Who is this little girl? I don’t recognise her, but I do remember.

Wow, what a sorting day we ended up having. You know if we had planned to do this job it would never had got it done, but we just started by looking for the old video player up in the attic and ended up having a major sort out, the first in the 12 years of being in this house! So as you can imagine we found all sorts of things!

I found all my baby pictures and growing up pictures that my witch of a mother gave to me, probably because she couldn’t be bothered with them any more! That’s the kinda kind and sensitive person she is! And it brings up all kind of different feelings. They say that photos tells no lies, but that is rubbish, that smile you see up there is hiding so much, in fact. I was a very smiley child, always cheerful, but the reality of it was I just learnt to become a good actress, the smile hiding everything, trying to please everyone.

The smile that hid the living in dirt and squaller,
the smile hiding emotional neglect,
the smile hiding hunger,
the smile hiding chaos,
the smile hiding unwanted attention,
but the smile hiding not being noticed,
even though that little girl you see had all the material things she could ever desire, it was all empty love.

I look like a boy in this don’t I, nice and 70s. So after sorting out the attic we thought we may as well sort out ‘that’ photo draw, you know the one, the one that you have been shoving photos in for years! Well there were pictures from past holidays and the boys growing up, school pictures etc, bloody hell where did all that time go, yesterday they looked like this…

And now all grown up and the eldest left home.

The thing that entertained my very bright A* child of mine was reading through my old school reports. I think he was surprised how stupid I was then. But he hasn’t got a clue what I had to contend with, all my effort and brain power was about getting through and coping! I left primary school not being able to read or write.

Here are the encouraging words my teachers had to say about me! This is from secondary school.

Rather weak!… thanks! You certainly knew how to build a child’s confidence!

As you can tell they really thought a lot of me. What they didn’t know then was I wasn’t emotionally ready for learning. My god if we said things like that in school reports now the parents would have a field day! Not that I would want to mind!

All I can say I haven’t done bad for myself, have I, considering!