Child development

 

 I was looking in a drawer and came across a little old A7 spiral-bound notebook ("Compact Note Book B. N. 12. A John Dickinson Product. Made in Great Britain"). The colour cover is a still life of a jar of five roses, four pink and one red. What would be suitable to write in such a book? The first lines answer the question: "William Robert b. 15 September, 1972. weight 7lbs 13 ozs". 

 The book is a journal of 22 pages of brief observations by my mother of the first two and a half years of my life (which is why she chose a pretty, rather than plain notebook to write them in). These run to about 1,450 words. It may be of some general interest as a record of infant development two generations ago. I don't know if much has changed since then in terms of practice or attitudes. I have certainly found it a useful record for myself personally. No-one is left alive who remembers much of me as a baby, so it is curious to be able to observe myself then, a time when I was developing consciousness but before I have specific memories of (they start about the time of the notebook's final entry). The chronology feels right.

 It is also, of course, reassuring to read a personal account of a mother's love for a child when that child was yourself. I came across this journal at the same time that Meta's new generation of smartglasses were launched with the direct pitch to distracted parents, "Never miss a moment". I know that I'd much rather come across a record like this of myself as a baby (observations that she thought worth writing down) than a copious digital file of recordings.  As a character in a Robert Holman play says, "Love is paying attention":

William Robert

 

b. 15 September, 1972

weight 7lbs 13ozs

 

20^th Sept-12 Oct in Special Care Baby Unit with twitches.

 

12^th Oct  Home – weight 9lbs 3ozs, on phenobarbitone medicine

 

*

 At just over 6 weeks W can hold his head up well, smile (just) & make a little cooing noise. He looks at things attentively & can bang on his pram beads.

 

At 3 months W smiles & laughs & babbles very engagingly. He seems very sociable – loves to be talked to and bounced about. He can hold up his head very strongly & just about sit up unassisted for a short time. He eats small quantities of solids and sleeps through the night until 8 or so. I’m still feeding him last thing at night but thinking of downturning this. 

At 4 months

 W now on 4 feeds a day – milk at 7.30-8, milk & cereal at 11, milk & broth at 2, milk & fruit at 6. He then sleeps through the night. He has just learned to turn over from his front to his back but cannot do it without support. Can only sit alone for a very short time. Is more wary of strangers & strange places than he was before but full of smiles for those he knows.

 

Jan 23^rd [1973]

  In hospital – W cut his first tooth! Has settled down well to hosp. routine and smiles at all the nurses.

 

Jan 26^th

  W can now get his thumb to his mouth to suck.

 

Feb 6^th

 W off pheno-barb!

 

 W at 5 months weighs 17lbs 7oz. Is on 3 meals a day most days (though sometimes 4). Likes cereals & fruity things but has turned against savoury tastes.

 

 He is very active and interested in everything. Can pick things up and convey them to his mouth and has discovered his feet – likes to kick them in the air and touch them. Likes to feel the texture of everything. Can’t yet sit without support but likes to be propped up.

 

W at 6 months

 Weighs 18lbs 6oz. Much as at 5 months but can turn over fairly easily now and can also move around the floor by kicking his legs in the air. He’s a very jolly happy baby – simply loves attention and looks at everything that is going on and reaches out for anything he can grab. 4 teeth at [? ?] now coming through. He likes to play with his toys and holds out his hand so that C[atharine] and I can pretend to bite it!

 

April 3^rd

 W can now sit up for short periods unaided.

 

April 21^st

 W at 7 months & is getting much more active though still cannot crawl. Yesterday grabbed some papers of C’s while she was not looking. Makes a varied repertoire of sounds b, d, g etc.

 

May 20^th

 W at 8 months is getting quite a mischievous little boy. He weighs 20lb 6oz. He can move very quickly on the floor by turning over and is always getting out his things. He can pick up small objects delicately between finger & thumb. He makes all sorts of noises & enjoys a game of peep-bo. He cannot yet sit up unaided though he tries. He still has his bottle and shows no sign of being weaned.

 

June 29^th

 W at 9 months + is looking very bonny – rosy & brown, blue eyes, very fair hair with a touch of ginger in it. He now weighs 20lb 7oz but cannot yet manage to crawl through he manages to reach things one would suppose out of reach. For instance he can reach shopping at the bottom of the pram.

 

 He looks at everything very attentively and babbles away in his own language. He has a definite sense of humour & a lovely laugh.

 

 Has just cut 7^th tooth and has given up if unwillingly – his midday bottle. Sucks his thumb a lot.

 

Aug 23^rd

 W weighs 21lbs 13oz. He has been crawling since he was 10 months & is now adept at opening doors & into everything in a flash. Now beginning to try to stand. He seems very bright – likes little games of fitting things with other things. He loved the beach when we were away. Still puts things in his mouth but [?] less than he did. Imitates sounds quite well – says something like ‘William’! Is now on to one bottle a day at rising.

 

Sep 29^th

 W weighs 22lbs 1oz. He is very active & can crawl very fast. Today he first succeeded in pulling himself to his feet in his cot but he has for able to stand with support for some time. He enjoys playing with little cars. He puts them on the seats of chairs and even makes a noise that sounds like car going along.

 

Oct 16^th

 W can now pull himself into standing position quite easily and take a few tentative steps holding on to play pen. Today he managed for the first time to stand one brick on another – beginning of building! He’s mostly cheerful & contented. Has a marvellous appetite. But he also has a furious temper.

 

Nov 7^th – W said ‘bye-bye’ and waved (not [?] at appropriate time). Walks all round the furniture but doesn’t yet stand alone.

 

Dec 4^th

 W still not walking though he gets around very fast by holding on to furniture. Has just started to take an interest in TV & smiles with appreciation when he recognises something. Can build up bricks (or around them!) v. competently.

 

Jan 5^th [1974]

 W can now stand unsupported for a few minutes at a time but still can’t walk. Can say ‘William’ & ‘baby’ but I doubt if he knows what they mean. Likes to build with bricks & push toy cars along but loves to play with my cookery books best of all – piling them up & replacing them in the shelves.

 

Jan 7^th

 W gives up bottle & takes first steps!

 

Jan 22^nd

 W acquires new skills – he has begun to feed himself, can roll a ball to me across the floor and point at pictures.

 

Feb 26^th

 W can now walk quite well though still slowly. He can also climb all the way upstairs & scribble with a pencil. He tries to copy what we say & dislikes being left alone in his cot. Some sleep problems.

 

March 30^th

 W at 18 months. Walks v doggedly – can get to the end of the Lane unaided. Knows about 6 words – no!, dog, egg, ball, nana, yum yum. Can climb stairs. Fetches his cup & bowl when hungry, brings his coat when he wants to go outside & loves to play in the garden & dig the dirt. Has a v strong will of his own.

 

April 7^th

 W’s vocab: no, gone, more, egg, nana, ball, dog, car.

 

April 15^th

 W can now do lovely smacking kisses.

May 31^st

 W now knows about 25 words & will imitate anything I say. He can climb on a chair, walk as far as the Keep, run quite fast. Has just learnt to call me mummy. Still eats with great greed but more discrimination, wanting biscuits rather than bread. Enjoys playing with water, with sand and earth & with cars; does not greatly care for other toys.

 

 List of W’s words: car, biscuit, sweet, ball, mummy, flower, no, teddy, golly, up, more, bye-bye, gone, home, toes, bath, dog, (ba)nana, tea, William, pussy, egg, [Kerry?], honey, door.

 

W at 2 ½ Yrs [1975]

 Appears very bright and observant. Talks fluently – uses short sentences and has a large vocabulary. He obviously enjoys trying to communicate. He is also interested in letters and books. Can sometimes identify the letters A, B & O & recognises the colour orange.

 

 Is very affectionate to me – likes to sit in my lap and suck his thumb saying ‘nice & warm’. He is also generally friendly to others – runs to greet them, shouting ‘hello’. With other children he appears gentle but determined – resists having toys taken away from him. One of the greatest thrills is to go on the train to London & he loves going to Morely College creche. Another treat is painting which he does very seriously.

 

 He can walk quite far – from this house to the village & the heath, but is nervous of stairs and steps. He is still, alas, totally un toilet trained – good results are purely the result of luck. Still has a pretty good appetite.

 

 Is very determined & has a foul temper when thwarted. He is good at building with bricks and at doing simple puzzles. Just recently he has started enjoying imaginative games involving pretend cups of tea, sandwiches, etc.

Objet trouve

 

 I was looking in a drawer today and came across a curious neglected thin object. Vacuum wrapped in a tight narrow bag with Japanese writing on it, my initial thought is that it might have been a pair of chopsticks, but it seemed a little outsized. Unsealing this package, I pulled out a fan and spread it open for the first time ever. Made of very high quality card, the fan is pink on one side and blue on the other. Each side has an inscription, in Japanese on the pink and in English - reading "Thank you very much for invitation. March 19 1962. Mayumi Moriyama" - on the blue.

 My father worked as a civil servant at the Department of Employment for decades. His 1962 diary tells us about the event that the invitation was for:

Tuesday 13 March 1962. Met Michael Mellish on the train.

 Charming Japonais I.L.O. [International Labour Organization] fellow (Mayumi Moriyama) lunch at the Bunch of Grapes and up the Dome of St. Paul's.

 Bishop of Woolwich at Lambeth Palace.

Monday 19 March 1962. CISCU meeting.

 Mayumi Moriyama to dinner - flashlight photo with me washing up.

 Like my father, Mayumi Moriyama worked for her Ministry of Labour for thirty years. Unlike my father she then went on to a stellar political career, serving in the Japanese cabinet on three occasions, as Chief Cabinet Secretary, Minister of Education and Minister of Justice. For about fifty years my parents would get a Christmas card from her office, always of a beautifully coloured and printed scene. They were incongruous things to receive, tokens from far away in recognition of a hospitality from many years ago.

 This fan is a very well-made object. Its something of a shame that for sixty-four years it has never been unwrapped and opened up. But if ever there was a fitting time for it to be discovered and used, then that must be today, (almost) the hottest London day ever. Thank you, Minister.

 

 

"Competent and combative"

 A dubious privilege of having attended a quite-famous public school is the opportunity to read obituaries of your teachers, an experience unknown to most other people. This school finally stopped sending me an annual print copy of The Old Grundian a few years ago, but I do still look at the online copies, just to check that no-one who I remembered has died.

 I learn that Mr B, my form master and mathematics teacher when I was a first former, is no more. When I was twelve I was terrified of this man. What do I remember of him?

 On my first day at school, talking to some other boys - who I had been at primary school with, but who had left to go to Grundwich a year earlier, when our classes were being allocated. "You don't want to get Mr B - he's a bastard." And a sense of confirmed fatalism when my name came up for his class.

 Our classroom still had wooden desks all facing the teacher's desk. How did he address us? The one recurring phrase that I do remember was, instructing a boy to come up to his desk, "Slither hither, wretched toad", said for his own amusement. He had a heavy physical presence. Most men - and particularly teachers - show flashes of a certain residual boyishness at some moments, but I never saw that in him.

 You never felt that he was speaking to a boy as an equal, having an ordinary conversation without a side to it. I recall one algebra lesson when a boy asked (not cheeking him - Mr B wasn't a teacher who you'd treat in that way), What's the point of this? I mean, how will it ever apply to our lives? With most of what we do I can see how it will go on to help us with money or measuring things. He refused to answer and we were disappointed in him. Disappointed for his not recognising the genuine spirit of enquiry and for his failure to covey an enthusiasm in maths, something that he was clearly very good at. I suppose that his best side would probably have been seen if you were a gifted mathematician at A-Level.

 Apart from mathematics, the other thing that he was interested in was sport. During the weekly class free period, he would put a little transistor on his desk and listen to test match commentaries. His valedictory speech to the class on the last day of summer term told us that we should spend our summer going to events like athletics meetings with our friends ("and you should have made plenty of those over this year") rather than wasting our time watching television. I didn't follow this advice.

 Mr B had a temper on him. College gossip recounted that he had been suspended a few years ago for brawling with an Art master. A curious thing about my memory of that year is that I remember his reputation for hitting boys, perhaps throwing things at us, but I can't clearly recollect his actually doing it, although I do recall the atmosphere of severity when he had been displeased with a boy. I don't know whether I've blanked out the memory. Maybe as a sensitive boy I wasn't capable of processing it at the time, or perhaps it didn't actually happen at all.

 One thing that I do remember. Because I was a boy who was brought to tears on most days at school, other boys would scathingly ask me, well, why didn't you cry when Mr B hit you, then? The object of the question was to prove some shamming or hypocrisy on my part, because if I didn't cry if the teacher hit me then it would in some way invalidate the authenticity of the many other occasions when I was brought to tears. But I don't think that he ever did hit me. Its the sort of thing that you ought to remember. Plus I don't think that I was the sort of insubordinate boy who would have brought out that kind of rage in him.

 The lasting impression that he left on me is that I don't think that I've ever come across a man with less femininity in his nature. I had the strong sense that he was the type of man with no interest in or understanding of women's things. Obviously this doesn't come up very much in a boy's school  but I do recall all the other masters in his position referring to wives or families on occasion, or just conveying a fluent interest in the wider world beyond school. For the type of boy that I was, having spent the previous seven years at a co-ed primary school around the corner, growing up alongside girls and boys with mostly women teachers, Mr B was exactly the sort of schoolmaster that I shouldn't have had, at that age and in that institution.

 Reading his obituary, thirty years after I last saw the man, is a sobering experience. I'm surprised to learn that he was only thirty-nine when he taught me. Twelve year-old boys aren't very good readers of the age of grown-ups but he exuded the sense of someone older. The obituary doesn't reveal any surprising details or aspects of his nature. He doesn't appear to have had any personal attachments. Mathematics, school and sport really were his life, even to the extent of regularly attending College matches and tournaments after he had left the school, a participation that is presented as admirably committed rather than illustrative of a sadly empty retirement.

 But my lasting impression is of the sense of something suppressed, that something being what are our best qualities - warmth, openness, kindliness. I'm struck by the lack of warmth in the obituary, with the best that can be found by way of colourful character detail provided by recollections of his "unsparingly critical observations". Mr B was a sarcastic schoolmaster, I think. One of the few things I've learned in life is that there's nothing as freezing as sarcasm. It shrivels people up, which is what its designed to do. Its invariably a bad thing to deploy, always reflecting badly on the person who uses it. I'd definitely rather be forgotten than be remembered for my unsparingly critical observations.

Imagine That

 As a eight year-old child I was just becoming aware of the Beatles, largely due to the continual use of Beatles songs on BBC television programmes: hot day = Here Comes The Sun, feature about publishing = Paperback Writer, etc. The only Beatle whom I had a strong individual impression of was Paul McCartney, though. Perhaps because of the video for ‘Coming Up’ I thought of him as being youthful and jolly, a child-friendly grown-up.

 I remember the death of Lennon vividly, largely due to the blanket news coverage. At that age, being told that an event was significant was enough for me to believe that it was significant. For my parents, however, the death of Lennon meant nothing at all beyond a very small degree of inherent interest as a murder.

 So I watched the news, and then I watched the special BBC1 screening of Help!, which did seem highly enjoyable, more like a Pink Panther film or One Of Our Dinosaurs Has Gone Missing in giving me an immersive experience of adventure, multiple locations and jokes – not the mournful wake which the news had prepared me for. I then pushed my luck too far and tried to stay up to watch the Whistle Test special. My mother refused (“I let you watch ALL of that film”), and I probably had a temper tantrum.

 

 Even in the midst of Lennon hysteria, I can’t remember ‘Starting Over’ at all.

 ‘Imagine’ disturbed me though, I think because of the echo on the piano, film of a dead man mooching about in a white room with his hairy wife, and ‘important’, ‘political’ message more than anything else. I can remember my 20-year old sister visiting home one Sunday lunchtime and telling us repetitively that she had bought the single because it was so sad that he had to die and it was such a sad song, etc.

 This led to me trying to adopt a similarly soulful reaction to the work at school the following week, running the piano motif again and again in my head, trying to make myself feel melancholy, refusing to do any work in a maths lesson in a prefab hut while I did this… Eventually I was summoned to account for my not working. I realised that saying ‘Because this man of peace was shot and its so sad’ would be a ridiculously precious thing, and so instead said nothing.

 I feel nothing but embarrassment in recollecting this incident.

 'Woman' was less frightening than 'Imagine', but had a similarly facile melody and one-word universal concept title, deepening the impression created by Imagine as Lennon as dead merchant of profound statements. By this time, I was getting rather fed up with this pondorous stuff, and was glad when pop eventually returned to the fizz, silliness and sass which had initially attracted me towards Top of The Pops in the first place.

Scrum

 A moderately famous South London public school in September 1984. Its chilly. My first rugby lesson. Studs clattering on the tarmac, we cross the road to a playing field. I don't know who any of the other boys are, so I feel wary. I know next to nothing about rugby, but don't like the idea of tackling or scrums.

  The games master is an old man, bald, very keen on the game. Many masters in the school are former players, and I think he was one of them. We're supposed to bring both a blue and a white jersey to every games period, but many of us haven't. "All right. Shirts v skins!", we are instructed. I'm one of the skins. It feels fated that I would be. It wasn't like this in primary school.

  A hailstorm starts. I know that in my primary school this would cause the lesson to be abandoned and we'd make our way back indoors, but this doesn't happen here. Nobody mentions the possibility. I feel cold and don't like the hard tingle of the hail on my skin.

  We are instructed in how to form a scrum. I am in the middle of the formation. I feel very uncomfortable. I don't like being unable to control my own movements. I don't like being pulled by the motion of others. I don't like being topless and cold. I particularly don't like the forced proximity to 15 other boys and the strange, automatic, insensitivity that seem to take over them. I feel trapped and frightened. I start to cry. I start to keen.

  The master stops the scrum. He pulls me out. The feel of the muscles of his fingers on my feeble naked bicep. He seems stunned. "You, boy! What's wrong with you? What are you doing?" "I'm crying, Sir" "What are you? Are you a girl? This is rugby!"

  I rejoin the scrum, and continue in silence, feeling the same discomfort. The other boys respond with contempt and disbelief. By the time the lesson is over, I leave the field a different boy than I was at the start. My unsuitable disposition for this education has been revealed, both to my peers and to myself.

  I often think back to this pivotal scene, and age has given me a different perspective. I'm surprised by the master's astonishment, and retrospectively I'm aware of holding a fleeting, momentary, power in the instant of our exchange. I now know that what I should have done was to shake my head, say "I'm not doing that again" and refuse to go back into the scrum. There would have been unforeseeable repercussions, but as my response had already exposed me as irrevocably different, I wouldn't have had anything in particular to lose. And because the situation had never happened before, the school wouldn't have had a set response to it. I think that a present day schoolboy probably would successfully get out of it.

  You have three options in dealing with authority; obedience, struggle or revolt. My habitual reaction is struggle, but this was one occasion when revolt would have been the right decision. Not though I knew it at that one moment.

Report cards

 I'm not sure that I'll ever manage to clear away my father's effects. The emotionally draining nature of it means that I can only manage short bursts at a time. My default emotion when I try is mostly frustration at his pointless hoarding (for every holiday that he ever took over sixty years he kept hold of every map and brochure), but interspersed with blinding rage at some reminder of his pomposity (a letter written to the paper in the early seventies complaining at some modern teacher's questioning of the value of homework, in which he compares the discipline required in learning declension of verbs with the worthlessness of "time spent loitering on street corners or watching television"). The worst discovery yet has been finding notes titled "W - personal development" in which he complains at my eight year-old self's “lack of interest in serious reading”, among my many other failings.

 It’s a dispiriting experience in several ways, booby-trapped with the occasional emotional landmine. Such as three of my reports from primary school from 1981, 1982 and 1984. I have no recollection of being shown these at the time. Talk about the child being the father of the man - some of this reads like my immutable and continuous inner voice of self-reproach today:

 William gives the absolute minimum; no amount of encouragement will alter this. (...) He is capable of producing more work than he does. (1982)

 William (...) shows an uneven development. He concentrates on the subjects which interest him the most. A very individual boy. He can appear precocious until one gets to know him. (1984)

 There are some odd reminders of aspects of myself that I'd forgotten. I always think of myself as being particularly cack-handed at anything visual or that requires making things, but at eight the thing that I was best at was art and crafts:

  William is a very original and creative boy. He has some ingenious ideas and the skills to carry them out. He has an excellent sense of proportion in his drawing. (1981)

 I'd forgotten that. I always think of myself as being verbal, but when I was a boy I was drawing all the time, not reading or writing. My other aptitude at eight years is Drama - "William enjoys being in the limelight in drama and can keep the whole class amused and keep their interest single-handedly." Like many shy people, I'm always most confident under the formal circumstances of speaking to a group. Another thing I'd forgotten was (third sentence):

William has a highly original mind. He writes very intriguing and unusual stories. His poems are excellent, here his originality and insight can be used to the full. (1981)

 My final primary school report contains a particularly prophetic passage:

He tolerates other people, preferring to walk on his own. He is well liked + respected by other children though not always understood. William prefers a peaceful atmosphere + one can imagine him seeking an academic career when he's older (followed by the largely undeserved, "He is a boy with great potential", which I'm glad that no-one showed me at the time). (1984)

 And look who I am and where I am now... The bit about other children makes me sound more popular than I usually remember myself being, but I think is also generally right. I tend to remember myself being an awful contrarian pipsqueak when I was eleven (usually learned behaviour from my father), but this reminds me that even I wasn't behaving like that all the time. By the age of eleven, there were lots of occasions when you would have proper mature conversations with your peers - boys and girls who you'd grown up with over the past seven years, the type of social interaction that I now like best as an adult. There's quite a lot to be said for the last year of primary school, when you could be a mature child without the anxiety of puberty or exams (more true then than now). Come the autumn, when I'd moved on to a single sex public school (Dulwich College) it felt like being thrown in a bear pit and all of that (co-educational) mutual interest and putative maturity had suddenly gone for good.

 I have a generally melancholic disposition and tend to remember unhappy incidents and feelings, but reading the earliest of these reports reminds me of the sheer amount of pleasant time that you spend in school as a child in a well-run and kindly classroom. The crucial thing from year to year, I realise, was whether or not the teacher genuinely liked me. It’s something that the teacher can't fake, but affects the child's sense of whether you're an agreeable or problematic person. I sound like a different child in these two years - or, more precisely, an opposite version of the same one:

William takes an extremely mature interest in the world around him. He has settled well into the class and there are only occasional outbursts of temper. He is a very affectionate and friendly boy with a delightful sense of humour. William finds it difficult to concentrate on things which do not hold much interest for him. I have enjoyed having William as a member of the class. (1981)

William is an unusual child. Although he takes a mature interest in the world around him, his behaviour in class is extremely immature. He is unable to concentrate for very long and becomes distracted, annoying other children and the class as a whole. William is capable of giving more than he has shown this year. (1982)

 And something that wasn’t thought about in the early eighties becomes revealed to me. My inability to concentrate, forgetfulness, and wandering daydreaming mind… is (predominantly inattentive) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, isn’t it? And all of the constant censure and guilt about work - careless, irresponsible, lazy, you don't care/show any effort, you just aren't trying… Perhaps I actually really couldn’t do it, after all?

 Further excavation unearths my first and second form school reports from Dulwich College. The striking thing about these when read after the primary school ones is the lack of pastoral interest in my emotional state or how I get on with the other boys. This makes them more disconnected from my inner life at the time, that I can vividly recall and instantly bring back.

 The story of me over these two years can be quickly told. I was a very unpopular boy at school and the object of derision and mockery. Almost every day there would be some collective baiting of me that would culminate with me in tears, power rituals that built towards a climax that its hard not to read as an adult as being in some way sexual (and with an institutional parallel in the ritual humiliation of playing rugby union twice a week). There was a dual quality to my understanding of this. I didn't understand what was going on while simultaneously riding what was happening to me and evaluating and testing what got a particular reaction. This was in part coping mechanism, and part Christian fatalistic stoicism:

He is very much a 'day-dreamer' (Summer 1985)

 And largely stemmed from my distaste at enforced mass male company, which remains something that I go out of my way to avoid. 

 [Even Smart's tremendous disorganisation] tends to distance him from his peers towards whom he feels no empathy whatsoever. (Michaelmas 1985)

 The two years took two different routes and I'm still not sure which was preferable. In the first form I somehow managed to conceal what was going on to my parents and teachers, although I think I was mentally ill by the summer (I'd wake myself up at four in the morning and wouldn't eat lunch). It was a private suffering, unhealthy but which also carried a certain dignity:

 He is a pleasant and reserved boy who ought to have the ability to make further academic progress. (Michaelmas 1984)

 He is as yet very passive, shy and uninvolved: a real loner. His interest in Drama could prove very useful in overcoming this. (Summer 1985)

 In the second form (thanks to a do-gooding and evangelical concerned form master) I was officially recognised as a problem child and sent to educational psychologists, etc, which felt like a continual humiliation. (By the third year, I became bolshier in a way that must have made me tiresome in a righteous teenage way but was also a better approach to coping with an institution).

 All four reports continually reiterate my disorganisation and, especially, my poor handwriting. I suspect this wouldn't be so much of a big deal today, not just because of universal computerisation, but because people have stopped making such a thing about the paramount importance of joined-up handwriting. On a few occasions I was sent to handwriting specialists and felt a great sense of a burden being released when I was fifteen and the final one told me, "Your writing is much better when you don't join it up. You should just stop doing it." My marks are always wildly poor in these two years. Retrospectively I hold some contrarian pride in having been the bottom boy in the bottom class:

It’s apparent from an exam mark of a mere 10% that after the difficult first term he simply never understood this year's course. (Chemistry, Summer 1986)

 But sometimes the grades for application are not so bad. I'm surprised to see B plusses for Science and French - two subjects that I can only remember being bad at. I intermittently show aptitude for History and Geography. The only thing that I'm consistently good at is Art, which certainly hasn't carried over into my adult life.

 I had four English teachers over these two years, and my observation in my primary school reports of the paramount importance of how much the teacher likes you, and that being something that can't be faked holds just as true here. The first two weren't much taken with me:

Although he is an enthusiastic worker, his written work leaves much to be desired. (Michaelmas 1984)

There is still a rather strange disparity between his written work, which is often very poor, and his oral ability. He reads well and has a lively imagination but his written work has shown little improvement. (Summer 1985)

 And then the third teacher, I'd forgotten about her. Young and inexperienced, she must have been a rather ill at ease but nice woman. She only lasted a term and wasn't good at managing the unruly and glib lower stream class. I remember her leaving at least one lesson in tears and the boys feeling a bit guilty and deciding to lay off because they quite liked her. Although my marks are almost as bad in English as in any other subject, I also get an A and her comment is the only one in these reports that strikes me as particularly perceptive or empathetic about myself:

Puzzling, original, unusual. His maturity of thought and his intellectual calibre is not only way above the technical standard of his written work, but also above the rest of the class in its sophistication, so he suffers from misunderstanding and isolation.

 She must have recognised something of herself in my position, I think now. I wonder what became of her?

New York New York - So good I went there twice (1980 and 1999)

I have a theory that every childhood has its optimum point of receptiveness: the time when the openness to sensation and sense of wonder of the early years has yet to dim, but once some acquired knowledge and social skills can start to be used to find ones way in the world. For me, this blessed point was around the age of seven and that was the time that my parents took me on holiday to America: Seven days in New York and three days in Princeton.

I tend to remember everything anyway, but these ten days seem to contain an unstoppable bounty of memories; the long haul jumbo jet with the pleasure of being given gifts and puzzles and drinks and a dinky orderly meal and headphones to Bernard Cribbins introduce songs by the Muppets, the criss-crossy roads and seemingly much brighter daylight of New York, a forth of July parade where I am presented with a helium balloon, new and unfamiliar breakfast cereals, the coach journey from New York to Princeton that takes an entire day and then being shown a map of America and seeing what a tiny distance we had travelled, the great staircase of MOMA, a trip to Chinatown where I am given a small red rubber dragon, a Broadway matinee of Peter Pan where the principle boy flies out into the gallery and the pirates are funny and the dog is clever followed by daddy taking me to an ice cream parlour that serves 120 flavours where I choose coconut.

I imagine that I must have radiated more charm on holiday than I did at home. On a bus, an old lady compliments the little English boy and tells us how if I was staying with her she would enjoy taking me to Central Park and the Statue of Liberty. My mother is pleased by this exchange, both because I am managing to make a good impression, and that the love that she feels for me is reflected in the responses of strangers.

Which is not to say that my memory is rose-tinted - I never trust those whose childhood recollections present an unceasing flow of delight. Surely childhood is as much about frustration and feeling afraid or hurt as it is about happiness?

In Princeton I drink gallons of orange juice and develop a rash.

My mother has an aura of fear and fluster that strangers can be quick to pick up on - on a sidewalk a hairy and ragged-looking individual sees us and adopts a demonic pose that makes my mother cry out and hold me close to her. "He's probably on drugs", my daddy explains. Once we have crossed the road I notice that the hairy man is now joking with a companion and looks quite normal, and am not sure about my father's judgement.

Most trying of all, while the three of us are walking downtown, my father spots some distraction and goes gadding off after it. We become separated and mummy has to get a taxi back to the hotel with me - the driver has large aviator-style sunglasses and an air of quiet authority that impresses me. Back in our room my mother - who does not take well to the cross-Atlantic time difference - has to have a headachey lie-down all afternoon. When my father arrives back they argue. "You selfish PIG!" mummy tells daddy. "You pig!" I parrot back, entirely taking my mother's side in this dispute. "Now, now! Don't say that" responds my father, prepared to take this criticism without response from his wife, but not from his son. When you are seven years-old, and trapped in a small hotel room in a foreign city with your angry unhappy parents you can't escape to the playground or the garden.

One evening I find myself sitting alone on a sofa in the lobby of this hotel - we must have been about to go out and my parents gone back to the room to fetch something. I decide to pass myself off as a real American and integrate myself with the city. I walk out of the hotel and onto 46th Street. What shall I do now? Many people are walking fast in both directions. A man amongst them is on roller skates. He looks like a suitably interesting person to engage with. I make eye contact with him. What would be an appropriately American thing to say? "Hi!" I announce. "Hi" he replies, perplexed, before he skates off again. Satisfied with this exchange, I return to the lobby and my place on the sofa. My parents come back to collect me. I don't tell them about my expedition, not because I think that I've done anything wrong, but because I am not sure that I can convey the meaning and significance of my action. It was an instinctive thing that one does, hoping that its significance will become clear to oneself in later years.

It takes me almost twenty years to return to Manhattan, from the last months of Carter to the last months of Clinton. I sometimes find it amusing to review the progress of my life as being like a microcosm of a nation state, with booms and depressions, alliances and wars. Retrospectively, this period seems like some kind of pinnacle of good fortune - through having stable employment and not having to pay rent, I have a surplus of £6,000 in the bank. I am twenty-seven years old, one of the lowest rungs of adulthood and the latter reaches of being genuinely young. I have lucked into staying, free, for a week at a marvellous apartment that resembles the set of Friends on Bleeker Street. This is with my friend Polly, an actress training at the Actors' Studio and her landlady, an amazing old lady of Broadway, who carries sixty years of theatrical history on her shoulders.

It is in this blessed coalescence of circumstances that I find myself walking through Greenwich Village on a Friday night, a young man with money in his pocket and supposedly ready for pleasure and experience. I'm even dressed in a white suit, a costume that I've always wanted to wear. The only problem is that - I can't think of anything that I want to do. I feel rather tired and uncertain of what the time is. I wander around for a bit, milling in crowds and looking at the shop fronts and restaurants. I am amused to see an establishment that promotes itself as 'Mr Slinky's bar and celebrity hangout', but resist the temptation to go in to see if Tom Cruise is hanging out there tonight. Around me are unceasing crowds of people who actually belong here, or at least who make a better fist of making it look as though they do. I give up the ghost and go back to the apartment, where I read an act of When We Dead Awaken and try to get to sleep.

In this journey from boy to young man some sense of venture has clearly been dissipated. The impulse to catch the eye of a roller-skater and say "Hi" seems to have gone.

Objet Trouve

 Most of my books are second hand, and date back to generations before mine. I find that, as a reader, I have a different relationship with books that were read or owned by others before I was born; I feel more of a custodian than an owner, knowing that my possession of - and relationship with - the book will be as transitory as it was for its previous owners. 

 Marginalia leaves the most tangential proof of previous readers. Usually, it just takes the subtle forms of underlinings and corrections. Inscriptions are always more interesting, adding an imaginative element to the road that was first trodden by previous owners - when they attempted to read this, how successful a gift it might have been. Because most of my library is plays and books about the theatre, sometimes I come across the traces of previous productions, either witnessed by the previous reader (cast lists penciled in), or participated in by them (lines underlined, lighting plans set out in the back). 

 I have one book that offers a higher order of marginalia, though. My copy of Famous Plays of 1932-1933 (Gollancz, 1933) has four pages of personal notes to self in the last two blank pages and flyleaves of the book. The writing is scratchy but almost entirely decipherable, and the ink has faded to a sort of browny-green. I transcribe the passage for you without introduction. Where I couldn't make out words I've put how they read to me, rather than guessing what they might be;

"I will be an actress worth while.

I will be quite lovely to look at & surprisingly intelligent.

I will do things that are worthwhile & not frivolous my 19 20 years. 

I will concentrate on what I want, what I am doing and resolve to build some strong foundations for my future happiness, my families & everything connected with me. 

I will be useful and considerate in every way, yet not weakly so. I will develop my character and personality & do the things I believe in.

I will always keep a sense of proportion & fairness in everything & be helpful & understanding. 

I am 18, not unenleiesly looking and can look quite pretty, good disposition, shy & rather negative, undeveloped & unniative in a underali way for my age. Not at all sexual, a trifle idealistic & very imaginative lazy thro lack of initiative, occupied with material living, thinks deeply rarely yet intelligent, original inventive & creative in minor ways. Ambitions growing in a wish for bettering material living & mental knowledge, for making people who've made me happy happy.
 

Untruthful when a lie is the easiest way out & occasionally unscrupulous weak by nature yet determined to raise ative is anxious & be successful & be acknowledged as different and above the ordinary level, & work the way up. Enjoys work, desire to please and to be liked & minds what other people say too much. Has real knowledge of self in impersonal way. Acknowledges faults & advantages tries to emulate & expand & develop the good & commercial analytical gift amounting to point of psychological insights wonderment at life sustains & complete unbelief in faiths of civilisation. Certain amount of will power developing.
 
Gets on easily with other people & adapts to surroundings in useful way when not she's & self conscious. Dislike of unnecessary sordidness & unnecessary luxury. Belief in appreciation as basis of real happiness & friendship & love on a 50.50 foundation real understanding one of most valuable assets. Love of people & pity of els suffering & tragedy & real depth of feeling in that respect. More mental than physical feelings, nervous & not frightfully brave yet could be I'm sure. Love of children. Very reasonable, sensible & often level-headed able to sift what's good & bad for one anxious to learn yet inactive to obtain that learning excuse lazy nites of difficulties of circumstances thus lazy mind, unstimulated. Love of nature & terrific appreciation of beauty of nature.
 
Incredibly disastrously vague to point of rudeness, yet knowing it & hating it all this time. Sense that if reasonably intelligent & adaptable life can really be happy & enjoyable. Wish & desire to act & make people feel & to desire to act & make people feel & to inspire. Likes solitude to think rather than being a close contact with people. One isn't in sympathy with at all tho likes of a lot of friends & intensely fond of real friends."

 I bought this book for £2 in the Spread Eagle shop in Greenwich in 1996 - I miss the days when Greenwich still had junk shops in it! - so I was 23 when I came across her message.

 I have a pretty strong idea of the author and the circumstances of her writing this passage. I think that she was given the book for Christmas 1933, a suitable gift for a stagestruck girl. The passage reads to me like the thoughts of somebody who normally lives in the presence of other people and who finds herself alone for a while. Either her parents and siblings have left the house for a walk for an hour or so and left her to her own devices, or - most likely - she's been allowed to stay in the living room after everyone else has gone to bed, and has decided to set out her impressions of herself.

 I get an oddly mixed sense of this girl - her thoughts are often generic and timeless, but also a product of her time; the lack of a sexual sense of self, the feeling that the opportunities facing a girl coming into womanhood in the thirties are somewhat limited, the sense that something more should be open to her. Its hard to tell how much of this is wishful thinking, invented character, and how much of it is the personality that she will eventually become. The sense of knowing too little and feeling too much, the great avowal of the importance of friendship is very particular to adolescence, and is strongly - and to some extent unwittingly - revealed by this girl.

 I wonder who she thought she was writing for? There's a different set of expectations inherent to the act of writing in a book than there are in writing a diary. The diary carries a specific set of cultural expectations; it is private, reading somebody else's diary is either a violation or an entrusting. While writing in a book is more of an act of offering a bit of yourself for fate. Either this girl was writing because she wanted to surprise herself decades hence, to discover her girl self as a woman and feel that she had remained true to her teenage feelings and avowals; or she hoped for someone else in the unimaginably far future to meet her as she was then. And it came to pass, too - me in 1996.

 I calculate that she was born in 1915. She surely can't still be alive now, but I felt that she was when I came across her words, about sixty-three years after she wrote them. I'm pretty convinced that she didn't become an actress, but I'd imagine that - subject to the Second World War and the eternal vagaries of fate - she became a wife and mother, the usual way of the world, leaving her legacy for posterity in more tangible but impermanent things than the words that she left for me to discover in another age.

Its behind me

Lewisham Concert Hall, 1976 or 1977.

In the afternoon, Mummy and Daddy take me to Lewisham. Not to the shops to buy things, but to a big building that I don't know. There are lots and lots of other people there, boys and girls and grown-ups. We have to show some bits of paper to a lady and then we go through a room where lots of people are standing up, and then Daddy shows the same bits of paper to another lady who is standing at the doors of another room.

The next room is very big, bigger than church, but more dark and more warm. It is full of chairs in rows, flippy chairs made out of rough grey fur, that feel like the chairs on trains, but with numbers on them. All the chairs are on a big staircase, so that each row is higher than the one in front of it. We are at the very top of all the chairs. Mummy sits next to me, looks at me, and smiles. It is very noisy in here, but I am glad that I have my own seat and that Mummy and Daddy are here.

At the bottom of all the stairs is a gigantic curtain. I don't know what is going to happen next. After a long while, people stop coming in and sitting down, and the lights are switched off, apart from the green ones that say 'EXIT'. The curtain moves up. Most of the boys and girls stop making a noise, grown-ups tell them to 'Shhh!'.

Behind the curtain is a big flat wooden floor, that is all lit up. This big space has had things put on it to make it look like a room. You can tell that it's supposed to be like a room, because there are flat boards that have been painted really well, to make them look like walls and fences. The room has two chairs and a table, and a treasure chest in the corner.

Two men are in the pretend room. One of them is old, and the other is supposed to be a boy, although he looks grown-up to me. They talk to each other.

(This is like being in somebody else's house. Although lots of people are sitting on seats with us in the dark, the pretend room is more important because the lights are on there and the man and the boy there are talking.. I like watching this make-believe.)

The old man looks after the boy. He tells the boy how poor they are. He also tells the boy that the most important thing is that he must NEVER open the chest, because then bad things will happen to them.

Some of the grown-ups and bigger children laugh when the boy is talking. I don't know why.

The old man and the boy leave the room. The lights in the room go dark so we know that it is now night and after bedtime. The boy goes back into the room, in a nightshirt and a cap - like children wear in books - and carrying a lamp. He goes up to the chest.

(He can't do that!)

He hears a noise and goes away.

(I'm glad that he stopped because he can't open the chest!)

He goes back up to the chest and opens it.

(BUT HE CAN'T DO THAT! THE OLD MAN TOLD HIM NOT TO!)

Light bursts out of the chest and loud music suddenly starts.

(Aiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee! Aiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee! THIS IS WRONG! THE BOY KNEW THAT BAD THINGS WOULD HAPPEN IF HE OPENED THE CHEST! NOW HE'S OPENED IT BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN! I DON'T WANT TO SEE BAD THINGS!)

I'm very frightened. I cry and howl. Mummy and Daddy don't understand why. They tell me to stop. But the boy did a bad thing, and he knew that he shouldn't! I'm frightened.

The other people on the seats aren't crying. Strangers shhh me. I don't stop crying. But I'm not being bad - the boy was being bad! It's not fair!

Mummy and Daddy tell me to look at what's happening. The make-believe room has gone. Now there are pretend trees and ladies in bright dresses and men dressed up as soldiers and singing. But I don't understand what's happening any more! I know that the boy did a bad thing! I'm scared and I don't understand. I cry some more.

One of the men dressed up as a soldier has a red face and shouts a lot, and the people sitting on the seats around us laugh when he shouts. This man is the same as a man on the television who has a red face and dresses up as a soldier and shouts at some other soldiers. He says something about me - how we don't like cry babies who spoil things, do we boys and girls?

This makes me cry some more, and shriek. I'm being told off now! But it was the boy who opened the chest who was being naughty, not me!

A long time later, the curtain goes down again and the lights come back on the seats. I've stopped crying, but I feel tired and my head and my neck hurt. At the bottom of the steps, some of the ladies who wear smart clothes and open doors are standing, and boys and girls are climbing out of their seats to go up to them.

Daddy tells me to go down there too. They are giving sweets away to boys and girls!

(But that's not what happens. You have to buy sweets in a shop. Strangers don't give you sweets)

Go down there - They are giving children sweets.

(No no. I can't do that. That isn't what happens to me. People are cross with me. The man told me off...)

I don't know what to do now. If I go down - which Mummy and Daddy want me to do - those people might tell me off, but if I don't then I won't get any sweets.

After a long time, I do go down and try to ask for some sweets.

The lady tells me that I'm too late and that we've run out of sweets now.

I climb back up to my seat. I knew that would happen.