Ziggy posted a very nice update earlier this year when she turned the same grand old age as me - and so she's not the only one spilling precious details of her life, here's mine.
1987 - I graced the world with my presence in time for tea. Right away I threw everyone into a state of turmoil because I wasn’t the girl everyone expected – but at least I think I was better off than a friend’s cousin whose parents bought tons of pink stuff, only to then realise, way too late, that the child was actually a boy. I don’t think people even bought pink stuff back then, and for some reason we were particularly backward so I’m sure it all worked out fine. In fact we were so outdated that there are only three or four pictures of me between the ages of 0 and 2 – and they’re all in black and white.
1987 is also as far back as my memory reaches – I remember crawling into the kitchen where my grandmother was cooking. I also remember the awful orange carpet in my room, which must be where my aversion to that colour stems from. Or perhaps not.
1988 – The only thing I remember from that time is the smell of poppies. They grew near a couple of garages which don’t exist anymore today. My grandfather used to work on his car there and I’d play with my toy cars. (Alright, the toy cars are poetic license; I haven’t got a clue what I played with). Apart from that, nothing out of the usual happened... I probably learned to walk and talk and such.
1989 – That’s the year a horse nearly bit off my thumb, or that’s what it felt like. Disappointingly, I didn’t even require medical attention. And I’ll never forget the neighbours’ dog – I remember it as a huge hairy thing blocking the entire corridor, but apparently it only came up to a grown person’s knee. Oh well.
I also had to do some sort of strange exercises every night because my feet were flat – you’ll be happy to hear that they’re beautifully arched today.
1990 – I started going to playschool. The only thing I remember from that time is how I ate snow in winter and was told off, so I moved to a different corner of the garden and continued eating. To this day the teacher seems scary to me, even though everyone reassures me she was really nice and actually liked me. That summer we went on a holiday somewhere in the west of Ireland... I’m sure it was very nice as such, but I wasn’t exactly on my best behaviour. First of all I told a local farmer that my grandmother had said he looked like an onion (wrinkly, in case you were wondering), then I fell into a lake from a pier without being able to swim yet, and then I disappeared without a trace on a trip to the city. A frantic ten minutes later it was discovered that I’d spontaneously decided to join a local nursery school class on their way to somewhere else.
I also remember some guy milking a cow. He kept alternately shaking and nodding his head... I thought that perhaps some of the milk was good and some wasn’t, and was quite fascinated by it. In hindsight I’m pretty sure he suffered from Parkinson’s.
1991 – That year my grandparents and me moved to Limerick, half an hour away. All I remember of this is arriving late at night and the smell of the car, as well as sitting on some sort of hand woven basket in the bedroom, waiting for someone to help me go to bed. That house is the nicest place I’ve ever seen – I remember every single detail, down to the smell of the curtains and the sound of the light switches. Unfortunately there’s strangers living in it now, so I can’t even visit it. I’m not sure I’d want to anyway.
1992 - I went on my first holiday abroad that summer, and got my first real taste of mosquitoes and the beach there, which seemed to be miles away. Coincidentally I walked past that very same hotel a couple of years later... the beach was really only ten minutes away. However, I also learned my first word in a foreign language then – kalimera - and was rewarded with cookies that tasted so horrible I still remember their taste. Ugh.
And I got one of my favourite toys – a giant plush huskey called Christopher that was almost as big as me. A friend of my parents had bought it, then felt silly carrying it home so he gave it to me. I also bit into a glass, which in hindsight is quite admirable since it was one of those really thick pint glasses and I still managed to break the glass instead of my teeth.
1993 - That year I started school. On the first day of school my friend and me managed to secure the table right in front of the teacher’s desk. As you see, I started off very promising. That day we took quite a few pictures, very unusual for us, and while we’re all dressed to kill with a nice background my grandfather is carrying a glaringly white plastic bag, for reasons only known to himself. That probably isn’t funny to anyone but me but we certainly never let him live those pictures down and that’s why it’s worth a mention.
1994 – Once again, I moved. This time on my own, and in with my parents and older sister. Considering that I’d only seen them once in a while before that, it went surprisingly smooth. So smooth in fact that I remember next to nothing about it.
I also had some infection of sorts and wasn’t allowed to eat sugar in any shape or form for half a year, and only one or two types of artificial sweetener. It was a year of extremely healthy food and porridge without sugar or honey for breakfast every single day.
1995 - That year, my genius was finally recognised. The teacher suggested I skip third grade and move straight on to fourth grade, but I refused and became so worried about the possibility of having to leave my friends that my grades steadily started dropping. Damn, I wish I hadn’t been such a sensitive kid.
1996 – One of the most vivid memories of that time is that a friend’s mother or sister had vast amounts of old editions of the Sun stored in their bedroom. Our favourite thing to do was sit in his room and read the scary stories in it. I remember tons of them. Something about a woman who suddenly discovered she had a tick the size of her back attached to, well, her back; a bride farting at her wedding and then being so embarrassed she had a heart attack and died; and just about every freakish kind of death and accident you can imagine. They scared the living daylights out of me. They had very nice Russian snacks though. Russian cuisine is very much underrated.
1997 – what happened in 1997? The only thing I remember for sure was my first sleep-over. In school. I don’t know what the point of it was but it was fun, even though some of my classmates showed off all sorts of tricks and I was very jealous because I couldn’t do anything. Useless child. Apart from that it must have been quite boring... although of course turning ten was a huge deal then.
