Reader, it was really Nothing

Monday 19.10.09

Now then this never happens. I can't think of anything to write.

It's like when I was at Primary School. There was a fashion for getting children from the age of six up to keep a diary. We had to write in our diaries every morning after assembly. I remember that plenty of my mates would say, 'But Miss, I haven't got anything to write'. I don't remember her advice as by that time, I would have started scrawling. At that time, I didn't consider it important to be truthful. I enjoyed making up elaborate accounts of what might have happened the night before. In typical fantasy week, there would be a birthday in my household, I got new clothes, was visited by hundreds of grannies and aunties, and there were buns for tea except for when there was Arctic Roll (an ice-cream desert) which we did have on occasion. I almost never fell back on the more truthful stalwarts of children's' diaries, 'I went home and had tea and played and went to bed' or, 'I did nothing today'.

I remember that I didn't especially like the teacher I had, although I don't remember why. She was popular with the other kids, but in spite of thinking her hair was nice (she had a Kate Jackson from Charlies Angels bob before the series was made) I wasn't keen. One thing I do recall is noticing that kids would take their diary up with one sentence done. Miss would ask them if they could do any more, they would say 'no' and that would be that, they'd be off to the dressing up corner. It was the early '70 when pretend play was educational. I thought I'd try the same, but never got away with it. She told me I could do better, and she was right, although I'd have liked to be dressing up in old bridesmaids dresses instead of writing a diary in which I was purporting to have been a bridesmaid for a different imaginary cousin every weekend. It was an enduring frustration of my childhood that I was in fact, in the absence of the necessary older sisters or cousins never ever a bridesmaid.

Anyway, it's only now, as an adult writing the truth that I'm finding myself with nothing to say. Nick and I had a quiet weekend as I have a bad cold. I went to an Open University tutorial that was attended by myself and one other person in which I learned not to bother to download a program that I hadn't bothered to download. Bingley has stopped pooping in the night. I told you I had nothing to say. Hey, how about this?

I spent the weekend in Paris sipping hot chocolate in a cafe by the Seine, soaking up the last of the Autumn sunshine. Thank goodness for my cashmere coat. Jarvis Cocker happened along, and we got to discussing art and drinking absinthe together like old chums. I think he might have fancied me..... that's more of a diary isn't it?