sheldrake

vensre just posted some wonderful extracts from the diary she kept when she was eight. She says: I think that should be a meme, to post fabulous excerpts of your earliest findable journal.

Ok, against my better judgement, I'll play that game. I started keeping a diary when I was 17. It is, of course, hideously embarrassing. It's also incredibly boring. Several distinct themes emerge. These could be roughly categorised as Is She Really Going Out With Him?; Parties I Have Been Unhappy At; Books I Have Read and Not Understood; and Dodgy, Dodgy Opinions.



On Saturday 29th August I read Maurice, and go on to have a blistering right-on rant for two pages on the Tory government's anti-gay stance. "It's absolutely bloody ridiculous!" I bluster. "What on earth does the government think it's doing? This is 1992 for God's sake! Wake up and get a life, you muppets!!!!"

Unfortunately, I then completely spoil all this by spectacularly failing Feminism 101, when I confidently declare my belief that "men will soon be more discrininated against than women". Yeah... I don't know either. "Why can't people just be people, I say!" I finish, before heading into an exhaustive list of people invited to a party I am shortly to be unhappy at. Profound.

On Tuesday September 1st 1992, whilst on holiday with my parents, we see the primitive dawning of the slash brain:

[my brother] has been complaining incessantly but apart from that it's been a pleasant day [if I talked like this too, it's no wonder I didn't have many friends]. In the evening everybody else played scrabble and I started reading a book called 'The Last of the Wine' out of the bookcase. It was about homosexual lovers in ancient Greece. Is it me, or do I seem to be getting a bit stuck in a rut here?

I later, um, appropriate this book. It's now downstairs in my bookcase. It's ok, I was only stealing from family.

Oh dear, this is sad:

Satuday 15th September
Yesterday I did not watch Eldorado, as I thought that going to Barry Day's party might be marginally more exciting. It was, just. You may wonder why I did not say anything about Barry Day's party before now. The reason is simply that I did not actually know. Yes - everybody had conveniently forgotten to tell me.

13 pages of teenage bitterness follow. Then something terrible happens.

Thursday 19th September
I am extremely annoyed (no pun intended) about the 'Extreme' poster I put up on Monday, which had been torn down by Tuesday. This is wanton vandalism of other people's property (mine) and anyway who has the right to say what we put up in our corner of the common room? Also, our kettle has been nicked.

I am cast in the school play - Much Ado About Nothing - as Margaret, and we go to see an avant garde production in... I don't know, somewhere.

Thursday 17th September
We went to see the Weird play production. It was very weird. [...] There was a lot of sex in it. The marriage scene was especially weird. Everybody wore kimonos and at one point they all took hold of one limb of a baby doll and pulled it apart so that it's head flew across the stage. When Hero fainted her dress stayed standing up. She was apparently really dead and the Friar said some magic chants over her and she appeared to turn into a raging wolf or something. Very odd. My character [...] had sex with several people during the course of the play, including Claudio and the woman who played Conrad, the Friar, Balthazar and a member of the Watch. At one point [...] she appeared wearing what seemed to be baggy pantaloons, a tutu and smoking a pipe. I somehow think I will not be playing Margaret quite like this.

The same day, I turn my attention to current affairs:

Talking of money, the pound collapsed today. I hope the price of pasties won't go up. On the home front, my father has had a row with my mother because she told Mrs Johnson that our chairs came from the rubbish dump.

On September 28th...

Today we were called in to an emergency assembly so that Mr Richards could tell us all that the school has won an award. We are one of only 3 schools in the country, apparently. According to Mr R, the award is 'a sort of thing' and he has to go down to collect it at London from the Prime Minister or someone. He is going to be on TV.

But, sadly...

Tuesday 29th September
Mr Richards was not on TV today, as promised. Or at least he was not on when I looked. How disappointing. It said in the paper that John Major was 'disappointed in the overall standard of entries for the award' so maybe Mr R is not as wonderful as he thinks. Ha, ha!

In November, during a long and boring account of who's seeing who, who's fallen out with who, who's stolen who's boyfriend, who's made who cry, and my opinions on all the above, I use this sentence:

I'm not sure I really care any more all that much anyway, any more.

On Saturday December 5th I write a heartfelt prayer:

Dear heavenly father, Please, please, please, oh Lord, don't let 'Slam Jam' by the WWF Superstars get the Christmas No. 1. Please find a cure for AIDS. Please get Rory Bremner off TV. Please drop a Lightning bolt on Barry Mitchell. Please let me get into Suffolk College and Hollywoods [nightclub]. Please send me a new pencil/pen for Christmas. Amen, love from Julia. xx

I indulge in tedious and occasionally malicious gossip for the rest of December. Later that month we perform the play. I remain in complete denial about my obvious crush on Claudio. Over the Christmas holidays I have some sort of depressive episode, which is a lot of fun. I read a lot of Narnia and write self-pitying poetry. On January 19th I finally come out of denial about Claudio, and on the 24th, mercifully, I run out of pages.