Dear Diary...

The summer holidays.
Nothing to do but pack a bag
and go hunting for a dead body.

Ahhh. The summer holidays. Can you smell the freedom? Are you overrun with free time? Are you living your best life? Nah, me neither. Obviously most people haven't had a mid-year, six-week break, since their school days. Indeed, I haven't experienced the thrill of breaking up since leaving my teaching job. But still. It's the summer holidays! The wide-open, sprawling days of possibility. Last term's a distant memory, and the first week of September is ages away. Anything's possible, the world's your oyster, you can lie in bed til noon. 

I was feeling vaguely nostalgic about this recently; about past summers and having all the free time. So much so that I did something I've never ever done before. Are you ready for this? Well let me tell you. I went into the loft and found my teenage diaries. I KNOW. 

You might be surprised to hear this is the first time I've done this. Since they were boxed up in 1999, when I moved into my first adult house, they've been stashed at the back of a variety of attics. The box has remained untouched. Every time I've moved, I've considered binning the thing, but something keeps me from making the leap. The box isn't just diaries - from 1989-1996. It's birthday cards, letters and notebooks too. Genuine historical sources. My memories, as they happened, recorded for posterity. They're my first regular writing efforts. It would be wrong to get rid of them, after all this time.

Sadly I can't find any evidence
of this. (The autobiography,
nor that it's 'ded good.''

Anyway, something made me take the plunge. I got into the attic, pulled out the Christmas decs, made my way through the burst airbeds and old suitcases, and found the box in question. I then spent a stomach churning hour reminding myself of my past.

Pity the teacher whose lunch
choice was recorded 
purely because I had a crush
on him for five minutes.

But who cares, when THE
ECONOMY IS IN TATTERS.

Well. It was certainly insightful. It became clear, almost immediately, that I was obsessed with boys. Happily my crushes lasted approximately four and a half days before being changed up for someone new. I included national news alongside mundane family stuff, and I was no fan of weekly church. But despite the cringe, it was actually fascinating. I had a clear voice. I was completely self-absorbed (an essential job requirement at thirteen) and I wrote about a wide variety of issues (Mostly. There was a lot of crush nonsense in there.)

The GCSE year. I actually got a
Dual Award Science C.
Definately

Three decades later, here I am writing Leeza McAuliffe stories - her thoughts and feelings in diary form. It's mad that until now, I've resisted the urge to mine my own diaries for ideas. But you know what? It was probably best. It meant I could find Leeza's voice without being hampered by my own. Whilst I've loosely based Leeza's diary on my own experiences (eldest in a big family, skint, book lover) I'm glad I didn't have my own entries in my head when I was working out what she wanted to say.

There was just one paragraph that I thought was quite Leeza-like. 

'A really funny nurse came in today in form period (no pun intended) and gave all the girls in our year a period talk. She must think we know nothing. Still, it was a good laugh and she gave us a free packet of Tampax so it wasn't a total waste of time.'

I liked how disparaging I was to the poor woman just doing her job. 'She must think we know nothing!' Honestly. I'm both cringing and proud of my thirteen-year-old confidence. 

I'm probably not going to make a habit of it. Reading my old diaries that is. It's always better to look forward than try to live in the past. Probably. Besides, when I was a teenager, I was so desperate not to be. I wanted control over my life. I wanted my own space, and to live by my own decisions and rules. Reading my teenage ramblings was a really lovely reminder that I've got exactly what I wanted. How brilliant is that?

Have a lovely week, folks.