I finished up with Jasper Fforde‘s the Big Over Easy and there’s that little sadness realising it could be a year to wait til the next of his chuckle. But the mystery of how Humpty Dumpty died is solved – I didn’t see that coming. Well done yet again Mr Fforde.
Kicking myself for not buying Neate’s City of Tiny Lights on my lunchbreak, I went over to his site and found a little blog about his diary from age 10. I dug out my own diary from the same age: a pastel green affair with a lock that my Aunt had sent me for Christmas at age 8 but only contains a few drawings of aliens and rockets up until age 10. I’ve read through the 4 months it contains and found I was an angsty, dull but hopelessly in love little girl (trying to avoid drawing parallels to my current self…). There’s this bizarre re-occurrence of writing things like:
(28.10.1989) I went into my room at 11.45pm and I kept reading till about 1.04am.
(3.11.1989) Narrelle came at 9.28am and we watched the Meaning of Life. Narrelle left at 1.12pm. Jani got home at about 4.30.
(18.11.1989) At about 3.00pm mum told me I had to walk to Amy’s party. Left at 3.45. Got there at 3.55 so I waited a couple of minutes outside.
(19.12.1989) Tony phoned at about 1.25 and asked if I could go swimming with Alan tomorrow but I said I had to go shopping (which is true).
(22.12.1989) Dad got home at 3.45 and at 4.00 we went shopping.
I was utterly obssessed with time! I remember the two watches I had around then. A black one – no numbers, just two hands with a little moon and star on the ends – that bugged me because it didn’t have a second hand. The other, this one still numberless but it did have a second hand, was a little pink-faced watch whose strap disintegrated from too much swimming. I think I’ve still got it boxed up somewhere with a makeshift strap in place when the replacement fell apart in New Guinea. I must have had my nose glued to those watches every time anything happened. Kids are weird.