Journal - Dear Kitty

I was gifted a five year diary when I was about fourteen. Someone, an adult, made unkind remarks about me and diary keeping. I was a sensitive soul and the book remained untouched in a drawer for a year.

I started to write a diary, or journal when I was fifteen. From age seventeen, I missed a lot of years when recording my life on paper wasn’t a priority. I wish it had been, then I could look back on events, see the person I was and compare myself with who I am now. Life is what makes us who we are. Life throws things at us and how we deal with those ups and downs shapes us. Ideally, we learn from life’s experiences, good and bad, and avoid repeating mistakes. No need to beat ourselves up if we don’t get it right. It’s a shame I don’t have the missing bits written down, but there was a time when keeping a diary got me into a spot of bother and another time when it caused me great embarrassment, so perhaps it is a good thing. Why, then, I wonder, do I bother to write a journal now, most days? I see it as therapeutic rather than self-indulgent and hopefully it’s a therapy that does me good and creates memories to read back on. For me, that is. I can’t imagine anyone else being interested.

When Anne Frank began writing to Kitty, she had no idea of the impact those two years of her recorded life would eventually have on the rest of the world. She received a diary for her 13th birthday in June, 1942. A month later, she and her family were in hiding. Her ‘Dear Kitty’ diary entries tell of her hopes and dreams and her adolescent awareness as she developed an attraction for Peter van Pels, who shared the hiding place with his family. She wrote of personal relationships with her family and Peter’s family, her fear of discovery and worries about the disappearance of Jews. Anne died in Belsen concentration camp in 1944. She was fifteen years old. Her diary, discovered by her father, was first published in the UK in 1952, as ‘Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl’. I have laughed and cried my way through that book. It is more than special.

There are many novels written in the epistolary form. I’ll mention a few favourites. ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ by Anne Bronte is framed round letters from the character Gilbert Markham to his friend about events connected with his meeting with the character Helen Graham, the tenant. ‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and Three Quarters’, by Sue Townsend, is written as a diary. ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker, based on letters and newspaper articles is a Gothic horror story which has done a lot for Whitby tourism.

My Haiku,

Secrets coded in
Fountain pen and turquoise ink,
When I was fifteen.

In difficult times,
Between neatly written lines
Are tears of despair.

Cutting my own path,
Italics with flourishes
Speak of confidence.

Scribbled in biro,
Telling of the days events
With love and laughter.

“Look how far you’ve come!”
I remind myself to take
The best from each day.

PMW 2025

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Dens - Sanctuary

My eldest grandson liked to enclose himself in the book corner. He discovered that by opening a door to the toy cupboard and a door on the fitted unit, he could comfortably place himself behind them, almost hidden and with plenty of room to look at books or build Duplo. He liked his own space even before a brother and sister came along to disturb his peace. It wasn’t long before he worked out how easily all the cushions came off the sofa and what a good idea it was to sit there and fashion himself a den by using the large ones to make sides and a smaller one for the top, or a roof. Sometimes a blanket was brought from upstairs and draped over the entire construction and he would be in there with a book or watch TV through a gap. A good den is great comfort.

1967. For the first time in my life, we were living in a house instead of a pub. It felt weird, so quiet, no juke-box filtering through the building, no babble of a thousand indecipherable conversations.  The house itself was very nice, a three bedroomed detached with a garage in what estate agents would describe as a ‘sought after’ area in South Shore. We weren’t there for very long, the way things turned out, and I have some happy memories, in spite of it being a miserable time in my life. My mother was seriously ill, having surgeries and treatments and it was better for her to have the privacy the pub didn’t have, which is why my parents bought the house. I started senior school, a school I didn’t want to go to but had to because I’d failed my eleven-plus. My friends passed and went to the school I longed to be at, but it wasn’t to be. Failed! I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since. On the bus I was regularly picked on by pupils from another school. I had to take two buses and often chose to walk the longest part of my journey rather than be at the mercy of the bullies.  The house became home with us in it and our cosy furniture. We had gardens, front and back. Dad got a swing for me and my sister and the wooden shed at the end of the back garden became a den. A deck chair, a cushion from the house, a drink of orange and whatever book I was up to in Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series was all I needed. The shed housed the new gardening tools propped up in a corner. Gardening became my father’s weekend chore. As the air chilled and the daylight lessened, I moved to an indoor den. My sister’s room, which must have been massive when I think what was in there and all the space to play, had her single bed and also bunk beds where I slept when our grandparents stayed over and had my room. The bottom bunk made a great den by using the tartan blanket on the top bunk as a curtain for the length and borrowing a big towel from the airing cupboard to hang over the end. The fun was short-lived. I wasn’t supposed to ‘mess’ in my sister’s room, even if she, aged about 4, didn’t seem to mind. It sticks in my mind how cold that winter, 1967/68 was. No central heating, but the house was cosy with a coal fire in the back living room and hot water bottles in bed. To add to my misery, I developed chilblains on my feet and a seemingly ever-lasting verruca. 1968 brought joy and normality. My mother had made a good recovery and we were moving back to the pub. School remained a nightmare until 4^th year but everything else was good.

My grandchildren can make a mess, make a noise and make dens to their hearts content. They can also tidy up afterwards.

My poem,

“I’m in my den!”
The voice, muffled
By the cushions
Forming a cube,
Of a fashion,
In the place where
There’s a sofa,
Now and again.
And giggling
While I pretend
I cannot find
Him, in the blocks
Of patterned green,
And I’m blind
To the red socks
And toes wiggling. 

PMW 2022

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Turn of Events - Changing the Course of a Life

My Dad at about the time he became a Bevin Boy

I've written before about how I believe in fate - or chance - whatever you want to call it, so this week's blog was right up my street.  There have been numerous times in my life when one event has set off a chain of others.  I love the way this can happen.  As in the film, Sliding Doors, I'm always aware that one decision can send things flying in a different direction. In my case, there has usually been a happy ending. 

This morning, pondering on what to write for this post, I spoke to my dad about an incident he'd told me about in his earlier life.  I was thinking I might include it in the post.  As we talked, I was impressed with his memory of events, the details that had obviously stuck in his mind.  In passing, he told me he'd once written it all down and if he could find it he'd send it to me. 

Half an hour later (after a few blips and phone calls) an email appeared in my inbox. My intention was to include some of the story in my post, but having read it, and been transported back to the 1940s, I took the unprecedented decision to include the piece in its entirety.  It was written in 2011, and the only amendments are that he has now been married sixty eight years and has eight great grandchildren, and two step great grandchildren. 

So here, without further ado is dad's account of a Turn of Events that began in 1943. (With apologies for quality and different sizes - they were sent as PNG files and try as I might, I can't get the images of the pages the same size)

The Reason I am Here by Jill Reidy 

Who would have thought

That a loose shoe lace 

Could have caused such a turn of events?

The serendipity of a random digit 

The lace undone

That decision

To stop and tie 

While others overtook 

And sealed their own inevitable fate 

Is the reason I am here 

Once a pacifist

That eager boy 

Dreaming of the fight

To save his country

Initial disappointment 

A small price to pay 

For seventy more years

A wife and family

And a life well lived

Scarred knees 

The only reminders 

Of a lace untied 

The decision

The lucky pause

That changed the course 

Of a young man's life 

And the reason I am here

Thanks for reading      Jill

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Pretty Lights

This week's theme is Illuminations. I looked into my heart; gazed at the tower burning; watched a firefly die.

I have stood on the verge of the abyss that is my mind. The vast chasm that leads to the innermost workings of what it means to be me. I asked the librarian to offer me something to read regarding this theme. She just laughed at me and told me to feel.

I wrote from the immediate mind.

Whatever that means? 

Pretty Lights

I walk

Above me hangs the forgotten dreams of a billion stars

Night hugs the air and cars drive past

Wonderment in the eyes of infant passengers

A spectrum of waste

Exploding in a million ideas

I like the blue sparkles

I see

Beneath me water protects the stone from prying eyes

Clouds released their wet prisoners with audible signs

Showing us the door to another place

Parallel universe.

The damp reflects

I like the mirror world

I hear

Beside me laughter pours from the excited vessels

Young canvases for colour to be experimental

Dancing plastic shines too bright

This unfeeling entertainer

Automaton doing what it's told

I like the playing bears.

I taste

In front of me sugar screams as toothless crones throw them in oil boiling

Breaded rings crying out to be someone else’s precious thing

Potatoes wrapped in fat soaked paper

Ungrateful hands grab

Consume for little energy

I like the hot dogs

I smell

Behind me souls of the faceless swam attracted by the light

Sweat of parents desperate to see through their past child's sight

Hope of warm winters from the money takers

Corruption of the voted managers

Desperation of the broken

I like the pretty lights

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