Before I Could Write – Part 10

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so here's a quick explanation: when I was younger, I was bad at writing.  I have been putting up examples from each year of my life since I started writing.  And as we reach Part 10, 'young me' is 15 years old.

I haven’t been able to find any more self-portraits because when I was 15, The School forced me to give up art (which I loved) if I wanted to do drama (which I loved more).  The Art Teacher did say I could take art as another GCSE if I came to special lessons after school, but this sounded like too much work for a L-A-Z-Y arse like me (also, quite creepy now I write it down).  So this is why I can’t draw.  DAMN YOU HORNDEAN COMMUNITY SCHOOL.

Me aged 15.  What a fool I was.  Ahahahahahahahahhaaaaaaaa

And in English class we were only allowed to write autobiography, something I hated because nothing interesting had ever happened to me.  So all I have for The Putrid Attempts At Writing, aged 15, is this:

In my life time, I have only really experienced pain three times.  The major time was when I was five.

The family took a holiday in Wales.  As the car pulled up the gravel drive we all saw a lovely cottage, by a field and river.

My brothers and I raced out of the car to explore.  I went down to the river.  As it was summer the water was low down.  Further along was an overflow pipe.  Well when I say pipe it was big enough for a five year old if she bowed her head.

As the water level was low the pipe was empty and desperate to be the first to do something (my brothers are five and six years older than me so they had done most things already) I charged through the pipe.  But to my horror it was blocked by a wall of spider’s web.  Realising this fact too late I emerged back into daylight covered in sticky thread and having not completed my original task.  (It wasn’t that I disliked spiders, in fact it was quite the opposite, it’s just that you try charging down a dark overflow pipe into some giant spiders’ webs and tell me you aren’t just a little but shocked.)  Ironically it was my brothers who travelled through the pipe first (claiming they had found it) and befriended the children on the other side.

The pipe went under the road so could be used by badgers or hedgehogs when not full of water.  But as far as I can see now, we needn’t have travelled through the pipe as the front door of the cottage opened straight on to the road.  You would know whether a car was coming by the fact the door would be ripped off its hinges and leave you with a wing mirror. 

Of course none of this has anything to do with the story, it’s just a little background.

It was past lunch, we were in the field, the opposite side from the house.  I had that slow rumble of hunger that starts low in your stomach and gradually works its way up until you NEED food.

I ran towards the house being stung by many stinging nettles.  As I hobbled into the house I searched for food.  I looked up, towering above me on the windowsill, in a glass bowl on a glass stand were a bunch of bananas.

I reached up.  I could just reach one.  As I pulled, instead of coming away from the bunch the banana pulled over the bowl.  It toppled.  It probably happened in a second but it seemed like slow-motion.  Then a stab of pain shot up my arm and blood trickled out.

I smiled (I don’t know why but whenever I am badly hurt I find it amusing.  Once someone hit my hand with a mallet, splitting it open which I found hilarious.  Painful but hilarious.  Well almost agony but the funny side of it masked the pain).

I showed my mother who did something, my memory fades at that point.  (I mean I presume I showed my mum, because the glass isn’t still there.)

Just so you know, the glass cut my wrist 6mm from my main artery.  On the up side it enabled me to tell left from right.  When asked by a teacher which hand was right I’d hold up the one with the scar.

...

Oh that was bad. 

I think The Writing was actually getting WORSE at this point.

(That’s my death throes)