In conversation with my 18 year old self

Ok, 18 year old me, I’d like you to calm down a little bit. Just…. calm down. You’re a bit crazy and all over the place. You’d do well by scaling it back a bit.

Also, I don’t want to ruin the dream but that ambition you have, to marry Michael Jackson… That’s, um, it’s not going to happen unfortunately. I won’t tell you why. The other ambition, to see him in concert, also doesn’t come true. He does plan a tour in England but, um, he doesn’t make it. Again, I won’t tell you why.

Also, your expectation that you will have a terribly meaningful and world-changing role in life… yeh, turns out you’re a bit ordinary, like everyone else. What a thought, hey?! After all that time being convinced of your own superiority and differentness.

O, and your thing about being ‘boring’, you hate that idea, right? Hate it. Urgh, imagine being boring, that would be the worst! Well, you’re not that bothered anymore. You enjoy the simple pleasures in life – cooking, being outside, growing vegetables, seeing other countries, having lunch with nice friends. Just calm down about the ‘boring’ thing. It’s going to happen. Get over it.

You know how you love going out dancing? In a few years, you won’t really ‘go out’ at all. You hate the idea of being squashed in next to a load of sweaty strangers, actually. You dislike the drunken nonsense that you talk and that other people talk to you. In fact, in about ten years, you’ll barely consume alcohol at all, a few times a year maybe. It’s better that way, trust me. We both know what we get like with a drink in us.

And you don’t wear make up at all. I know, after all that time poking your eyes out, trying to work out how to wear eye liner. No, you don’t wear anything now. You’re too lazy. Sorry to break it to you but you’d rather spent the time in the morning having a cup of tea and blogging than poking your eyes out.

Yeh, you’re a ‘blogger’ now. You’re mad for it! You’re one of those. One of those sad people who thinks others want to read about the minutae of their everyday life. Yup.

And tea is very important to you. Very. Important.

You’ll run off to Africa soon, little Laura. And it will be fabulous. You’ll be enthused. You’ll be good at something. You’ll be in your element. For the next ten years after your gap year, you’ll refer back to it as a time of excitement and adventure. Just a few words of warning though – don’t get too excited by your new friends who take you in on the first night, they’ll drift away in a few months; also, please try and eat better – a plate of rice with some sweetcorn mixed in does not constitute a real meal, unfortunately; another thing, you’re going to mess up the article for the Namibian Independence Day by sleeping through the celebrations, shame on you.

And now, last but not least, F. Scott Fitzgerald still rocks your world. That fact is unchanged throughout your life. They make a new film of The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio. I’m going to let you watch it for yourself and make your own mind up….

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!’

My worst food disasters

I had a recent one and it’s been haunting me and making me think of other kitchen disasters I have had.

I’ve tried making chocolate mousse a few times and can’t quite get it sorted. I don’t know whether I’m not whipping the egg whites enough or something but it seems fine when I make it. It’s the right texture and all that. Then I refrigerate it for a while and when I take it out, it’s just solid. It’s not light and fluffy, it’s heavy and un-airy. And it depresses me. It make ME feel heavy and un-airy. I don’t try to make chocolate mousse anymore.

I made some flapjacks a while ago. They were going to be a present for someone so I made sure I did a good job. When I took them out of the oven, they looked lovely. I left them to cool and went in the front room… Came back ten minutes later… They were black! I’d left them to cool on top of the oven, with the hob on! I NEVER leave the hob on. I’m really strict about turning things off with the oven and hobs. Lovely apricot flapjacks, cooked and finished and ready to eat… and ruined.

When I lived abroad, as opposed to one specific disaster, we just had an ongoing disaster concerning our diet, which was mainly that we were 18 and didn’t really know much about cooking. We mainly ate plates of rice with something added, eg rice with sweetcorn mixed in, rice with chopped onion mixed in, rice with butternut squash, rice with rice. We also made these dumpling-type things which were just flour and water with something added, eg, dumplings with sweetcorn, dumplings with onions…..

My latest one was a marmalade cake. The recipe said to use self raising flour AND baking powder. I thought it seemed wrong but I trusted it anyway. So I made the mixture, put it in the oven and checked on it twenty minutes later. Disaster! The mixture was bubbling like crazy and expanding at an alarming rate. It had overflowed out of the loaf tin and formed a little cake mountain on the bottom of the oven. I didn’t know what to do about it, I turned down the heat and watched it closely. When it eventually stopped exploding, it then sunk into the empty space that had been created from all the bubbles in the middle of the loaf. It looked awful! I felt like a failure. The next morning I woke up and tried it again, plain flour this time. It worked!

I had used the Great British Bake Off cookbook for it and later found out the recipe was one that a guy used then got eliminated! His had sunk too! And then they just put the recipe in the book without changing it! Madness. For anyone else wanting to make a sticky marmalade tea loaf from that cookbook, use plain flour!

P.S. 21 days till first exam. Today’s study topic – Theft. And I can’t find any of my Land Law notes! Oops!