Alice By Accident - Lynne Banks Reid

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notebook private” on my old one. That’ll be for writing about my true private life.

       SCHOOL NOTEBOOK MY LIFE by Alice Williamson-Stone

      I was born in Brighton and on April 8th I will be ten. I don’t think I’m pretty but I have strait teeth and big eyes and my hair is nice but I wish Mum would let me have it cut (and have my ears perced) but she says I can’t till I’m SIXTEEN!! My mum is a solicitor. I have no brothers or sisters. I have two grandmas and one grandad. I may have another grandad too. I have some aunts and an uncle and cousins but I don’t see them exept once I met my Auntie Carla and my cousin James who’s a baby and sweet but boring when they came to visit us from Liverpool. I used to have a pair of minicher hamsters and a goldfish called Jason because he was golden like the golden fleece. The hamsters were called Itchy and Scratchy after the cat and mouse in The Simpsons. They all died. I cried most about Jason, and I haven’t had a pet since then. I had a Tamagochi cyberpet but that was yonks ago. I want another pet. I’d like a dog but I know it would be too hard to look after it and they cost too much to feed. But something small like another hamster or maybe a white rat. Rats are very soshable and like to stay in your pocket.

      In Brighton we lived in a flat on a main road. I never went outside by myself because it was dangerous. Gene my grandma said I was a battery child, that’s like chickens who are always kept indoors, but in London I’m a bit more free-range. We live in a house my grandma lent us. It’s bigger than the flat and it’s got a garden and it’s in a quiet street so I can ride my bike and play outside, and there are other kids, but not the ones I go to school with. But I still think of our flat in Brighton as home. That’s where my proper room is with most of my things in it including my bed and my hammock and my fairy doll and my big armchair where my stuffed animals live. All exept Benny my blue bear, I brought him with me of course. I wish we could go back there but we can’t because Mum works in London and it’s too far to commute. English is my second favourite subject after Art. I always get As in Art.

      That’s my life.

       B+. It’s good, Alice, and would have got an A if your punctuation had been better. I know, you get carried away, but presentation matters – try harder! And why are you doing this strange joined-up writing? Please PRINT. Spelling (not so bad this time) – copy 5 times each: pierced, miniature, sociable.

      My life? Well all I can think of that isn’t private. Talk about boring, but it’s what she asked for. I wrote it all in my grandma’s kind of writing, joined up and with loops for the b’s, h’s, g’s, j’s, k’s, q’s, y’s and l’s. Little f’s have two loops, top and bottom, they’re a tail-letter and a tall-letter. I can’t do the capital letters in Gene’s kind of writing exept the F’s and G’s. I practised F’s when she first showed me because they’re fun to write, it’s like drawing a fancy design, like this

. Capital G’s are fun too, you can do two kinds
or
. I like
best of course but it’s not very G-ish.

      I’ve been sent up to bed. Mum got fed up with me because I keep talking about the row she had with Gene so she said “Go to bed and read, I want to watch TV.” She watches TV alot. She used to read me bedtime stories but she stopped. She said because now I can read for myself but I think it’s because I complained because she got sleepy in the middle and her voice sort of went away and I had to keep nudging her. She got really hurt feelings and wouldn’t read to me any more even when she wasn’t sleepy.

      Gene used to read to me. She read really well because she’s an actress, she did different voices for all the caracters in the stories. She used to sing songs to me too when I went to stay with her in the country. She knows millions of songs with all the words. I’m really upset with Gene but Mum says even if you get angry with people you should try to remember the good things about them. Mum said that for when I’m angry with her, but I’m using it for Gene. Only it doesn’t work all the time cos the anger is too strong. Well it’s not all being angry, it’s mostly being sad because I miss her. Still who wouldn’t be angry with a grandma who has a row with your mum and then doesn’t see you any more.

      

      When I wrote that last bit I started crying so I stopped. I cry alot when I think about Gene so I think I’ll stop thinking about her.

      

      I was quite pleased with getting a B+, and I copied the spellings, which I don’t always. Only three, it’s a miracle, I usually get a dozen, maybe the Brandy medsin is working. She is SO STRICT AND PICKY banging on about presentation. Putting in quote marks and paragraphs is just so fiddly I can’t be bothered. After the lesson she kept me back and said “I want you to stop this silly show-off writing.”

      I said it’s called cursive. She said I know what it’s called but we don’t do cursive writing in British schools any more it’s too hard to learn. Gene told me she’d probably say that and what she means is it’s too hard to teach. Gene said that for hundreds of years kids learnt to do cursive and do good penmanship and they still do it in America but here now they just do joined-up print which is babyish and a cop-out.

      I said to Miss Brand “but I like writing cursive and Brandy said quite crossly “Well you can’t, unless you can do it properly it looks like a spider that got drunk on ink. Everyone larfed and I felt a bit hurt. It didn’t put me off though. I’m going to practise the capitals secretly. You can’t join-up Brandy’s kind of capitals. Gene said if you have to keep lifting your pen between letters you write much slower and that makes sense. I want to write fast because I’m going to write alot.

      At least Brandy didn’t make me copy my life story all out again. Nicola and Alexandra had to cos they got Cs. You have to if you get anything under a C+. But she said “Basicly it was good. You see you could write your life story.” My life story will be ten years long in April. Till now it’s only nine and a half years long. (It’s true I don’t remember the first three and only bits after that until I was about eight.)

      I’ve decided I’m going to write my ortobiography in here in cursive in my special notebook. First I’ll practise some cursive capitals. I’ve got them all written by Gene on a piece of paper with extra lines on it so the spider doesn’t look so drunk. F and G first and then I’ll do the others that aren’t so fancy but they’re still fancier than Miss Brand’s boring print ones.

      The only one you can’t join to the next letter is a P because it ends too high up.

      I’m going to draw pictures in here too, I’ve just thought of it, it will be an ilustrated ortobiography. I’ll start with a picture of Peony. She’s my child minder’s little girl so I see her every day after school. She’s only eight but she’s completely mad. She wears crazy clothes and hats with things stuck in them like the bottoms of old shoes and paper flowers and choclate rappers. She makes her mum buy her crazy clothes in jumble sales and she actully wears them outside like she cut two pairs of trowsers up and pinned the wrong legs together and she wears different shoes on each foot. Once she went to school in a mad outfit (she changed on the way behind a hedge in someone’s front garden!!) and they sent her home only she couldn’t go because they haven’t got a phone so her mum couldn’t come and get her so she wore all this funny gear all day, the other kids kept falling off their chairs larfing and the teacher was going bananas.

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