Jacqueline Wilson's Happy Holidays Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Holidays by Jacqueline Wilson

  Holidays by Nick Sharratt

  Tracy Beaker’s Big Day Out

  My Summer Holiday

  Did You Know . . .?

  Buried Alive!

  Hetty Feather’s Holiday

  Quick Holiday Quiz

  What’s the Country?

  Beauty’s Holiday

  Super Summer Recipes

  Gemma’s Holiday

  Ideas for a Rainy Summer Day

  Our Free Day Out

  About the Author

  Also by Jacqueline Wilson

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  How will you spend your summer holiday? Will you be swimming in the sea? Eating lots of ice cream? Or relaxing in the garden with a brilliant book?

  Jacqueline Wilson’s Happy Holidays is packed with fantastic summery puzzles, activities, facts and stories, including Buried Alive! – plus a brand-new tale from Jacqueline. Join Tracy, Hetty and all your other favourite characters for the best holiday ever!

  HOLIDAYS

  by Jacqueline Wilson

  I write a great deal about favourite holidays in Jacky Daydream and My Secret Diary. I loved going to the seaside, and the two most memorable holidays of my childhood were spent in Bournemouth and Newquay. I still like going to the seaside now – though the sea feels so freezing cold that I haven’t got the courage to go in swimming any more. I like swimming in warm sea now! I recently had a fantastic holiday in Barbados where the turquoise water was just like jumping into a bath.

  However, I think my all-time favourite holiday venue is Hay-on-Wye, which is nowhere near the sea. It’s a tiny Victorian town in a valley on the Welsh Borders. It’s magical countryside. There are gorgeous wild ponies up in the Black Mountains and you can see for miles if you stagger up the nearest bluff. The river Wye runs beside the town and there are lovely riverside walks and a beautiful spot called the Warren for picnics and paddles in the water.

  Hay has fantastic restaurants and pubs and a wonderful ice-cream parlour, so I always go home feeling very fat. But the best thing of all about Hay-on-Wye is the thirty second-hand bookshops – my idea of bliss!

  HOLIDAYS

  by Nick Sharratt

  I had a lot of great holidays when I was a boy, but if I had to choose I’d pick the first time we went camping, when I was about to turn eleven.

  We started off with a few days in the Lake District where we pitched our brand-new tents (one for Mum and Dad, one for my sisters and one for my brother and me) on a campsite overlooking Derwentwater, and I just couldn’t believe how spectacular the view was, with the glistening lake and the mountains in the background. Then we drove over to Northumberland, visited Hadrian’s Wall and had a lazy day or two by the sea.

  Finally we went to stay with some friends who had a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales, but not big enough for everyone, so the boys still slept in the tent. I’d thought the lakes were impressive, but for me Swaledale was complete paradise, a truly beautiful, utterly peaceful valley with grass so green it was almost luminous, hidden away like a secret among the wild moors. We went for long walks alongside the river Swale or scrabbled up the side valleys to cook fry-ups, swim in rock pools and peer into the mouths of the ruined lead mine tunnels up there. I fell completely in love with the place and it’s still my absolute favourite destination for a holiday!

  WHERE ARE YOU going for your summer holiday? I’m jetting off to America. I’m going to Disneyland. I’m going on all the really scary rides, especially the one where you whizz up in a rocket and spin round and round. I’m going to go on that twice. I’m going to hold hands with Mickey Mouse and fly in the Dumbo plane. I love that film Dumbo, especially the bit where Dumbo twines trunks with his mum. I’d do that with my mum. If I had a trunk. If my mum ever came to see me.

  She’s a famous actress in Hollywood. She is. That’s why she shoved me in this Children’s Home. She’s way too busy to look after me. I understand. I do really. Anyway, I’ll get to see her on my summer holiday, won’t I? That’s where I’d like to go. Only they’re so mean and boring in the Children’s Home. They won’t take us anywhere decent for a holiday. You’d think kids in Homes would get really great holidays seeing as we’re deprived. Huh! Guess where we’re really going? To this boring boring boring outdoor activity centre in the country. It’s where we always go.

  We do stuff like canoeing and abseiling and pony trekking. I thought it would be great but last year they kept picking on me. It wasn’t fair. Just because I gave Justine and Louise’s canoe a tweeny little flip with my paddles. I was just experimenting. They did the most amazing submarine canoeing before they surfaced, spluttering.

  I got into even more trouble when we did abseiling. I couldn’t understand why Weedy Peter and some of the little kids acted like they thought it was seriously scary. It was too easy-peasy for me. So I tried turning a somersault and descending upside down. It was mega-great – until I got in a tangle and ended tied up in knots. I was just being inventive. I didn’t see why they had to read the riot act.

  They had serious doubts about letting me do pony trekking. I promised to be as good as gold – and I was. I had this amazing black pony called Nightmare. I really loved her. I groomed her for hours, brushing her mane and her tail. I didn’t even make a fuss about mucking out her stable.

  I was the best rider. I really was. ‘Look at Tracy,’ they said. But after a while they stopped looking at me so I decided to liven things up a bit. I knew Nightmare was bored with all that prissy trotting. I thought it was time for a little gallop. So I dug my heels in and Nightmare hurtled forward, so fast that I shot off her back and ended up head first in a nettle-patch. That was a real nightmare.

  So I’m not exactly looking forward to returning. And the guy who runs the centre probably won’t be too thrilled when he catches sight of me.

  I had a good long m-o-a-n about all this to Cam. She’s going to be my foster mum. She is. This time it’s really true. Cam’s going to be my foster mum until my own mum finishes making her movies and we get it together again.

  Cam’s thrilled at the idea of fostering me. Well. She’s given it serious thought. Perhaps she wasn’t that keen just at first but now she’s going to all these classes about being a good foster parent. It’s a bit of a waste of time if you ask me. I know exactly what a good foster parent should be like. She should let me sleep in every morning and take me to McDonald’s every single day and let me watch horror movies on the telly till late into the night and she should buy me HUGE presents every day, double on my birthday – and take me for decent summer holidays. She’s seeing me every week now with a view to fostering me after the summer. It’s a shame she and my stupid social worker can’t get their act together and get me fostered during the summer – and then Cam could take me to America.

  ‘Dream on, Tracy,’ said Cam. ‘I’m having a bit of a cash flow problem. Like all my cash flows out of my purse and once I’ve paid my flat money and bought some food there’s hardly any left.’

  I like Cam but sometimes I wonder if she’s the right foster mum for me. I really want one with lots and lots and lots of money. I mean, you can’t have a good time without money, can you?

  Well, maybe you can. Wait till I tell you!

  Cam comes to see me every Saturday. We usually have this little routine. She takes me to McDonald’s. That’s the best bit. Then we go for a trip somewhere. Nowhere exciting – mostly museums and art galleries. I don’t mind dinosaurs and I like giggling at paintings of ladies with big fat bottoms – but it’s mostly pret