14 May 1982

Posted on May 14, 2012 by

Fri May XIV

Went to St L’s in the pouring rain to replenish stox for the PARTY tomorrow

This is one of the more curious entries in the diary. The handwriting is appalling, even by my standards. To hazard a guess, I would say that for some long forgotten reason I wrote it whilst standing up and holding the diary in my left hand.

Writing the diary standing up wasn’t uncommon. It ‘lived’ on top of a chest of drawers just inside my bedroom door and so I often wrote it without really removing it from there. It never occurred to me that I was leaving it where everyone else in the family could – and hopefully did – read it. I certainly don’t recall having any great angst over the contents of the diary, largely because it never occurred to me to have any. Everyone in the family knew that I was keeping it and as I had not yet developed the goth-like teenage angst of later years I didn’t bother squirreling it away somewhere.

After all, it isn’t as if I was writing in any great detail. If I had been, I wouldn’t have been trying to piece together the narrative after all of these years.

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13 May 1982

Posted on May 13, 2012 by

Thur May XIII

Lisa went to the zoo. Played Ulcers and actually won, so the ‘jinx’ is broken.

The biggest question going through my mind is just how many times we must’ve played Ulcers for me to think that I was jinxed. I clearly wasn’t that concerned about it, because it isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the diary, but I would say that you have to lose a lot at any board game to start to feel that fate was against you.

It really does emphasise just how little there was for us to do of an evening, though. With only two television channels, the choice was pretty much reading or playing games so far as I was concerned. Mum and Dad of course always had things to do, whilst Lisa and Kevin went to bed pretty soon after we finished dinner in the evening. Homework was supposed to be done when we came in from school, so that left me with whole evenings to fill. Shame the internet wasn’t around then, really.

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12 May 1982

Posted on May 12, 2012 by

Wed May XII

Took Karen to R.T.S. and when I fetched her back I got invited to join in a game of HIT THE DECK with them. Decided to join the youth group and am going Swimming with them on sat.

I have previously mentioned Karen’s membership of Rossgrove Team Scene and how disparaging I would be about them. I can’t help thinking that this was all something which had been set up. It was clearly the first time that I had been into the building itself to collect Karen and may even have been the first time that I had collected her at all. I suspect that someone somewhere thought that I ought to get out of the house more and meet more people during my time in Auckland.

That said, I resisted pretty hard at the time. I didn’t want to join in with a game with people I didn’t know and I suspect that after all of my comments about ‘Rossgrove Weirdos’ I knew that I was going to look pretty silly when they turned out to be normal people that I liked. I remember that Sheelagh, one of the leaders, had to talk me into it and then she and Karen persuaded me to at least try going swimming with them.

So why do I think this was a set up? Well, where was the usual parental roasting for coming home late?

Oh, and if you are wondering how to play ‘hit the deck’ then I have no idea at all. It wasn’t a card game, it was some kind of ball game, but I know no more than that now.

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Friendship

Posted on May 11, 2012 by

I have been inexplicably lucky over the years. I have developed so many friendships that I don’t really deserve to have. Over the course of the next few Fridays I want to tell you about some of them – not all of them, just some of those which have endured for a decade or more

Starting a new job is always strange. A new building, a new work culture and more new people than you can begin to remember. I’ve changed jobs a few times throughout my alleged career – sometimes because I received a better offer, sometimes out of necessity – and yet every time it is the same. It is all new people, again and again.

Well, almost new people.

I started a new job in October 1999. I found it so strange and disorienting that I actually fell ill over the Millennium and in the weeks afterwards. This was despite having recruited Jasmin from my previous job but one to work with me and working with the most intriguing lawyer I shall ever work with. At the time something did not feel right and it affected me, although I never did really work out what it was.

An additional problem was that Jasmin hated the place as well and left after six months. That left me with a bit of a problem, because she would leave just before I married Helen and went on honeymoon, leaving others to recruit someone to replace her.

(I stress at this point that I don’t blame Jasmin at all for this. If you are not happy somewhere there is no point in staying and she wouldn’t be the last person I introduced to that firm who had problems with the environment there)

I returned to work after almost a month away to two surprises. One was that my office had been redecorated, in a colour I approved of. The other was the news that a replacement for Jasmin had been found.

Then they gave me a name.

Immediately, I was transported back in time by roughly six years, to the day that I started work two jobs previously. I was beginning work at the biggest firm I had ever worked for to that point or this. Being introduced to everyone was overwhelming, there were just so many of them. One in particular stood out, though. Amid the chorus of ‘hello’ and ‘pleased to meet you’ I had met a heavily pregnant lady in her last week with the firm. Introduced to me, her response was to laugh and say ‘Good luck’.

A quick check with some other friends from that job confirmed that this was indeed the same person, now the mother of a five year old daughter and returning to work. I was assured that I would have a great time working with her.

That turned out to be a huge understatement. Hazel had an enormously chaotic time away from work, but inside of the office she was a marvel. Being almost impossible to fool is a great talent in itself and she missed nothing during our time working together (well, other than one of my better April Fool tricks) Along the way  we had some great fun and, more importantly, moved on from simply being work colleagues to being good friends.

It is now more than six years since we stopped working together, but that friendship has continued. When Caro and I were married we couldn’t think of anyone better to act as our chief usher and we were delighted that Hazel agreed to do the job. She’s been more than a friend over the years – and that little girl turns 18 this September, so it is a good few years – and we were both thrilled when she finally met the love of her life and married him.

Life may never be easy for her – it is hard to be happy at work when you are almost preternaturally immune to all of the tricks people try to pull on you – but I’ll always be proud to call her my friend.

PS: Hazel has a blog of her own. It is much better written than this one. If she wasn’t  such a good friend I would, frankly, be insanely jealous.

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11 May 1982

Posted on May 11, 2012 by

Tue May XI

The Proverbial Guides’ do? They took over 1 hr on the Treasure hunt, and even then we had to stop them for tea. And we got some very interesting spellings of ‘caravan’.

It took me until quite late in life to realise that spelling wasn’t really my forte (some of you may have noticed this by now, as I don’t always remember to spell check these entries). I was well into working life before I became any good at punctuation and it took even longer before I stopped being so smug about the mistakes other people made in either.

Looking back over the diary one of the most disappointing discoveries has been my handwriting. For years I harboured the delusion that, as a teenager, my writing had been quite neat and that it had only been ruined by my entry into a profession where rapid note taking was an essential part of the job. Now I know that there are only two significant differences, in that my writing is now a lot smaller and I write the letter ‘e’ differently.

Which is all rather frustrating to me. I don’t want to have beautiful, flowing, handwriting, but I would like to be able to read it occasionally. Knowing that it has always been like that and is nothing to do with my accidental career somehow pains me.

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10 May 1982

Posted on May 10, 2012 by

Mon May X

Went to St L’s. Arranged a Treasure hunt for Karens Guides ‘do‘ tomorrow.

Treasure hunts seem to be one of those things that have gone completely out of fashion, but for a time they seemed to be a staple of every party. Adults would even organise them in cars, the object being to either spot things or pick up items along the way.

For children, of course, they took place on foot. The idea was still the same, though. You had to correctly solve the clues, and also collect things such as a feather, or a certain leaf,  as you did so.

I am pretty sure that it was Dad and I who compiled the treasure hunt, although he gets no credit from me. I don’t remember why the house was being filled with girl guides, although I suspect that it was in aid of some badge or another (is there a ‘confusing clue’ badge?), or who had the task of copying all of the clues onto sheets of A4. Judging from my handwriting throughout the diary I sincerely hope that it was Mum or Dad, anything else would have been very unkind.

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9 May 1982

Posted on May 9, 2012 by

Sun May IX

Karen returned. The Thermostat on the water heater went, and the electrician had to come. Lisa and Kevin being right h o r r o r s.

Note the very deliberate spacing of the final word. I don’t know why I did it, other than to try and emphasise just how awful I thought my siblings were. I really ought to have recorded some detail of what they were up to!

I do remember the thermostat going and being very frustrated by it, even though it was no fault of anyone’s. I think it was the fact that it came so soon after the bathroom light had broken. In those days I almost always had a shower before bed, usually spending a very long time just standing in the warm water but occasionally indulging in a spot of off key singing as well. Not being able to take a shower ruined my routine and attracted my ire.

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