Monday, April 03, 2006

Gold Star

When my Mum moved house a couple of years ago, she arranged to have about a dozen boxes full of miscellania that she'd been storing for me in her loft sent over to France. They're now in my own loft.
The other day I was going through one, wondering what to keep and what to chuck out, when I came across one of my very first writing jotters from primary school. I suppose it was my first plog — paper log.
Here's a sample page. You probably can't read the 6-year-old writing so the text is underneath.




29.11.68 Helping Mumy
I oftin help mumy. I yosily dry the dishis and Ronald washis the dishis. Wen I have nothing to do I asc Mumy wot to do for her. At Grany's I wash the dishis and dray them. Sumtim I dust. On Sundy or Mundy mumy is gong to do the spring clining I am gong to help. I aryn with my toy aryn with Mumy.
Can you hear the Hebridean accent in that last sentence?
This time next year, Z should be at about the same stage in reading and writing, at least in French. I can't wait for him to start plogging. I wonder if he'll come up with as many fibs as I did to gain the teacher's approval.

7 comments:

Neil said...

Did the Hebrides have Nora the Explorer???

Kim/Thomas said...

How sweet that is, I would love to see something I wrote at that age, well I have a desk that I wrote on, but that doesn't count! It just says, "my mommy is making me mad right now" or something like that, I was 8 apparently!

Ms Mac said...

Oh my! You had a toy aryn? I would have killed for one of those and a toy green grocer's cart, remember those?

Lesley said...

Neil: It was more like Balamory, to be honest.

Kim: Sounds as if adolescence kicked in early for you!

Ms Mac: The thing I really wanted was one of these model heads that you put could try out hairdressing on. I never got one.

leon's life said...

I wanted one of those heads too. The one that you could do the makeup on and and a long pigtail.
When you pushed a button and the haie got longer/shorter, is that the one ?

I never even had a Barbie but a much smaller version, I think they were called 'Tammy dolls' and were about 15cms high. Does anyone else remember those ?

Anonymous said...

It must be strange looking at those crayon marks thinking that your own (somewhat older) hands carefully drew them and thinking about the pleasure that you must have had when you got your gold star! It's wonderful and scary at the same time.

My mother constantly cleared our various house - with seven kids I suppose there must have been just too much to keep. I have nothing like this, sadly.

Lesley said...

Pauline: I had a Tammy doll too! She was a bit chubbier than Barbie.

Wendy: You have to say it out loud with a Scottish accent, it's an iron.

Sarah: I remember studying some philosopher years ago who reasoned that 60-year-old general is not the same person as the 40-year-old soldier, who in turn is not the 4-year-old child. I didn't know what he was talking about, but now I do. I feel only a very vague relationship to the child I once was. Was that really me?

Confinement

Being confined indoors most of the day, just the four of us, is reminding me of the days when my children were wee and most of our weekends ...