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Little Black Dress Life Lessons

School days – the best days of your life… If you consider being made to wear P.E. knickers and study the Industrial Revolution* to constitute ‘best’, that is. (*Thankfully, not at the same time).

Actually, it wasn’t all bad. As well as our ABCs the LBD team learnt highly useful things such as the fine art of making friendship bracelets and how to get out of cross-country running on Thursdays. In honour of Testing Kate, check out our Little Black Dress Life Lessons below to discover other valuable things which we have learnt along the way. In Whitney Gaskell’s smart and sassy new novel bad-luck magnet Kate Bennet certainly learns some lessons in life and love!

Never go out with your biology teacher's son – it will make every lesson a tirade of giggles with the slightest mention of pollen or tadpoles, and leads to you hanging out at your teacher's house at the weekend! Not cool!

Never trust boys in tuxedos at James Bond parties – they’re just overexcited about pretending to be spies. Someone will call the police as they wave their (water) pistols at each other.

Never wash teachers’ cars to raise money for charity as you will have to carry your bucket home on public transport. The bus will lurch. You will fall into it and your bum will become wedged in the bucket. You will be humiliated in front of everyone on the bus. Including all the boys from the school down the road. It will be the most embarrassing moment of your life.

If you are singing 'Knock on Wood' (cool slow version) in a hastily formed band for the sixth form panto and it goes really, really badly (you can see your two best mates cringing in the front row), DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT release a tirade of swearing as the curtains close without FIRST checking that the microphone has been switched OFF. The sound of 1000 kids creased up with laughter will stay with you forever...

Never tell lies like ‘my grandfather keeps dolphins in his swimming pool, oh yes and my uncle owns the Scratch‘n’Sniff sticker factory’ (they were big at the time). You will get way out of your depth, promising everyone free stickers and then get to the very embarrassing point where your entire class will be gathered on the school steps expecting a huge delivery truck. After ten painful minutes you will be forced to mutter something like 'Must have broken down'.

Have you learnt your lesson? Reckon you could teach us a thing or two? Send your tales of testing times at school to littleblackdress@headline.co.uk.