song, where are you?

I came across a bag of notebooks last week, which span from 1999. I have a funny feeling about these; part horror, part joy. Some of the writing makes me cringe; clumsy expressions, naive thoughts, clichés, sad memories. But there are other things that inspire me or shock me, make me laugh, or even allow me to admire myself – which is fair, and kind, I think. Sometimes.

So I decided to look through them and save some fragments, sketches and notes, and give them an acceptable shape. I have called them mini-redemptions for now, until I can think of something funnier.

When we lived in Manchester we had our daughter baptised because the local catholic school was top of the school league at that time. Yeah, I know, that’s not very holy, is it? But it was a practical issue, and even though she was only 2, we were thinking ahead. To be honest I don’t really care about those leagues and charts and statistics – in fact I would happily be travelling around the world educating the kids with great people in crazy and magical places. But that’s another story. Anyway, the priest was very kind, and funny – he talked about footbal and discos the internet and modern life, in a way you wouldn’t expect in such a formal context. This is a little quote from him that I scribbled down during the ceremony:

A lot of kids today are not the full shilling!

 All you good people  here today know that. Life today is very complicated and our children have so much more to learn and deal with. But the three children here today will have the best foundations to prepare them for life and, we hope, they won’t turn out like that.

 - 20th June 1999, Manchester