We listen to Joseph and talk about Joseph
Not happy with Grandma
Hello friends,
So, last time, I presented you with a list of opening lines from a diary I kept in 1993/1994, when I was 12-13 years old, and I invited you to ‘vote’ for the lines that were most intriguing, or that you just wanted to know more about. Thanks to everyone who emailed, commented here, or commented on Instagram.
I have to say it came as no surprise that this line got the most votes:
I’ve taken a long hard look at myself, and I’ve decided to go for it.
I mean, it’s so loaded! I was 12, and taking a long hard look at myself! So you’ll find out what that was all about very soon.
First, here’s a pic of the 93-94 diary. If you’ve been reading here a while, this is probably now quite a familiar sight.
But did you know, if you look closely, you can just about see that it has ‘KEEP OUT’ etched into the front cover in bubble-style lettering? And I can also tell you that this diary has ‘UR A SADDO LOSER’ scrawled on the back. Lovely stuff.
Okay, let’s get into it.
I’ve taken a long hard look at myself, and I’ve decided to go for it
So this very dramatic and powerful first line was written on Sunday 8th August 1993, when I was 12.
Now here’s the thing: I really wish that what I’d been writing about in my diary age 12 was .. not this. But here we go. I want to share it with you. And it was the 90s.
Yes, the thing I am ‘going for’ is … to lose weight.
Lots could be said here. Where to start?
I know I’ve mentioned before that there will be extracts and shares coming up which are about this topic of weight and body image, those very common worries that so many teenagers contend with. So although I wish the “it” in “I’ve decided to go for it” was something more exciting, this is just the truth of it, so I’ll do my best to articulate some thoughts as I look back here.
First, I guess it’s interesting how I say I’m not going for a target weight, and that it’s more about feeling happy and confident, because that strikes me as quite a grown-up thing to say. But see how there’s a word that comes first: thinner, and obviously it comes first because being thinner is what I really believed would make me confident and happy, at the age of 12 (and I believed it for a long time afterwards) (and I still fight that assumption now too, if I’m totally honest).
When I read that page, so much about it makes me sad. The time frame / deadline of 30 days. Admitting I won’t be a model by then. The way I reassure myself. And the fact that my writing looks young. As mature as I sounded, I was very much still a kid.
To be clear, I’m not against people making healthy choices to look after themselves in whatever way works for them; I do that myself now, I just try to do it in a non-diet-culture-conforming way — or as much as I can given all the conditioning. But I know how this little girl felt, and I know how this kind of thinking and seeing herself has been really hard to shake.
For example, just as I was writing this, I felt peckish. A pointless dialogue unfolded in my head about whether or not to get a bag of crisps. I’m a bit hungry. But how hungry? Maybe get a bag of crisps. Probably shouldn’t. Probably better to wait for dinner which is 3 hours away.
(I didn’t wait.)
(I had a packet of smokey bacon Wotsits, first time trying them. They are okay, but also like eating slightly savoury air. 2.5 / 5)
The inner chat that diet culture embeds in us is so draining to experience: all of the bargaining with yourself, the shades of guilt, the rebelling, the trying to make up for something, the rewards, the judgements. I have reduced that inner chat by A LOT, but, as I’ve just noticed, it still pipes up, though not as often.
As I’ve got older and become more aware of all this, I’m deliberately mindful of how I speak about food to others, and I really notice it when other people, mostly women, even the really strong and seemingly together ones, are openly judgey about what they’re eating, or what they think of what other people are eating. As much as I notice it and think STOP IT, I have sympathy too, because it’s the way we’re shown to be, unfortunately. Like, really unfortunately. The culture, our families, advertising, all of it has contributed to that voice, whether it’s in my head, or whether it’s coming out of someone else’s mouth.
Growing up, I was lucky in that my mum always told me I was lovely. That was something that she herself didn’t hear when she was young, so she was very conscious of giving that to me. But she was also openly critical of her own body and her weight. So that’s what I heard and absorbed. Thinner is better. You get thin by eating the right things or just eating less things. When you lose weight, you are worth more.
I know I’m not alone in this, I’ve had many discussions with some awesome women, and men, who have also been on their own journey of undoing the messages we picked up as kids. And, as I alluded to above, 90s kids.
There’s so much that could be said around this topic, and I’ve found it quite hard to choose what to say here, and how to say it, but I think I’ve got something across. Really I just wanted to paint a bit of a picture around what might have contributed to me, age 12, writing something like that, after that killer opening line.
I’ll move onto the next page now, where I did what 12-year old me did best: I made a schedule! For … “A day in my new life of diet.”
(it’s quite cute how I worded that)
(but also, “life of diet”, yep — it’s where you’re heading, Teresa! Weight off, weight on, weight off, etc, for the forseeable future, my love. It’s what dieting does to you.)
I see the funny side of this very precise timetable. Like how I definitely needed those 30 mins of rest at 8.30am, after the whole 10 minutes of exercise I’d completed between 7.50 and 8am. Phew.
Btw, Sean is my little nephew, who was staying with us over the summer. Good of me to allocate 30 minutes of my day to him. (I think in reality I would have spent most of the day with him, I was a very dedicated and serious Aunty.)
Excellent that I’ve marked out the time to watch Home and Away and Neighbours.
Notice how the schedule is so packed that it looks like a really busy day — kind of like my ridiculous Christmas schedules from the same year.
But actually, to say this is Day One of My New Life Of Diet, there are only two very short periods of exercise (10 and 15 minutes each) plus a 45 minute walk, then lots of “free time” — like my time wasn’t generally free at the age of 12 in the summer holidays?
Bed at 10pm, alarm set for 7.45am — so almost 10 hours of sleep. Good for you.
There’s a food list too, but it’s somewhat confusing, because it includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea. Being from the North of England, ‘dinner’ is the meal we’d have around noon, which is mostly called ‘lunch’ in the rest of the country. We didn’t say ‘lunch’ where I’m from. So I don’t know why I also mention lunch. It seems I thought that was an extra meal before dinner? Like brunch. Who knows. All we can know for sure is I was having crackers.
Rest assured, I am certain I was not just having lettuce and cucumber for tea (tea being the last meal of the day). I think it’s incomplete because I probably needed to find out from Mum what we were actually having for tea. You know, with me being 12 and all. I bet it was fish fingers, something like that.
So there we go, that’s what was behind, or beyond, that great opening line.
I knew as I typed out that list of opening lines that some of the lines that sounded really exciting weren’t leading to anything exciting at all, and I also guessed that no one would vote to know more about the entry that began, “Going round to Dad’s soon” — and I was right!
But I’m going to share it with you anyway, because turns out — it’s fun! I think.
Going round to Dad’s soon
I’ve written about this before: how me and my Dad didn’t have much in common. We always lived apart, and there was a big chunk of my childhood where I didn’t see him at all. We regained contact I was ten, and for me it was like meeting him for the first time, even though I’d spent weekends with him up until I was about three or four. I just didn’t remember much from those very early years, as you’d expect.
Anyway, all this is to say, we were really different, and I was very hesitant to let him into my life.
That’s not actually it.
What I was hesitant about was letting him into my heart. I was happy he was in my life again, but I kept him at arm’s length for most of my teenage years.
But there was one thing that acted as a unifier: the West End musical of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Which regular readers know I adored.
While I know my dad genuinely liked the show, I also know a big part of why he liked it is because I liked it. He’d taken me to see it, neither of us knowing what to expect, me thinking it was for kids and that it’d be boring and then… I fell for it, along with anyone who played the lead role, big time.
My dad was very happy to see how happy I was when watching it, and it was good for us to have that really positive shared experience.
So in February 1994, when I was a couple of months away from my 13th birthday, I wrote this in my diary. It starts quite gently, just me saying I’m going round to dad’s, and that I like going there now — because we listen to Joseph and talk about Joseph.
I love that. Just me and my dad, talking about a musical, listening to the soundtrack of the musical. I mean, how much could there have been to say, really?
Well on this day I planned to take all the programs and souvenir brochures from our London trip with me, so that would have injected a new energy into the chat.
Next, I start to talk about my Grandma (Dad’s mum), who had heard all about how much we loved the show when we came back from London, and so she wanted to see it as well. So Dad bought tickets for us all to go together, along with my two Aunts. I was so excited to be going again, and to be sharing it with more people.
Alas, Grandma did not like it. Here’s me reflecting on how much she didn’t like it in the same diary entry.
Oh dear! Not happy with Grandma.
I do remember, at some point during the live show, looking at her to maybe get a smile or share a “isn’t this BRILLIANT?” moment, and she was just visibly wincing! She really, really hated it.
On the next page, I’m talking about how the actress who played the narrator, Linzi Hately, was THE best:
So my Grandma thought Linzi ruined the show —a musical — by singing all her parts, and should have just spoken them instead. HA! indeed.
Here’s the final part to this rant. Again, Grandma is in the firing line. This is about how when we listened to the tape together, she made a smart remark.
My writing has gone a bit erratic here (high emotions I expect) but essentially what happened is Grandma heard that lyric where the brothers say they’re not a fan of Joseph, and she quipped, '“Neither am I” — meaning I, Grandma, am NOT a Joseph fan [shocked face].
I remember being really ticked off about that!
And rightly so.
OKAY that is all for today. Thank you so much for reading if you got to here.
Please do feel free to forward this email or share a link to the web version with anyone who you think will get something from it. I’d love to get a few more subscribers. And if you haven’t already subscribed, or if you would like to support the newsletter with a paid membership, you can find out more about that here:
I’ll be along again soon with another share from beyond an opening line of this same diary. It’s quite a treasure trove!
In the meantime, you can find me on Instagram, where I share bits of these dairies and also news / reflections on other creative pursuits. I also run a monthly zine club on Patreon, where I create a new zine each month and send it to your actual house! I know, how 90s.
Back soon,
Teresa x
Not sure what a zine is? It’s a small printed publication, made from a love of creating and sharing ideas. I have several that are based on my teenage diaries, and others that use material from my more current journaling. I make and print all of these at home, and they’re available on Etsy if you’d like to take a closer look.
