Waiting In The Lunch Queue

In my school, each year group has a time when they are on first lunch. Being on first lunch is like having a golden ticket that helps you skip the queue to ride on Oblivion in Alton Towers. The queue for lunch is that long. This term, my year is not on first lunch so we have to run all the way from our class rooms to the dining hall - about 150 metres - once we hear the bell go for lunch or we will not get it. If it takes you more than five minutes to get to the dining hall and you are not on first lunch then you have missed early lunch as all the years which are on first lunch will have arrived at the same time as you. They get to jump the queue while you will stand and roast or rather freeze in the cold. So imgaine about thiry girls running as fast as their legs can carry them, school skirts flying open to reveal laddered tights and strained red faces, then you have only imagined half of the stampede to lunch.

Anyway, luckily for me I never have to do all this olympic sprinting. After Africa Week (a week we had celebrating Africa) was held news pretty much got around that I was from Africa and after that getting into lunch was EASY. All I have to do now since that wonderful week is to walk briskly to lunch and queue. When I have positioned myself I then begin to stare at the teacher who is on duty and is in charge of letting students in. My face is not so pinched anymore but sometimes I suck in my cheeks to add emphasis to my looks. I try and look my most pitiful and with my hungry eyes I melt the heart of whoever is at the door and before you know it the teacher says 'Five people on the hot queue (the queue for hot meals). Amazingly I am always the fifth or so person to be let in and after that the teacher deafens his/her ears to the hungry pleas of girls wishing to be let in to lunch. Most likely images of Oxfam adverts flash through these teachers minds when they look at my sucked in cheeks. They most likely say to themselves, 'At least if we can't help every single one of those poor starving African children, we can at least help the ones on our doorstep (me).'

Me, I want my lunch too badly to mind. Lately though, the female teachers have been wising up to my ploys and only the other day I had to wait for like five minutes before I got into lunch. I think I need to suck in my cheeks more.