I brought a box of books back from Hungary, and it contained a few of my old diaries. Not the full series, just a selection from age 8 to about 22. They are probably of interest only to me; I have spent the last couple of nights alternately giggling and horrified at the things I have written down over the course of my life. I have just pulled out the few phrases that might be fit for public consumption:
The first couple of years consists of oneliners about who is currently friends with whom, and the welfare of my guinea pigs. We then move on to a wealth of schoolgirl crushes, which are all pretty much characterised as follows:
18/11/83 Today in science RC used MY pencil. I was the very second person he asked!
There are several detailed reports of dreary family camping holidays, the most thrilling of which is a trip to the Peak District where I spent all the journeys sharing my side of the car with Mickey the dog; my airbed had a puncture, the lens fell out of my glasses, and my ancient third-hand Brownie camera died. Luckily the whole thing was redeemed when I uncovered the Bumper Biggles Book in a book sale and read all five stories before we got home.
It’s easy to spot the point at which I turn into a teenager:
4/3/85 I hate everyone. I want to die sometimes. No-one would notice. No-one likes me. I’m going mad.
Music was an important feature of my teens. Not the sort of music you would approve of, I’m sure; I used to listen to Tommy Vance’s Friday Rock Show, and I wrote about ten pages on the first concert I ever went to, which was Bruce Springsteen in Roundhay Park, Leeds, on 7th July 1985. In February 1986 I recorded my disgust and horror at the Frankie Goes To Hollywood version of Born To Run. I probably needed to get out more.
Then there’s all the horrible bit where my parents split up, bad hair for a decade, first boyfriend, and first experience of getting drunk, which is graphically documented, in very big letters. In 1988 I weighed 8.5 stone.
I studied psychology at university, and the contents of my course seeped into every aspect of my existence. Even my dreams:
2/6/90 [Pages and pages written about one dream] F [my sister, who would have been two years old] was saying words and sentences. I told her she should only be in the holophrastic stage [of language development]. She seemed to understand.
I move on from dreaming about linguistic development, to reporting fascinating facts about stress and anxiety…
12/6/90 Buzz Aldrin was chronically depressed after landing on the moon. Probably because of the stress.
… to diagnosing the reason for the placidity of an acquaintance’s baby:
2/4/91 Apparently she never cries. Well, she was a Low Birth Weight premature baby, and both parents smoke, so perhaps she’s a bit retarded.
I spend a summer au pairing in France, and go on and on and on and on about how lonely and how bored I am. There is also much discussion of a novel that I’m writing, of which I now have absolutely no memory. I wonder what happened to it.
Towards the end of my three years at uni, I develop the scale of Boring-Bastard men, where a score of 0 means the bloke is dull on a stick, and a 10 is utter cad. At that stage in my life, I considered a 5.5 to be ideal.
8/4/92 I conclude that “I love you” is a very overrated phrase anyway. If it is true, you don’t have to say it.
One is so very wise, aged 21.