Fierce by Kelly Osbourne Read Free Book Online

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    Dad was always banned from parents’ evenings at Pipers Corner School. On the few previous occasions he had turned up, he would fall asleep as the teachers spoke to him and Mum.
    Another time, as the teacher sat behind the desk talking to my parents, my dad kept pulling up his T-shirt and showing her his stomach. I mean, for fuck’s sake. My dad does this crazy thing where, after he has eaten something, he lifts up his T-shirt to see if he’s gained any weight. That’s why he was doing it.
    I think my mum banned him, not the school. They probably thought he was funny. Everyone else bloody did. In the end, my mum used to go by herself. I wasn’t bothered that my dad didn’t go to parents’ evenings. It meant that everyone wouldn’t be talking about it at school the next day. ‘Did you hear what Kelly’s dad did lastnight?’ All that sort of shit.
    My dad hated school and I felt the same when I hit my teens and moved to America. I’m incredibly proud of my dad and what he’s achieved on his own merits without an education. Of course, getting an education is vitally important. But I think I realised at an early age that I would be one of those people who learned outside the classroom. I would get a different type of education.
    It was blatantly obvious that I had a good grasp of what drugs were. I was blatantly way more knowledgeable on the subject than my innocent school friends.
    Once, in English, we had to write about the dream we’d had the night before. Thinking about it, what if you’d not had a dream the night before? The teacher didn’t consider that. And you can’t always remember them, can you? I wrote the following (I’m writing about a dream within a dream):
    Books and events
    Dyslexia: How to Survive and Succeed at Work by Sylvia Moody, Vermillion, £9.99, ISBN 978-0091907082 This is a brilliant book for dyslexics who have problems at work, such as with reading, writing organisation, time management and remembering things.

    Dyslexia: A Teenager’s Guide by Sylvia Moody, Vermillion, £9.99, ISBN 978-0091900014 This offers tips on reading, writing, spelling, remembering things, taking notes, studying and dealing with exams.

    To celebrate Dyslexia Week, the British Dyslexia Association has launched a Wake Up 2 Dyslexia national campaign which runs for a month each year. The main aim is to raise money and awareness about dyslexia. Get in touch via the the British Dyslexia Association for more information.
    ‘My Dream’

    Where the fuck did I get that shit from? Now I can’t even remember writing it. I’m actually shocked. I was twelve years old. It must have come from knowing about my dad. It was obviously something that was on my mind.
    Similarly, when I read the book Junk for the first time, I knew what everything meant. No one else at my school had a clue. Junk was written by the author Melvin Burgess. The main characters, Tar and Gemma, get together and then leave home. They end up living with some squatters. In the second half of the book they become heroinaddicts. It’s quite detailed in its explanation of what drugs can do. When I say I was knowledgeable on drugs, of course I was aware of the names of different drugs, but I didn’t know the details of how they were taken. Junk was there with all the details and it also made me realise that drugs affected lots of other people apart from just my family. When the book came out in 1996 it was quite controversial because even though it was aimed at young adults, many parents thought it was unsuitable for their teenagers.
    Everyone was talking about it at school and I wanted to find out what it was all about for myself. One night after school, I went to WHSmith in Beaconsfield, which is a town near Welders. I saw it on the shelf. Firstly, I was attracted to the bright-green cover with a needle on the front. But of course I’d heard what it was about, so I wanted to read it and know what was going on. As I flicked through the pages,