Monday 5 April 2021
The Toilet Roll Archives (25): The Girls vs Zombies (cc the group chat)
Hihellohowareu? Hope you’ve had a wonderful Bank Holiday! Here's a pretty special post in its honour. Big ups to the girls group chat before we get started. All the love always, esp with this consensual roast.
Almost a year ago I was sat in the exact same spot on the
sofa, typing out how different Easter weekend was going to be. Whoop-de-do...here we are again. I think I’m wearing the exact same socks too, with a sneaky hole
in the big toe – classy, boujee, ratchet etc 😊
Things look a bit different though. The gender ratio has shifted
in the flat, I have a new-found passion for mango, and what once seemed an
abundance of time has been well and truly filled to Capacity with a capital C (but who wants to talk about that?) My
Good Friday Cleaning Party was sick tbf. Went harder than Parklife, but with
less Dark Fruits and more fabric detergent.
It was around this time last year we discovered the joys of TikTok and were constantly facetiming each other, chatting for hours on end because there was quite literally nothing else to do. Over the past year, the girls’ group chat has (as ever) been a source of entertainment, of venting, of advice etc. She’s a multi-functional, multi-faceted entity at this point. Out of interest, I scrolled back to see what we were chatting about this time last year and it was the night I found out that several of my linked social media accounts had been continuously being hacked by some third-party app for the better part of a year – I only found out when one of the gals moaned that she was “getting those dodgy emails from [me] again.” My look of horror is still the face of the group chat. Sick. (This is your warning from Fun Auntie Kerry to keep changing up your passwords!)
Speaking of friends and group chats, the whole Who’d Survive
A Zombie Apocalypse thing came up recently. What started out as a bit of a game
turned into a fully fledged screenplay. All the scenarios were considered, all
the character development was brainstormed. Think a B-Tec version of The Walking
Dead. Realistically, I've never understood why people try and battle to survive in those apocalyptic films. I'm pretty sure if myself and the gals tuned into an emergency BBC broadcast on the matter, we'd throw our hands up and declare surrender almost immediately.
But riddle me this: if the purge alarms sound and we’re all at
Lucy’s (because that seems to be where we all congregate more often than not), how
would the Mary’s Lads fare in the midst of apocalyptic crisis?
So we all know the first to go would be the mighty Cleggy.
Amy, we love you so, so much, but when you self-admittedly declared yourself a liability
because of your fear of the dark, we knew we’d have to let you go early on. But
such a sacrifice can only mean that our battle to survive is done in the name of
the Honourable Clegg: A Martyr, A Hero, A Light in the Darkness.
Operation Clegg begins when we pile in a car: Ms Lowe, Lucy Dillon
(no nickname reveal yet again), ‘Victoria Rybak’, Helen of Troy: The Face that Launched
A Thousand Ships, The Mack, Baby-Trap Barry and lil ol’ me. We tear off into
the chaos like all end-of-the-world films begin, even though the most logical
thing would be to stay at home, stay up high and lock the door.
We slam on the accelerator and speed off in the direction of
Pennington Flash, because A) Lucy’s house is around 5 minutes away and B) All
good Zombie films take place in the woods.
We’re zooming down the Lancs, Operation Clegg fully underway. Helen
of Troy has snatched the AUX cord because she probably has a playlist ready and
waiting for this kind of scenario and is it even really a ‘panic’ if Panic! aren’t
blasting down the speakers? No tears, just vibes.
But we aren’t quite mowing down the Zombies at this rate. It
seems the good people of Leigh all share the same mindset: get in the car and get
away. There’s talk of Lilford, there’s talk of Penny, there’s even a Wigan-bomb
dropped here and there, only to be mocked and scoffed at because no one ever chooses
to go to Wigan – not to Jack’s on a Friday, not to go buy a pie, and most
certainly not in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
The traffic down the East Lancs is piling faster than it
does on a Monday at 8:00 am. We’re stopping and starting amongst vehicles of squashed
families. HOT’s playlist of choice is drowned out by the sounds of car horns,
screams and those awful zombie groans that you know smell as bad as they sound.
People are abandoning vehicles and sprinting down the dual carriageway
because it’s faster on foot at this point. We are all staring, aghast, at the
scenes before us. We’ve never seen anything like it. It doesn’t take long for
someone to bash on our window, begging to be let inside.
“Please, please,” they cry out. “I’ll do anything! There has
to be room for one more! Please”
The individual in question is soon joined by others. They’re
banging on the windows and pulling on the doors.
It doesn’t take long for Lucy Dillon to lose her rag. All five
feet two inches of it. 😊
“Would you piss off!?!” she screams. Small in height but large
in fire, Lucy isn’t one for sharing resources. She'll yeet anyone.
“This is our car. You aren’t coming in. Get lost!”
And we don’t know how it happens but it does – a window is
smashed and Lucy is physically removed from the car.
Lucy is down but there’s no time to mourn. Operation Clegg
can’t fall apart before it even gets off the ground. The driver puts her foot
down and, all of a sudden, we’re accelerating, weaving through the traffic
again to the sounds of a much fainter playlist and the muffled sobs of
Baby-Trap Barry because she’s a Pisces.
We pull up to the Flash about five minutes later, because dystopian
fantasies know no time or boundaries (clearly) and it’s at this point we make
the executive decision to lock HOT and BTB in the vehicle for the time being because
neither can be trusted. Their uncontrollable aggression caused by a weird combo
of emotionally-charged chaotic-good means things could get very Lord of the
Flies very quickly. Great qualities to have when channelled appropriately – but
not quite the start we’d need.
Basic human integrity aside, we’d keep our gal pals locked in
the car until the time would come to Release The Hounds. Yes, we’ve found our
designated hunter-gatherers. HOT and BTB would scavenge for food and resources,
bring them back to base, and then we’d put them back in the cage – sorry, I mean
car. They protecc, they attacc, they most certainly will bite back. Guys, I
love you but it’s a case of service and expedience over rights at this point.
Sorry not sorry; executive decision made xoxo.
I’m saying all this as if I could lead the pack and make it all
the way. To be fair, the intent would be there because I wear hoop earrings and
we all know the bigger the hoop, the bigger the ambition and drive, but no one put
it better than Anna-mal-Crossing-Addict/HOT herself when she said “you’d fall over
and cut your leg and get sepsis or something, you absolute let-down.” Can’t say
it didn’t hurt to read, but, hey, where’s the lie? I’d rather succumb to my own
stupidity than a zombie bite.
Let’s pretend this happens after we set up base somewhere
high up (I’m thinking the top of that hill near the canal?) Big ups to Katie
Lowe, everyone’s favourite Chemistry teacher, who would no doubt use her
knowledge of the periodic table to try and make my death a bit more comfortable.
That’s right, Ms Lowe knows her stuff – unlike a certain Chem teacher who said
we didn’t need to turn up on time to pray every morning if we didn’t tell
anyone how she’d sip on her can of Coke Zero and vape at 8.30 am in our lab form
room. Yes, Ms Lowe actually knows things about hydrochloric acid and Bunsen
burners and stuff. She’s probably Harry-Potter-Potion our way out of any potential
messes. One to be protected at all costs.
Speaking of protecting, let’s move to the mother of the GC,
The Mack. You cannot convince me otherwise that Charlotte would die at the
hands of the zombie whilst protecting one of the girls. She is the character in
the movie that everyone is rooting for from the get-go who dies in the
cruellest, most untimely, most devastating of fashions. Think slow-mo, with
some sad monologue playing as a voiceover for good measure. Award-winning stuff
that has the whole cinema whimpering because everyone loves Charl-a-lotte.
Which leaves our adventurer, ‘Victoria Rybak,’ who would
unleash her inner Robinson Crusoe minus the imperialistic white man tendencies
and thrive. ‘Apocalypse’ – what about it? Nothing phases the leader of
Operation Clegg. Cars exploding? Zombie bites? Weapon building? Those 12 years
as a Girl Guide and that “technically, technically” 1 year in the army will
have all been worth it, Vicky; a Bear Grylls with bare skills.
And there we have it, pals: how the group chat would fare in
the midst of a zombie attack. This was as wild a ride to write as it probably would
be to live (and die), but hey, makes a change.
Also thanks to the gals (again) for letting this morph into some weird screenplay-story thing. Happy to split the Netflix royalties equally.
