Nothing says Happy Birthday quite like your parents – who, up ‘til now, have been at each other’s throats on a daily basis – uniting to make your life even more of a misery than it was before.

I’m 16 now. I have certain rights I didn’t have when I was 15. Like the right to leave school, for one. It’s a right every other 16 year old has in this country – but not, it seems, in the West House of Pain and Torment.

In the West house – the house of Wolf and Cheryl, this perverse suddenly united force – I have to suffer the slings and arrows of a pointless education whether I want to or not. The alternative is exile to the Wairarapa and the loving arms of Mum’s Exclusive Brethren loopy sister and Uncle Kees, her sadistic bible-bashing husband. No thank you to that in a very big way.

This is not for want of trying. The things I did to get expelled – or *excluded* or whatever the hell they call it these days – from Shadbolt High…. Well, let’s just say some of them even pushed my boundaries of good taste. Honestly, the bleeding heart liberals running today’s schools make it much harder to be evil than it should be in a proper world.

But, as usual, my will triumphed – for about a second – until Dad had the genius idea of packing me off to St. Mary Ignatius School for Catholic Girls, just to ensure that I am emotionally scarred for the rest of my life.

Luckily there are ways and ways around these things. I have what I suppose you’d call a *friend* in this messed up homeless girl called Jools – and she has this weird (but sort of touching) need for an education, so we did a bit of a deal and…

Well, let’s just say I am now freed of the shackles of the massive pointlessness that is going to school. It may require a little work to keep this going – and, undoubtedly, a lot of lying, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with it.

As it turned out my 16th birthday party wasn’t entirely dreadful. I endured the traditional West family drinking of the yard glass; my Mum thinks I’m gay, which is kind of funny; and Eric threw up all over Pascalle which was definitely funny.

The weirdest thing was Pascalle’s boyfriend, Hayden, gave me this way too perceptive gift for someone who streaks his hair. Maybe he’s got hidden shallows.

What am I saying!? He goes out with Pascalle – he can’t possibly be anything other than vacuous and hollow.

Happy Birthday to me……