I used to be stupid tribute

Having read some of the entries on IUsedToBeStupid.com I thought I should catalogue some of my own childhood misconceptions:

I used to think that a sign saying 'To Let' on the outside of a building meant that there was a toilet inside - weirdly, I knew how to spell 'toilet', but thought that the rules of spelling were more flexible than to limit the spelling to one version.

My Dad used to let me sit on his lap and drive the car, resulting in a belief which endured till I was a teenager than the steering wheel actually powered the car and was pretty much the only important factor in making it move.

Probably my most inappropriate misapprehension was that the word 'cunning' was short for 'cunnilingus' - I don't know where I had heard the word, but I figured they were close enough, so they must be related. It wasn't until I said it to my step-dad when I was about 10 that he asked where I had heard it and explained that it probably wasn't the kind of word I should use without knowing what it meant.

Snow!

The sad thing about getting up before 7 (apart from the very fact of being awake at such a time) is that on the very rare occasions that it snows, you don't get that weird light through the curtains when it snows like you do if you wake up when it's light. And although there was a fairly hefty dusting, there certainly wasn't enough for sledging. When I was a kid, it felt as though snow was relatively common, and when it came we would go to the nearest hill with our variety of sledges, have a snowball fight and make a snow-man leaving plenty of snow to spare. If the Boy Wonder and I had done that yesterday, there wouldn't have been any left for anyone else. But, undeterred I did try to enjoy the snow of yesterday - everything looked pretty and I felt all strident and tough, but after a lunch-time wander to the garden centre to get worms for the hedgehog and another trip to another garden centre to get salt for the fish, I felt all active and worthy and decided to use the unnecessary plastic bag I had received to collect some of the rubbish I had encountered along the way. However, having filled one carrier bag, collected another one from a tree and filled that as well before I was even half way back to the office, I felt decidedly less hearty and worthy, much less enthusiastic about improving the look of the white-frosted countryside and had mad hair and filthy hands which were an unfortunate combination as the latter meant that I was unable to do anything about the former, so I ended up back at work looking like a slightly confused scarecrow. I was surprised at the variety and nature of the stuff I picked up though - there were the usual cans, bottles and bits of miscellaneous paper, but I also found a thermos flask, slightly dented, but with something in it, which had conveniently frozen solid and hence much heavier than expected, a scarf which looked quite nice but was covered in ice and mud, a book without a cover and an array of random bits of plastic. Since discovering 'Found' courtesy of my brother I have been hoping to find something of even the vaguest interest whilst wandering about the place, and I suspect that this desire played no small part in my otherwise completely altruistic attempt to clear up the countryside. But alas, there was nothing of any note to be found, although I suppose snow is not particularly conducive to paper-based discoveries. I did once find some kind of school report for a girl who was clearly in trouble and had to get every teacher to sign in a box before each lesson. I wondered briefly what she had done to warrant such a punishment, but there was nothing to indicate what that might have been. So, whilst the snow didn't mean that we couldn't leave the house, build a snowman or even create a passable snowball, it did provide a worthwhile lesson in litter picking - it's not for the fainthearted and you probably won't find anything interesting.

The tragedy of disappearing food

I have a slightly compulsive approach to food. Despite the fact that my mother is eminently sensible and would encourage my brother and me to eat a wide variety of foodstuffs, never really allowed snacking and was in control of our sugar intake, the more devil-may-care attitude of my father towards our health included allowing us to eat/drink condensed milk straight from the tin, serving 'experimental' dishes based loosely on recipes he had cut out of the paper and a completely unfathomable love of faggots and lardy cake which he tried (unsuccessfully I might note) to imbue us with. These contrary approaches somehow combined to form a bit of a monster - I have incredibly faddy eating habits, often falling in love with a product for weeks on end, only to abandon the industrial quantities I have purchased when a new treat takes my fancy. As a child I used to go into raptures when allowed to eat frozen peas, raw dried pasta and whole cucumbers. As an adult, with full editorial control over what I eat, recent food affairs have included tapenade (consumed with every meal at the height of its popularity), chav-wiches (a salt-and-vinegar crisp filled savoury muffin which makes me feel wrong, yet right all at once) and the current favourite, Belgian waffles with a dusting of icing sugar (our tolerance of dust is surprisingly high, so this is more generous than it might otherwise be). Despite the fact that the Boy Wonder mocks me mercilessly for the manner in which I acquire favourite foods, he is often the originator of a particular fad, but where he revisits a long-neglected foodstuff with interest and nostalgia, I will sample it already knowing that it wouldn't take much to make it onto my food-of-the-month list. The only problem (as far as I can see - if other people have a problem with the way I conduct my faddery then it's no concern of mine) with the way I fall in love with certain products is that there is a distinct correlation between the ease of procurement of a certain food item and the amount I love it. Unfortunately, the correlation is inverse, and so I often find myself fruitlessly searching for foodstuff which my brain and stomach are telling me must be there, but my eyes are putting up arguments like 'Seriously - if they were going to be anywhere, they'd be here, and they're not, so just try somewhere else. No, you haven't forgotten what they look like, this shop just doesn't sell them.' The most calamitous example of this phenomenon is without doubt rice paper. My love of rice paper began when I was younger, probably about six, and would be given money to go to the shop round the corner from my Dad's to buy sweets. Even at that age, I would regularly clear the shop of their rice paper stocks, buying 50 sheets at a time, occasionally accompanied by some sherbet to make my own version of flying saucers. Then, as adulthood encroached, I kind of forgot about rice paper, writing it off as a treat from my past. So when the Co-op round the corner from our old flat started selling it, I was entranced. I would regularly go and buy 10 packets of perhaps 40 or 50 sheets each, polishing them all off within days, and guarding them jealously, despite the Boy Wonder's palpable lack of desire to steal them. When the Co-op suddenly changed sweet supplier and stopped stocking them, I was sad, but once again I came to terms with the fact. Then, when we moved to The Village, I was delighted to discover that the newsagent a mere 200 meters from our house sold rice paper. I was overcome with excitement, and cleaned them out on the first occasion I spotted them. The nice lady behind the counter looked at me as though I had a problem, so I told her that I did, impressing on her at the time my excitement at having discovered an outlet of this near-forgotten foodstuff so close to our new home. So, imagine my disappointment when the shop closed temporarily for refitting (and apparently installing a tardis as it is about twice the size now, and that can't just be down to the clever positioning of everything next to everything else, regardless of whether there is room for customers to actually move around) and re-opened in a blaze of glory, but with a new generic sweet supplier and no room at the inn for the brightly coloured sweets of which I had almost got used to having a regular supply. That was it - the last time I came across rice paper was in a shop somewhere in the middle of nowhere and when I bought their entire stock, I was told that even they wouldn't be ordering it again, being as I was the only person to even consider purchasing the stuff, let alone demonstrating any enthusiasm. So, whilst I can accept that I am in a minority (my brother will eat rice paper, but I don't think he dreams about it like I do), I cannot accept that someone willing to buy copious amounts of the stuff cannot find anywhere which will sell it - I can't promise that I will eat enough to sustain an entire factory, but I could easily promise that you would only need two or three more like me to achieve that goal...

What do I really need to know about the Corn Laws?

I feel cheated that a large part of the history syllabus when I was at school focused on the Corn Laws, followed by a fascinating insight into the repeal of the Corn Laws. Every time I have thought about this, I have been surprised at how little I remember of these except that I didn't really understand them when I was 14, although in fairness, there was a lot of stuff I didn't understand then and it was mostly because I wasn't paying any attention and me and my friends were too busy taking the mickey out of our history teacher, who was unfortunately named Mr Guy. However, having suddenly thought about it again recently, I decided to look it up and see if I had been missing out on a fascinating and worthwhile slice of historical know how. So I did, and whilst I now appreciate the importance of the law's abolition in terms of free trade (a concept which I have a sketchy understanding of at this age, but had no real idea about at 14) I really cannot fathom what possessed the examining board to choose this particular period in history as one to which all GCSE students must be introduced. When you think that history effectively covers everything since the world began, I find it hard to conceive of the kind of mind that couldn't think of a time period more suited to engaging the minds of adolescents - anything with blood would have done for a start. There's just so much to learn, but subjects like this really did put me off history as a subject - the focus always seemed to be on learning dates rather than understanding how the events of the past have impacted on our present and how they will continue to affect the future. So, I can safely say that not only did the Corn Law syllabus fail to provide the basis for what should have been my understanding of the Corn Laws, it simultaneously put me off history at a point in my life when I could easily have been quite inspired to find out more.

The thing I wish I’d known

Inspired by my brother and his blog, I started considering this topic and it has certainly given me food for thought:

The thing I wish I had known was that it’s much easier to be happy than to be anything else. I spent years feeling as though I had missed something that everyone else was aware of, or that I was the one who was not in on a universally understood secret. I wanted to be popular but didn’t really have much in common with the people I thought I wanted to be friends with. I wanted to be one of the girls that the boys fancied, but I didn’t actually fancy any of those boys. The things I thought I wanted turned out not to be the things I really wanted. I thought life should come to be and invite me to join in rather than realising that if I wanted something I had to go and get it, and nobody would be feeling sorry for me if I decided to stay in at the weekend because nobody had called me rather than just calling someone and asking what they were doing.

I would also have liked to know that I was good at things which could be made into a career – I was so aimless at school, and then for another three years at university, and then for another couple of years before I found a job that I actually enjoy doing and am keen to learn about. Careers advice seemed uncannily tailored to the jobs which I claimed I wanted to do – journalist, child psychologist etc – regardless of the fact that I wasn’t really cut out for any of them. I wish I’d known about jobs other than nurse, teacher and ‘something in an office’, although I can’t complain that there is anything I would change about my life now (although, obviously, pots of money would make things easier and there would be less frustrating days at work).

On a lighter note, I also wish I’d known that a terrible nostalgia would descend as I approach my 30s – had I known how much I would regret it 15 years later, I would never have given away my Ramona Books.