Writing about writing

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m sitting on my bed at 7.30am, fully dressed. No, I haven’t experienced a time warp. It’s part of my new routine; write before work at least once a week, keep the old fingers tapping over. It’s a funny thing, writing. Enjoyable, challenging, always subjective. But I’ll tell you what- as I look through old documents on my computer, I really have written some corkers over the years. Not, as you’ll shortly discover, in a good way.

Firstly, I draw your attention to a file called ‘Regret, by Ella Dove.’ Now, on first sight, this appears to be a ghastly teenage poem, full of the angst and woe that, thankfully, I never actually experienced as a child. I distinctly remember writing a poem about heartbreak and trying to rhyme ‘break’ with the ‘stake’ that I felt had been plunged deeply into my chest. I was about 14 at the time, so the most that had happened was a boy on the bus had made fun of my hair. I probably didn’t even know his name.

But ‘Regret’ turned out to be something else entirely. It was a piece written for my Open University course when I was 17 (yes, I know, had to get that in there...). Essentially, it was Anne Frank, except that it was a grown man hiding in the loft in wait for his ex-wife. That’s what Point Horror and Jacqueline Wilson does to you.

But let’s go further back into my childhood. Allow me to take you on a journey, old chum. Of course, these are ‘masterpieces’ that aren’t on my computer, but they’re so engrained into my memory (and that of my parents) that I could probably recite a lot of them straight off. From the Brussels sprouts that came alive and chased poor little Mikey down the road while his parents were out shopping to the hamster who fell into a post-box and ended up travelling the world, reading back these early stories often makes me question my sanity.

At school, it seems I favoured poetry above all else, which made for some wholly inappropriate rhyming, this RE project being a prime example...

Transubstantiation,

The Catholics believe,

Wine- blood, and bread- His body,

As they worship Him with ease.

Somehow, I’ve managed to sum up the whole of Catholicism and massively insult anyone having a crisis of faith. And that was just one stanza.

Indeed, no academic subject was safe. I refer you to the poem I wrote at the start of secondary school about Salmonella. To provide a bit of background, we were asked to do some research. Mind maps, diagrams, perhaps the odd pie chart for those blessed with the power of Excel. But I was not a fan of graphs. I didn’t fancy a straightforward fact sheet either. Oh, no. No prizes for guessing how I chose to present my research...

Salmonella, he’s a nasty little fella,

He gets in your food,

Which is very rude....

And so it continued; my own little form of rebellion. The poor, poor teachers. No wonder I wasn’t in Set 1 for maths- I probably would have turned my algebra into a sonnet. Let’s not even talk about the time I turned my speech for House Leader into a geeky version of Rihanna’s Umbrella...

I’m prepared for all the things,

That being house leader brings,

Chess, debating, science quiz,

Our house will be the biz

Still, it worked, I suppose. As the keen blog followers amongst you will know from previous entries, I still rhyme- and surely that's not a crime?