One of the things that we brought back from France after my mum died was a collection of my primary school exercise books.
I spent a very happy hour last night reading my diary entries from when I was five and six years old. Even in my most formative years I was evidently completely devoid of creative imagination, preferring instead to make precise, economical and factual statements.
My favourite entry simply says 'I have two felt pens.'
Assiduous Quinquireme readers would be justified in thinking that not much has changed.
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I bought a new pen today. It was black.
My school diary entries used to revolve around what I had for tea the night before, and what I'd watched on the telly. When my teacher suggested that this might be a bit tedious, I wrote about the dreams I'd had, although these were pretty dull as well, so I made them up.
This was when I discovered the "...and then I woke up" trope of imaginative fiction.
I don't have any diaries from those days, but my younger brother's makes hilarious reading. It seems we spent the 1970s just eating soup and watching TV - he even lists all the programmes! well, what else was there to do???
'Felt pens'? Like to keep in felt sheep?
Pedro, looking miserably out over his village, sighs to his mate 'See-a the feeshing fleet? I mend three of those boats. Do they call me Pedro the Boat Mender? NO. See the houses? I build one of them weeth-a my OWN HANDS. Do they call me Pedro the House Builder? NO.
I shag-a the one sheep . . .
Bless your mum for keeping your stuff.
I still get the occasional pang for my Cindy doll and her PanAm air hostess outfit. Long gone.
I never managed it past March with my diaries.
i recently threw out 1986 as it was so mind-numbingly dull not to mention cringeworthy
mainly it was: tonight we had baked beans on toast for tea and then we watched eastenders and then top of the pops and then i did my french homework (only i didn't finish it and pretended i had left it at home) and then i went to bed - night night, diary!
tedious...and the trend continues over at my blog
p.s. how many felt pens do you own now? the chicklets are but three and have at least a dozen each (felt tip pen inflation perhaps?)
You could do an Andrew Collins and use them for the basis of a book about growing in normal.
My 1970s school diary was always written on a Monday, and each entry ended with the line: "And then I watched the Pink Panther Show and then I went to bed."
Rural Cambridgeshire was a happening place.
There is nothing quite so satisfying to the soul as office supplies (there is NO sarcasm intended here. I have a marvelous metal cabinet full of tiny drawers, which I stole from my graduate department lab, and each tiny drawer has a little cache of pens or erasers or labels and so on). It is heartening to see that you had your priorities straight at such a young age...
My childhood diary has few entries. One of them revolves around watching Nixon resign. I wrote something to the effect that I felt sorry for him and that he had cried and said "I am not a crook." This only proves that I have been gullible all my life. {sigh}
Valerie: Ooh yes, I love stationery, although I'm more partial to notebooks than to pens.
UC: I daren't even look at my diaries from my teenage years. From what I recall they're an endless litany of obsessions with various popstars, actors, boys, etc., interspersed with awful literary pretensions.
Rach: Ditto the rural north of Scotland, although I do seem to have been a terribly outdoorsy child, always planting things in the garden, tidying up dead poultry, building dens with my brother and going for walks. I've made up for this outdoorsiness since.
Arabella: Ooh, I am envious, I was never allowed Sindy (or Barbie, although I didn't want Barbie; she was rubbish and so was Ken).
Llewtrah: God, that would be the dullest book imaginable. I'd quite like to read everyone else's primary school diary entries, though.
My first diary is kind of an embarrassing mixture of a bit blurry analysis of different pony colours, how I wanted to be The Phantom or Jesus and what I had recently watched on the telly.
I wish I could have written something as brilliant as your felt pen entry.
Bless - there's a lot to be said for precision and brevity.
my infant diary had a day-by-day report on whether my mummy had or had not given me my vitmin c pill - until the teacher told me to pack it in.
not much has changed - have i had my omega 3 today or not?
now, if you still HAD those two felt pens ...
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