I might rail
against the self-absorption of teenagers today, their obsession with their
smartphones, addiction to social media and vain predilection for selfies. But,
when it comes to sheer conceitedness, it turns out they have nothing on my
fifteen-year-old self.
This I
discovered when I unearthed a dusty spiralbound notebook from a broken shoebox
at the back of a shelf of my childhood. My looping adolescent handwriting
overflowed from every page as if the margins of the pad simply could not
contain it.
And, if you
know what was in the last notebooks I happened upon (eviscerated in this blog),
you can imagine how my heart sank.
Surely not
more maudlin poems preoccupied with mortality and saturated in self-pity? Not
more lacklustre investigations of hackneyed topics like ‘My Hobby’, liberally
peppered with protestations about my infamous lack of spare time?
No, here, it
would appear, tellingly exposing the untruthfulness of said protestations, were
word-for-word copies of letters that I had mailed to a variety of unsuspecting
recipients that year.
Hmm, it would
seem a fairly arduous and egotistical undertaking to have carefully transcribed
my letters to my penfriends into a notebook before sending them. Even with my
peculiar mania for documentation, how did I judge this to be a worthwhile use
of my time?
Perhaps I
kept a record in order not to repeat (or contradict) myself in subsequent
letters? I choose to believe this explanation because the alternative, that I
considered them somehow worth preserving for posterity, is not something I wish
to admit, even from this distance.
But,
curiouser still, I shortly after stumble upon laboriously typewritten versions
of these same dreary epistles. This truly does beggar belief. Especially when
you consider the alleged dearth of spare time belaboured in my earlier writing
efforts.
Remember,
this was before we all had personal computers, laptops, mobiles, tablets and
the wherewithal to not only instantly commit our most inane thoughts to
posterity but blast them into the ether without forethought or further ado.
It was before
word processors. I didn't even have an electric or electronic typewriter at the
time, just an old children’s aqua blue manual Smith-Corona Petite. So this
represented a lot of painstaking, time-consuming work. Okay, perhaps it wasn't
quite a Herculean endeavour but, believe me, my (no doubt many) spare hours
could have been more profitably spent.
In the
incriminating Tippex-heavy pages, I’m forever less than subtly blowing my own
trumpet, while relating mundane activities and banal schoolyard exchanges with
friends, but parlaying them up to sound like some kind of systematic rebellion
against an unjust world. Mock exams approach and I claim to be close to a
nervous breakdown. Friends get suspended for what I deem minor offences and I
itch to start a revolution, not that I ever thought to mention it to anyone at
the time. I never would have guessed I had such a talent for melodrama.
[Sister
recalls that one of my (generally older male) penpals was in prison. I protest:
‘It was a mental home … at least I like to characterise it as some sort of
secure facility.’ In fact, the address was a hospital, but possibly a
psychiatric one, somewhere in Kent. I've kept his letters to me too – which
mainly consist of rather too in-depth recitations of repairs he’s made to his
car, sometimes with photos. This correspondent, evidently reading between the
lines to conclude that it was unlikely that I’d have gone anywhere or be doing
anything, had the temerity to turn up on my doorstep unannounced one Saturday.
I was horrified, mortified that I’d opened the door with greasy hair and in my
usual ill-fitting outmoded hand-me-downs. I probably cared more then about
being unable to follow fashion, as dictated by the odd copy of My Guy I
could persuade my parents to buy.]
It seems I
wrote letters (yes, more than one) on my sixteenth birthday, which I describe
as ‘not up to much’. That’d be right. Plus ça change … no one ever made
any fuss about such things in our family. At least I’m able to report that my
brother’s birthday the next month is a similar non-event.
I still can't
get over the hubris behind the conservation of this woefully damning and
unremarkable correspondence. Yet it does offer some insight into the image that
my teenage self wished to project to outsiders, I suppose, albeit a rather
disheartening and sobering one. I guess I had the chance to portray myself and
my daily bland as something less monotonous and ordinary to people who would
probably never meet me in person.
It’s not that
the facts have been changed exactly but the complexion I put on them seeks to
subtly colour and amplify their significance. And this sort of shading also
affords a glimpse into my slightly weird psyche.
Thank
goodness that I don’t seem to have persevered in copying these exceedingly dull
letters out for that long because they are literally excruciatingly
embarrassing to read through.
Full of
thinly disguised criticism of others, my friends, family, etc. (for not being
more like me i.e. liking the same music, TV shows, tennis players, etc.), they
also feature the usual (familiar from my preteen efforts) justifications about
why I'm not really doing anything (but writing in my diary and to my
long-suffering penfriends and copying everything out for no good reason).
Similarly,
I've just discovered a diary (always a heart-stopping moment) from about the
same era, detailing such momentous events as trips with friends to play tennis
on grass courts in Danson Park, to shops (sadly without the benefit of ready
cash) at Eltham, to McDonalds and to see my grandmother in Lewisham Hospital.
It also
carries the dubious honour of containing some more transcriptions of the
toe-curlingly trying-too-hard-to-be-cool-when-I-was-anything-but awful letters,
including one to some poor chap whom I regret to inform that I can't take on as
a penfriend.
He must have
been thanking his lucky stars that day, unless he slit his wrists while reading
the first part of the letter, before realising he was going to be spared future
correspondence.
I break the
news to him gently:
‘Well, I hope you won't be too disappointed but I'm afraid I can't write to you as I have already got so many penfriends that I had to pass the last one on to my sister. It wouldn't be fair to take you on too as you'd probably never get any letters. … I'm really sorry that this was a waste of time.’
Then I think
I no doubt angsted at length over leaving someone utterly heartbroken. Now, in
retrospect, I imagine him ceremoniously burning the letter before doing a
little dance of delighted relief around the ashes.
The diary is
also replete with top tens – of men I fancy, characters in TV shows, songs I
like, songs I've recorded amateurishly on tape (you know the ones, with the
first couple of words missing and the DJ’s voice breaking in at the end), radio
chart positions, boys at school … if I was interested in it, it seems I graded
it into a list. And then if I heard a new song or saw a fresh prospect, I would
immediately pen a new list to include them, sometimes dated just a day after
the superseded one. Not sure how I found the time.
I detail
entire tennis matches and plots to films that I've seen on TV, gushing praise
for players and stars. I also went through a phase of copying out large chunks
of library books I liked, with buying them out of the question due to the fact
that our parents didn't believe in pocket money.
It’s a sad
indictment of my teenage years. My whole existence was the same crashing
non-event bursting at the seams with insignificance. And, if anything, the
writing is worse than in my first years at grammar school, more self-conscious
and less honest, perhaps partly, at least in the case of the letters, because
it was written for others to read.
It seems no
one was immune from my clamorous communications. I also wrote letters to French
and German schoolgirl penfriends, Points of View at the BBC, the Radio
Times, tennis magazines, pirate radio stations and companies who made TV
adverts that I liked the music of. I know this because one was kind enough to
send me a recording of the music in question, which I still have to this day
and still love. (It was an
advert for Long Life beer of all things.)
Perhaps my
primary school was to blame for kick-starting my correspondence habit, as,
purely on the strength of having reasonably legible joined-up writing, I’d been
deputised to write a letter to HM The Queen for her birthday one year; and duly
received a response from one of her ladies-in-waiting. I still have this,
mounted, no expense spared, on the inside of an old exercise book.
Receiving
post in those days was something incredibly desirable – as children we just
never got any, bar the odd birthday card from our Gran; and so were inspired to
write off for stamp approvals galore, needlework guides (no interest in
needlework just coveted the plastic doobries and stuff that came with),
AirCanada brochures (still haven't managed to get there but it looked
breathtakingly beautiful) and pretty much everything whose small print insisted
the applicant be over eighteen but didn't require any proof of the fact or any
money upfront. (I’m pretty sure my little brother also answered one of those
ubiquitous Charles Atlas adverts that promised to turn weaklings into
muscle-bound he-men.)
When this
illicit post landed with a thump on the doormat, you'd have to get to it before
your parents could see what you'd been sending off for. Not easy as at that
time you also had a second delivery to watch out for each day.
In the end
you'd have to confess as the demands for you to purchase the next instalment of
the craftwork periodical or whatever began to mount up.
Still, as
this was about the only misdemeanour I committed as a teenager, I reckon my
parents got off fairly lightly. And they probably thought giving me a few pence
now and then for stamps was a good investment, as it meant that I would be
relatively safely occupied for hours on end composing self-aggrandising drivel
to dispatch to all and sundry.
