More, please ... Flossie Teacake tucks in.
There is an alarming shortage of bad girls in contemporary children's fiction. Where are today's tomboys, practical jokers, the greedy, grasping, dirty-fighting anti-heroines? It's bad enough that this year's sex-specific nostalgia compendium has saddled girls with "homemade scones, pom-poms and daisy chains" while boys get conkers, pirates, spies and stars. But the roof-climbing, teacher-baiting, grimy-nailed intensity of Tyke Tiler seems, by and large, to have given way to the prim bookishness of Hermione Granger. No one has taken up the cudgels of the notorious Marmalade Atkins, arch-tormentor of mustachioed nuns and setter-off of bangers during Silent Reading. And hard as I try, I can't think of the 21st century's answer to Hunter Davies' Flossie Teacake.
Strictly speaking, Flossie is not a bad girl. She would be one if she could, but as she's only nine, she's condemned to sensible shoes, specs and school uniform until she reaches her sister Bella's golden age, 18. Bella is long and lean and junk-shop glamorous; Flossie is short and round, favouring chips and chocolate sponge over boring old salad and dowsing her cornflakes in sugar behind her mother's back. A self-centred opportunist, utterly focused on one-upping her brother and sister, showing off and stuffing her face with pudding. She is an absolutely credible nine-year-old, with a nine-year-old's morose sense of universal injustice - uppermost in her thoughts and usually on the tip of her tongue is the dismal refrain "It's not fair".
Flossie particularly resents the fact that Bella is allowed to keep her room in a state of fascinating confusion - in this miscellaneous paradise, shop dummies, sheep's skulls, old clothes, pillows, rugs, bottles, records, and strips of red silk festoon the entire floor and dangle from the ceiling. The door bristles with threatening notices: "Keep Out, Guard Dogs, Dangerous and No Admittance - This Means You, Flossie." Nevertheless, our plump protagonist trespasses one day when Bella's out, spotting a fur coat on a shocking pink hat-stand; the coat, "rich and prosperous", calls to Flossie, who sees "strange shapes in its silky, shiny surface" as she strokes it. She tries it on, "wishing with all her might that she could be 18 years old, this very minute, and not a boring nine-year-old with specs and a fat tummy and bossed around by everyone and told to eat green salad." And the miracle occurs.
Every small girl (and boy too for that matter) has surely longed at some point to be grown-up ahead of time. The vicarious gratification of this desire, as well as Flossie's complete lack of high-mindedness, chivalry or selfless virtue, is what makes the Teacake books so appealing; the sweaty-palmed sense of suspense as she fastens the three buttons of the coat and transforms instantly into leggy, glamorous Floz, her 18-year-old alter ego, remains just as gripping whether she's off to be a waitress, a dance instructor, a hairdresser, or simply down the pub. Despite leaving a trail of fried-egg milkshakes and spaghetti-haired customers everywhere she goes, Floz usually comes out on top, coat-pockets stuffed with loot to make most nine-year-olds drool. In the 1980s, anyway. Fifty pence went a long way back then.
Bring back the bad role models; bring back the pre-teens who enjoyed eating, fighting, climbing and pranks. I'm tired of nineties and noughties girls who are gravely concerned with body image and femininity - I want more Flossies, who look in the mirror and think "I hope I'm not turning into Anna Rexic ... she's the slimmest girl in the whole world" before charging off to fill their faces with breakfast. I want more scabby-kneed Tykes and villainous Marmalades, who call their teachers "cock" and are interested in murder and menageries, not puppies and penguins. Does anyone have any contenders for me?
