celebrity and saving the world. The summer holidays are a distant memory and we have normal school things to think about too. All our
This is not great for me because Jenny mostly wants to talk about boys. Definitely not smoky, green-eyed sex gods. Not those, oh no. Anything but those. But boys in general have suddenly become a bit of a pet subject. And Edie wants to talk about internet campaigning and her new project to help build schools for the Invisible Children in Uganda. She says her website's been getting thousands of new hits recently and (I quote) she wants to ‘harness its popularity to improve awareness of the plight of displaced children in areas of conflict’.
Which is great in theory. Fabulous and worthwhile and I'm really proud of her. I've even bought a bracelet to support the campaign. I'm just not very good at statistics and campaigning methods and international organisations. I try and concentrate but my brain starts clouding over and I find myself thinking about next term's designs for my pencil case or the ideal colour combination for my next pair of Converses. I wish I wasn't so superficial but it's obviously genetic, so I don't think it can really be my fault.
But I do discover one interesting thing. I happen to be googling Jenny one evening after homework (OK, insteadof homework – it's become a bit of a habit to watch the search results grow each week) and I notice that one of the most popular sites for people looking for stuff about Jenny is Edie's blog. It turns out that Edie's been describing Jenny's TV and magazine appearances alongside snarky comments about my outfits and general information about world peace and her own do-gooding.
I can't help wondering how many of the hits are down to Edie's limpid prose and biting political analysis, and how many are down to Jenny's taste in shoes.
I ask Edie about it as we're leaving school one day and she somehow manages to change the subject to how much publicity she's raised recently for Invisible Children, swiftly followed by the number of displaced people in camps in ten African countries. By the time she's finished quoting a series of very large numbers at me, I've forgotten what my original question was.
‘I need to do more, though,’ she says with a dramatic sigh. ‘I mean, if we could get a million signatures, say, on a petition, then the Prime Minister would have to take the problem more seriously. And he could raise it at the next G8 summit. And they'd have to do something.’
‘Do what, exactly?’
‘Give more money to people who are trying to put families back together. Stop supporting the governments who keep the conflicts going so they daren't return home. Build more schools. Just imagine: you spend years and years in a camp with hardly any food, no education,people dying around you. There's thousands of them living like that and hardly anybody's helping them. Just because they're not being shot at any more, it doesn't mean they're out of trouble.’
I try to look encouraging.
‘Oh, come on,’ Edie complains. ‘It's not that impossible.’
I must practise my encouraging look more.
‘You care, don't you, Nonie?’ she asks, looking doubtful for the first time.
‘Of course I care,’ I protest. ‘But I don't know these children. They're so far away.’
Edie looks irritated.
‘Huh! Jenny only has to put on a pair of silver shoes and half the country seems to know her.’
We're back on to that subject again. I make an excuse that I've got an essay on a Brontë to finish and head for home as quickly as I can. Edie goes on and on about saving the world, but if she carries on like this it's going to be practically impossible to save a friendship.
I t's not all celebrity and saving the world. The summer holidays are a distant memory and we have normal school things to think about too. All our
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