My first (autograph) book

Book One: Progress update

I’ve started transcribing my earliest diary (1972) and  I’ve also transcribed a notebook, that was really an Autograph book, from 1966 (I was six). 

I remember asking all my family, and anyone else who came to the house, to write something in my autograph book. No one wanted to write more than their name:

“It’s an Autograph book, you’re only supposed to write your name.”

“I know, but can you write something else as well?”

“But it’s an autograph book. You’re not meant to write anything else .”

“I know! Write something else. Pleeeease.”

“Like what?”

“Something else. Just write something.”

After much pleading and persuading from me, most people had a stab at writing something, other than just their name.

My Mum wrote:

By hook or by crook, I’ll be first in this book.

“Is that all?” I asked, “Can’t you write something else?”

“It’s supposed to be short. It’s a rhyme. I’m saying, I’m the first in the book. That’s it.”

“Can you write something else?”

“No, that’s it.”

It was Christmas. My Dad’s friend John Kenny was visiting us. He wrote:

May you have many more happy Christmas days.

Well, I was only six years old, so I would hope so.

My sister wrote:

Laugh and the world will laugh with you, Cry and you will cry alone.

I didn’t understand it. I asked my Mum, who explained it to me, then I did understand it. Why wasn’t anyone writing happy things in my book?

Next my Aunty Sheila:

Little Willie in the best of sashes

Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes

By and by the room grew chilly

But no one liked to poke Poor Willy.

“So, he fell in the fire? And was burnt?

Why?

Why didn’t they want to poke him?”

To me, poke meant prod. I didn’t know it meant stoking a fire. It was a sad story and I didn’t see the humour in it, at all.  I just wished someone would write something jolly in my book.

On the next page I had drawn a tower block (I lived in a block of flats). At first, it appears that the building is on fire,  with me in it – and, like a time-lapse photo, I’m in three different places.  I know it’s me, as I’ve written the words ME and drawn arrows, pointing at all three people.  I’m waving out of two of the windows and a chimney pot, with a camera in my hand.  

Looking more closely, I realise the building is not on fire.  What I thought were curling flames seems to be a winding route, or path, from ground level to chimney.  Or it could possibly be a Rapunzel-like rope.  

Far below, on a path leading from the block of flats, are people with guns in their hands, taking aim at something.  Along the paths are other people, all with one leg raised high, at right-angles to their bodies. They are either dancing, running, or goose-stepping.  

I think around this time I was watching The Man from Uncle on t.v.   I also think this was my first Story Board.

The camera might be from a spy briefcase set we had.  It was probably plastic, but the camera worked. However, from what I remember, I think I mostly took photos of drain covers and pigeons.

My Nanny wrote:

I slept and I dreamt that life was beauty.

I woke and I found that life was duty.

And that was the last time I ever asked anyone to write in my autograph book. I just wrote in it myself and drew pictures.

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Happy Writing!