Deleted Scenes
Welcome to the first Teenage Diary newsletter of 2024 — or should I say…
Twenty! Twenty! Four!
Because in my diary 30 years ago, that’s how I chose to announce the arrival of a similar-sounding year … like a club DJ
Then I listed my new year’s resolutions:
To be me! I must have been watching a lot of Oprah.
Interesting that even though I wrote the list on the 1st of January, I decided that the resolutions would start the next day. Allowing myself that one extra day of being unhelpful, untrustworthy and not eating fruit.
In this issue I’m doing something a little different: I’m sharing some extra stuff that didn’t make it into the first batch of newsletters. These are the extracts I photographed during the drafting stage of writing those newsletters, but they didn’t get included because the posts were getting long and I was careful about deviating too much from the story I was telling.
So I think this is a fun way of expanding some of what I’ve already shared with you, and a way for you to see some extra bits and pieces which are still as entertaining / cringe.
You can still enjoy these even if you missed the previous issues, but I’ve included the links too so you can go back and get all the goss if you’d like to.
Here we go!
I LOVE HIM
Back in October, in an issue called Dear Village Print, I told you about the letter I tried, and failed, to write to our very local paper when I was 11 and had decided I wanted to be a writer. What I didn’t show you was this nugget written on the back of the diary where I drafted out those letters:
Of course the BIG question is WHO, WHO did you love, Teresa?
Well I actually don’t know! But one thing I feel sure about is that this mystery man wasn’t anyone “real”, at least not in the sense that he existed in my actual life. At the age of 11 I had crushes on a few celebs (you may remember the Tom Cruise declarations) but real life boyz were a different matter.
In fact, within this same diary I actually started going out with someone … and I absolutely hated it. Thankfully so did he, so we just ignored each other for the whole “relationship” (5 weeks!) Luckily I wrote extensively about how much I hated it all in my diary — and that story will be coming to you soon!
But back to my declaration of I LOVE HIM. What I really like about this is that if you look carefully, underneath there is a second, fainter, “I love him”, which makes it sound like I shouted the first declaration, but whispered that one.
I LOVE HIM! (I love him)
Nice and dramatic and unnecessary.
Smashing friend
You may recall that when I re-read the letters I’d drafted to the Village Print, I noticed how I’d used words that I’m sure were not a natural part of my 11-year old vocabulary: Efficient. Superb. And I realised these were very likely picked up from my dad.
Well, I found another fun example of this language absorption, this time in the diary I kept when Dad took me on that week-long culture and history focused trip to London, back when I was 12.
I made a friend that week: she was the granddaughter of the hotel owners and we got on really well. We were actually penpals for several years afterwards. She was called Stephanie and the word my 12-year old self used to describe her was…
Smashing!
Now, I know you didn’t know my dad, but honestly, that expression is straight from his vernacular.
Side note: As I’m writing this, I realise that “smashing” is a very British expression, so if you’re reading from elsewhere you might not be familiar with it. Essentially it’s a compliment, and it means something like excellent, or wonderful. Only it’s not really very kid-like. An elderly relative might say they had a “smashing time” on holiday, or that their grandson “looks smashing” in his new football kit. I don’t know this for sure, but it also feels especially Yorkshire, or it just has a northern England vibe in general. I’m certain you’d hear it in an episode of Wallace and Gromit.
The other thing I did a lot while in London was shorten some of the place names, so Buckingham Palace became “Buck Pal” and Paddington was “Pad”. Again, this was a habit of my dad’s, who was a regular visitor to the capital. It gave an air of informality to our trip, like we were friends with London or something.
When I mused about this on Instagram recently, my friend Ruth said: Makes me wonder if you’d have gone to Ally Pally would you have shortened that even further to Al Pal? And I said that yes, without a doubt, we would have done that.
Like the inside of a spaceship
Remember that awful week in 1992 when myself and all the girls in my class had to rearrange ourselves into new pairs of best friends? Well, if you recall, as stressful as the process was, I stayed upbeat because I still had my school trip to Thorpe Marsh power station to look forward to.
But what happened at the power station???
Allow me to fill you in.
A couple of notes:
I just know I was disappointed that the journey on the double decker only took 5 minutes.
Nice to see me working through the spellings of “wear”.
The trip was “ok”, Margaret was “ok.” … I think this means both were disappointing.
… apart from the noisy bit where we had to wear ear protectors, obviously!
I remember the part where we looked up at the cooling towers: we had to start by looking at the ground then all lift our heads at the same time, inducing some kind of collective shock and awe moment.
Love that this report is book-ended by my inner 1950s school ma’am personality: Anyway enough of yesterday. Anyway let’s get on with other things.
Side note: As with “smashing”, I’m wondering if power stations are called something else around the world? Maybe power plant in the US? I know Homer works at a nuclear power plant.
Here’s a photo of Thorpe Marsh anyway, so you get the idea.
(This was in its heyday; it was actually decommissioned in 1994. Thoughts go out to Margaret)
Please don’t read
Naturally, every diary I kept had some kind of DO NOT READ warning or request written on the first page. This one is from the diary where I made all of those insane schedules for Christmas 1993.
Upmost!
Sorry, little Teresa.
Good, long hard think
In the same 1993 diary, I had some serious thinking to do. But not for too long.
Have been a bit upset
As if I didn’t have enough on with making all of those Christmas plans in the physical world, I was dealing with the supernatural realm as well:
This is interesting because I do remember being really concerned about existence of ghosts and spirits around this time. The terrifying and now notorious TV show Ghostwatch had aired the year before, and I’d happened to watch it alone.
(If you grew up in the UK in the 90s, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, do read the Wikipedia entry because this was a really interesting piece of TV history.)
So anyway I was totally pulled in by Ghostwatch and believed I was watching live paranormal phenomena being broadcast right there in my living room. In the days and months that followed I convinced myself I could sense a presence in certain rooms of our house, and I had a couple of weird dreams where ghosts were doing casual things around the house like using the hairdryer.
It wasn’t just the fault of Ghostwatch, of course. I’ve spoken to a few friends about this and I think it’s common in the pre or early teen years to get concerned about the possibility of there being more going on in our usually safe spaces. Oh and a few of my family members talked about seeing ghosts, and there was a story that my older brother had experienced something ghostly in my bedroom back when it was his.
Yeah… easy to see why I’d get spooked!
As you can see, I wrote But now I know we haven’t, and that’s because I eventually talked to my mum about it, and she reassured me that we did not have a ghost. I felt better.
Of course, I’m not sure that one chat would have totally quashed my fears, but I do remember feeling relieved that I’d told her, and she’d been very pragmatic about it. Thanks, Mum.
Okay that’s all for this time. I hope you enjoyed this mix of extra bits.
I think the next issue might be about that awful “romance” I mentioned above… I have permission to use the real name of the boy in question (in fact he said he’d be livid if I didn’t) so at least I can leave the redacted pen out of that one.
As always, thanks for being here, and for any and all of the likes, comments and shares. It’s always great to connect and hear what you enjoyed or resonated with.
See you next time,
Teresa x
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Really enjoyed this extra newsletter! Good to finally know your thoughts on the power station trip