What a mess

The children are visiting at the moment.

Yesterday Molly and I had matching pigtails.

It was fun.

We also went swimming. When we went in the small kiddies pool, Molly said, “Oo, it feels warm and hot and nice. Like chocolate mousse.” Which is fair enough, I guess.

While everyone else was having fun and splashing about, I decided to go for a swim in the big pool. I didn’t have my goggles but I thought I’d just deal with it. It’s fine. No problem. Off I went, to the grown up pool and got in the lap lane and got my Olympic brain on and set off.

It was a disaster, people! It was a disaster. I started with breast stroke. My face went under so I closed my eyes and breathed out and when I came up, I opened my eyes but there was still lots of water on my face which went in my eyes so that hurt. And confused me. So the next time I went under, I closed my eyes too late. Which confused me further so I forgot to breathe out properly. The next time I came up, my eyes were stinging and I had loads of water in my nose and mouth.

I was a mess. I started to get all breathless cause I was breathing in and out all at the wrong time. My face was a mess cause my eyes were red and I was coughing and spluttering like an idiot. I was panting like an old person trying to climb stairs.

It was just all wrong. All wrong.

I’ll never get to the Brazil Olympics like this. I feel like I’ve really let myself down.

A boy I once loved

Once upon a time, when I was about 14 years old, I went to a Saturday drama group, in pursuit of my ultimate goal of being the best actress in the history of the world. Obviously.

There was a boy at this drama group, called Tommy. Tommy Sherlock. And I was obsessed. He filled my every waking thought. I thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. Ever.

The first week my friend and I went to the group, everyone was introducing themselves and he introduced himself as ‘God’. I thought this was the funniest thing I had heard anyone say in my life.

He had dark hair and blue eyes. He wore Adidas trainers and when my own trainers got too worn out, I bought the same pair that he had. He also wore those grandad socks that were fashionable for a while. The Pringle ones with diamonds on them, you know? So I wore them.

He played the lead male in a peice we worked on for a while. He had to sing at one point and of course he had a great voice. A girl called Sian played his girlfriend in the peice. I hated her. One week she wasn’t there so I stood in for her. When he pretended to put a ring on my finger, he had to touch my hand…. I wrote about it in my diary.

I thought Mrs Laura Sherlock sounded pretty good and worked out a signature I would use.

Now I’ll tell you the sum total of what I knew about him.

………..

Erm…… His name….. And what he looked like….

Erm…..

Erm….

Nope…. I got nothin’.

Seems a bit silly now.

Things I believed as a child

A girl who lived on my road told me that sometimes flies can burrow through your scalp and get into your brain.

She also told me that if you swallow chewing gum it can go into your insides and wrap around your heart.

When a plane flies overhead, if you wave to it and it flashes its red light, it means the pilot has seen you and is letting you know.

 

Be careful!

If the wind blows while you’re doing a stupid face, it will stick that way.

My parents once convinced me that my birthday was on April 25th (it’s not). I remember being extremely doubtful at first then thinking it must be true because they were so convincing.

You never digest sweetcorn! It stays in your tummy FOREVER!

A teacher at school when I was about eight told us that there are lots of little men living inside your body, making sure it works properly and when you feel ill, the baddies were winning. If you take a little nap, it means the goodies can concentrate on fighting the baddies and making you feel well again. I think she meant it symbolically but I was fascinated for many years afterward about this whole little-men-living-inside-me thing.

This one is from infant school. A rumour flew around that when you moved up to junior school, if you wore glasses, the big kids would call you ‘four-eyes.’ We were quite intimidated by this rumour. I’ve no idea why it made such an impact on me as I’ve never worn glasses.

If you step on the lines while walking down the corridor at school, you fancy Marvin! (If you were a boy, I think you were told you fancied Hayley.)

When you’re a grown up, you wear make-up. That’s just what all grown-up women do. When the girl who lived on my road, and who told me about flies and chewing gum, said she wasn’t going to wear make up when she grew up, I was shocked.

My dad once told me that if you eat the instant custard powder straight from the jar, you have to be careful because it would get to your stomach and form a big lump of custard that would get stuck there.

If you sit too close to the TV, your eyes will go square. I was pretty terrified of this one because sometimes my dad would say, ‘O they’re already changing a little bit! Be careful! You’d better sit back!’