the children of the house
2003-04-12 || 11:45 a.m.

I just had one of those really odd experiences when you wake up but you dreamt that you already woke up. I was really confused. I didn't know why I was still in bed because I remembered getting up already.

All I can think about is the past - I hope that means I'm going to die soon.

I have a photo somewhere of me and Sarah standing by the diseased apple tree before it was cut down. I'm sure I was wearing a short red tartan skirt and yellow vest and Sarah was wearing shorts - possibly pink with a blue vest. I think I was probably about 7 years old.

Then I started thinking about starting ballet. Me and Sarah joined together. The beginner classes were Saturday morning in Christchurch hall. It has that funny church hall smell and there was always clouds of dust that you could see spiralling about in the sunlight. I acted in my first ever play in that church hall too. I was second doll in the brownie play when I was 7. I remember Brown Owl afterwards speaking to my mum and saying how she wished she made me first doll because I was really good but she had to give first doll to an older child. I remember wearing my nightdress for the part. I can visualise it now. It had buttons to the waist and then a long skirt, all in white cotton and there were flowers all over it. Oh God that just brought back a really horrible memory. When we were kids and we got invited to parties my mum would make us wear our nighties as long dresses rather than buy us a party dress.

God boring childhood memories. They're not even interesting to me.

I saw my dad last night. I've asked him to come and give a talk to my kids on life in India and bring his photos and stuff. Amazingly, he's agreed and I think he's quite looking forward to it. He was asking me last night what sort of things I wanted him to talk about and what sort of photos to bring and I was telling him that the geography we are going to do is to look at village life in India. As I was talking to him I was trying to superimpose his face when I was a child onto his face now. The things that people remember are so odd though. It must be the same for other people too. Like you can remember, for no discernible reason, one very insignificant day but you've forgotten all the rest. I've got two insignificant memories like that. One when my dad came to pick me up from ballet at the YMCA and it was autumn and we walked home and I kicked the leaves all the way home. Actually, I'm not quite telling the truth here. I know why I remember that time, it was because Karen Williamson had threatened to fight me the next day at school and I was scared and for the first time in my life probably I told someone else. I remember being really nervous about telling him that I was worried. And I knew he wouldn't do anything to help me anyway, my dad is the biggest pacifist in the world ever. If I'd have told my mum it would have been a different story. She'd have been straight up there for a fight. Bex and my sister are like that too. Bex has always reminded me very much of Claire actually which is good because Claire's life is nice and she hasn't done stupid stuff like me and she did everything around the right way which gives me hope that Rebecca will be the same.

This is so rambling and none of it means anything. When me and my sister were very young we had this bible poster on our bedroom door that we got from church. It has a picture of what was then called the GPO tower and a bible quote. I wonder what the quote was. I have this idea in my head that it came from either Ruth or Esther. I just think it did because I'm sure I remember thinking how it was a girl's name.

Me, Sarah, Claire and Lindsay used to play Little House on the Prairie on the bottom of Sarah's stairs. Both our houses had dog leg stair cases but whereas ours ended against the hall wall, hers ended in the middle of the hall which meant you could attach a blanket across the top to be the roof of the wagon and then we used to wrap ourselves in blankets and sit on the landing underneath to cross the prairie and build a new log cabin.

The best stair game was getting into a sleeping bag and doing a sort of sleeping bag luge. That was fucking funny and very dangerous. Especially given that at my house the stairs had three turns so you had to get down and around without knocking yourself out.

That was our 'play as soon as all of the adults have gone to work game'.