(Gosforth, age 14)
Five-year Diary: I work on my history project—Lady Anne Clifford and her castles. It feels like proper detective work. Once in Appleby, I visit both Brough and Brougham Castles.
Julie-Anne is in Brunton
We meet at 2:15. Before I go, I put the rabbit away—an oddly domestic detail, but part of the day all the same.
There are girls around the house for my sister. There often are. I notice them. I always notice them. Girls interest me more than boys—everything about them. I prefer their company, even if I don’t yet know what to do with that preference.
Julie-Anne and I go into town
We wander through shops—Callers, Woolworths, Windows, Eldon Square. I buy things: three records, paper, bits and pieces. It feels purposeful, even if the purpose is unclear.
She gets her bus at the Haymarket. I get mine.
She isn’t really a girlfriend—more a friend who happens to be a girl. We’re too young for anything else. Neither of us is looking for anything physical. Perhaps I tried—holding hands, maybe a kiss—but nothing came of it.
Still, there’s a sense—unformed—that something might have been possible. I could have taken her home and seen her to her door. That might have deserved a proper goodbye. A kiss, even.
I didn’t.
Instead, I get off the bus and hit my head.
It was a clumsy moment, slightly distracted, slightly elsewhere. After that, things blur. A gap in memory. Then nausea. Feeling sick, unsteady, alone in it. Dangerous ground to be on. Decades later, X-rays show I’ve crushed or compressed the sinus bone in my left cheek.
Once home, I fall into a routine. Records on. I only have a mono record player. High jump in the garden. Pack away the history project.
Read from The Reader’s Digest Gardening Year again: jobs for April relating to an established lawn, roses, planting hostas and airlayering rhododendrons.
Television later. Letters left. Supper in the oven. I guess Mum was out.
Everything settles back.
O.K.
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