Free The Donut Diaries by Dermot Milligan Page A

product of some scientific experiment to create a new life form that had gone horribly wrong, and spawned a monster.
    J-Man chivvied us along.
    ‘Let’s move it, guys! You know we lose dinner if we get out there late.’
    So we trundled out onto the sports field, along with about fifty other Camp Fatso kids. Waiting there for us was a small, bald goon whose name, as I soon found out, was Mr Phlapp.
    ‘Settle down now,’ said Mr Phlapp, in a perfectly normal voice. It turned out that Phlapp was about the least insane adult I’d met at Camp Fatso. True, there were a couple of things that limited his skills as a PE instructor. The first was that he didn’t seem to like sport very much. The second was that, instead of sport, he had a strange obsession with human pyramids. This is when you get kids to stand on each other’s shoulders, each layer being smaller than the one below it, the whole forming a rough pyramid shape. It was an unpleasant and hazardous operation, especially considering the size of those taking part.
    ‘Right, let’s begin with a basic three-two-one,’ said Phlapp, and soon the field was scattered with little pyramids: three kids on the bottom row, then two, then one. I was put in a group with J-Man, Dong, Flo and two fat twins from another hut, whom everyone called the Tweedles. I began on the bottom row, which was both the easiest and the hardest job. Easiest, because it required zero skill – you just had to stand there without falling over. Hardest, because you had what felt like several tons worth of fatty standing on your shoulders.
    ‘Good work, nice shape, very pyramidical,’ said Phlapp in an encouraging way. ‘Now let’s have a good clean dismount.’
    There was quite a lot of falling, landing face-down in the mud, etc., etc., but no serious injuries.
    ‘Excellent, time to move up to the classic four-three-two-one.’
    This time round I found myself on the second tier. I had to climb up the legs, back and shoulders of the guy beneath me – who, luckily, was the titanic Igor. To him I was as insignificant as a fly on an ox.
    I didn’t mind the second tier. It wasn’t high enough for my fear of heights to kick in, and the strain wasn’t as bad as being at the bottom. But it still isn’t exactly how I’d choose to spend my leisure hours. Especially not as the wind and rain had begun to pick up.
    ‘OK, one more and we’ll call it a day,’ said Phlapp. ‘And let’s make it the majestic five-four-three-two-one. You, young man, the new boy, what’s your name?’
    ‘Me, sir? Dermot.’
    ‘Why don’t you have a go at the top?’
    ‘Er . . .’
    Obviously, there were at least nine reasons why I shouldn’t ‘have a go at the top’.
    1. I was a rank beginner at the art of the human pyramid.
    2. I was afraid of heights.
    3. I was a bit of a klutz. Not as bad as some of my nerdy friends back at school, such as Renfrew and Spam, who basically couldn’t be trusted to tie their own shoelaces without stabbing themselves in the eye, but you wouldn’t want to let me hold your priceless Ming vase.
    4. I didn’t want to.
    5. It was now really, really rainy and windy.
    6. It (i.e. the formation of the human pyramid) was a truly stupid activity at the best of times.
    7. I mean, a human pyramid? Why . . .?
    8. OK, I’m struggling. Maybe there were just seven reasons.
    9. Did I mention that I really didn’t want to do it?
    But they were all there waiting for me. They were the cake, and I was the cherry, so I began to clamber up the enormous, but still uncapped, human pyramid that had miraculously formed before my very eyes.
    Yes, it was the Great Pyramid of Fat Geezers!
    It wasn’t just my crew any more, but other kids I didn’t know, so I had to keep saying, ‘Excuse me,’ and, ‘Sorry about that,’ and, ‘Ooops!’ whenever I put my foot or hand in the wrong place – and it turns out that almost everywhere is the wrong place when one human being is climbing over