Essex Girl

Maria Ferguson

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786829870
• eBook ISBN: 9781786829863
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

"Essex Girl: a young working-class woman from the Essex area, typically considered as being unintelligent, materialistic, devoid of taste and sexually promiscuous." – Collins English Dictionary Kirsty is a sixteen-year-old girl growing up in '00s Brentwood. She likes WKD, Elton John, Pie & Mash and Charlie Red body spray. She's on a quest to win Sexy Ricky's heart and pass her GCSEs. She also has a secret to tell you. One she can't tell anyone else. Follow Kirsty's story through the house parties and Irish pubs of Essex. From West Ham matches to choir practice, pre-drinks to registration, she will tell you what it's really like to be an Essex Girl.

Essex Girl

First performed at the Roundhouse, London, June 2018

Kirsty: Maria Ferguson

Director: Lucy Bairstow

All photography: Suzi Corker

For my fellow Essex Girls…

Characters

KIRSTY

sixteen, Essex Girl

NOTE

The prologue and epilogue are written in the voice of the writer and are spoken by the same person portraying KIRSTY.

The main playing space is blank. There are objects placed in a line from upstage to downstage on both sides. The objects are a grey hoodie, an old mobile phone, an inflatable chair, a small teddy bear, a full bottle of WKD Blue and a can of Charlie Red body spray. The actor enters and speaks the prologue from centre stage.

PROLOGUE

I come from a place full of sticky dance floors and early morning chips. Where broken glass on surfaces is to be expected. Where we walked into clubs three years or more before we had sufficient ID and push-up bras and platform wedges hid a multitude of sins. Where we thought that sticky back plastic on passports could hide the fact that we weren’t yet women. I come from a place where they still call us whores and slags and sluts and bitches. Unintelligent, materialistic, promiscuous, devoid of taste. I come from fake tan and miniskirts, white stilettos and highlights. Home of the chav, council estates, the BNP, and make-up caked on to skin that never needed it. I come from always wanting more. City boys and commuters, fake tits at sixteen. I come from amateur dramatics. Drinks thrown in faces on a Friday night, Time & Envy under-eighteens, WKD Blue. I come from over-the-knee white socks, pleated skirts rolled up high, white eyeliner, GHDs. I come from catcalls in the street, house parties, saving up for Burberry scarves, moodies from the market. Louis Vuitton. I come from snooker halls we could still smoke in. Parks where we kissed boys in the dark and they’d tell their mates that we went further than we actually did. Adidas trackies, Estuary English. Shuttle bus to Sugar Hut, too much skin, free champagne, constantly lying about your age, constantly wanting more and now and growing up way too fast. I come from Oh My God, Shut Up! From you’re mugging me off and leave it out, I come from doing anything just to be let into a club, I come from it’s a laugh, love, come on, it’s just a bit of fun. I come from believing success looks like a ring, and a house, and a pram. I come from two Wetherspoons on the same street, pound shops and bookies. Champagne taste, lemonade budget. Whatever job will get me rich, whatever clothes make me look fit, whatever car makes me look swish, might be drowning in debt but I still look sick. Babes, I come from Essex.

Cue music – noughties banger. Lights go from a general wash to a square of light centre stage. The actor builds our set as the music plays, bringing each object from side stage into the square. First, the inflatable chair, then the WKD, the teddy bear and the old mobile phone. She sprays the body spray into the space and over herself before throwing it to a member of the audience. She then puts on and zips up the hoodie and places the mobile phone in the pocket. Throughout the text she is free to move around inside the square as if relaxing at home.

*

KIRSTY: Theatre is about suspending disbelief, so now I’m Kirsty and I’m sixteen. This is my bedroom. Nothing special, I know. I go to the girls’ school in Brentwood. Everyone calls us deckchairs, ’cause we have to wear these brown, blue and yellow striped blazers – they’re disgusting – but we don’t have it as bad as the Sacred Tarts. Sorry, I mean, the girls from Sacred Heart. That’s the girls’ school in Upminster. Catholic, same as ours. Their uniform might not be as bad, but they get called the Whores on the Hill, and I reckon they must be pretty slutty ’cause this girl Chelsea got off with Carly’s boyfriend at the Campion disco in Year 8. Oh, Campion’s the boys’ school but they don’t have a nickname. They’re just the Campion boys.

Anyway, I’m hiding up here ’cause Mum’s just got in, she’s in the kitchen, and if I go down there, she’ll probably smell the smoke. She’s got a nose like a flippin’ bloodhound. I know she don’t like smoking because of Nan and that but I’m sixteen now. I’ve got a National Insurance Number. I can make my own decisions.

Besides, Carly was saying today that smoking’s probably good for you, actually, because it makes you eat less. She said when her mum stopped smoking, she put on two stone, ’cause whenever she wanted a fag, she’d just have a Wagon Wheel instead. She was on forty a day. I mean Carly was saying this eating a packet of Nice n Spicy Nik Naks in between puffs of her Silk Cut but, I have seen her mum and she has got fat so I’m not taking any chances.

Last week Dad found a lighter in my pocket, and he grabbed my face like he wanted to hit me. He didn’t though. Obviously. He just asked how I could be so fucking stupid. I said it was Billie’s, but he didn’t believe me.

Billie’s my best mate. Has been since we were kids. I mean we’re more like sisters really. We used to dress the same, pretend we were twins, which is silly really ’cause she’s much taller and skinnier than me. She’s a lucky bitch. Like, her parents don’t give her shit about anything. She nicks her dad’s fags and brings bottles of spirits from his cupboard to parties, but he never says nothing. We reckon it’s ’cause he knows we know that he’s been copping off with some other bird, and Billie’s mum probably knows it too but she don’t say nothing neither, and Billie says as long as she gets twenty B&H when she wants them she don’t give a shit who he’s shagging.

I stay at Billie’s most weekends. She lives in this massive house in Mill Hill. Everyone at school calls it Rich Road. Some footballers live there and everything! She’s got a pool, a trampoline, and a bar. In her house! How mental is that?

When I go round we usually just rinse Malibu from her dad’s optics and smoke and watch films upstairs. But sometimes, when her dad has poker nights, we have a laugh with his mates. Before they start playing, obviously, we’re not allowed to watch. And we’re definitely not allowed to join in. My favourite’s Black Gary. I don’t know why we call him Black Gary. There’s no other Gary. But he is black.

They put old music on and tell us stories. Mainly about the East End, and how they’re self-made, and how they didn’t waste time with degrees but now they’re richer than all the toffee-nosed wankers that did.

Terry, that’s Billie’s dad, he’s got his own constructio...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Essex Girl
• Glossary
• Essex Girl ‘Jokes’