(Gosforth, age 14)
Five-year diary: My sister went back to school today. It would be my turn soon enough. She went to a day school, and I went to a boarding school. She’d come home every night, but I wouldn’t be home until July.
Mum brought breakfast up to me. I was still in that half-state between working and drifting, sitting with my project but not entirely inside it.
I stayed at home, working on my various projects: geography, history, art and storytelling.
I have another nine days to fill. There’s a lot of holiday to make up for being at school 24/7 for months on end.
My sister rang from school mid-morning. She’d forgotten her books.
I went to the Photoshop on the High Street. My prints weren’t in. So no photos from Appleby yet, ones of Brough and Brougham Castles, or of Knock Pike. Pictures I had hoped to include in my Geography and History Projects.
Mum decided we should go out for lunch.
We drove to the Blue Bell in Rothbury, then on towards Bamburgh and the beach. The Northumberland air, the space looking out across the North Sea —it felt like she was returning to a time in her youth.
At some point, we talked about the future. About writing. I was trying to form something, though I didn’t yet have the tools.
I might have rung Julie-Anne, or thought about it—there was always that sense of reaching outward, testing connection.
There was a plan, vaguely, to go to her place—or to go out.
Later, I watched nature films—quiet, observational, distant.
Then the news: a bomb in Birmingham. “Blast.” Injuries—legs, eyes. The real world intrudes, briefly, violently.
And through it all, one clear thread: I wanted to write my book
Leave a Reply