18th September 2010

Right, so Mum gave me this notebook for my birthday and said, “Write things down. You’ll thank me when you’re older.” Which is such a Mum thing to say that I almost didn’t do it, purely on principle. But here I am.

I’m sitting on my bed with the window open because September still thinks it’s summer. The notebook smells like new things, which feels important, somehow.

I don’t really know what I’m supposed to write. Mum says there are no rules, and Dad says diaries are just conversations with yourself that nobody interrupts. Which might genuinely be the nicest thing he’s ever said about talking. Dad isn’t a big talker, and he mostly communicates through how aggressively he mows the lawn and the way he says “right then” before leaving a room. That phrase alone can mean anything from I completely agree to I am choosing peace over further discussion.

So, I turned seventeen today - that happened.

Not sixteen, which is dramatic. Not eighteen, which actually means something. Seventeen is just… there. Like a Tuesday. Nobody feels strongly about a Tuesday. You’re not old enough for anything new, and not young enough for anyone to make allowances. You’re just here, being seventeen, eating cake.

Mae came over after school and we ate the cake Mum made - too much lemon in the icing and not quite enough in the sponge, which is extremely on brand. She’s a brilliant cook who occasionally loses a brief but impactful battle with ratios.

We sat in the garden until it got cold and talked about A-levels starting. Mr Calloway has already given us an essay. It's due on Monday which I think it's a bit too much, for the week of term. Mae is doing Psychology. She wants to know why people do things. I said, "You could just ask them." Mae got annoyed and threw a grape at me. That’s how our friendship works: observations, followed by small fruit-based consequences.

The dog sat between us the whole time like a referee. He does that. If two people are talking, he positions himself exactly in the middle, as if he’s mediating. His name is Biscuit, which I didn’t choose. There was a family vote when I was nine. I campaigned hard for “Captain” and lost to everyone - including the dog, who responded immediately to Biscuit. The name of my dog might sound like something you can eat. My dog also thinks that he’s really big! I think that is great, about him.

I am taking English, History and Economics for my A-levels. Economics because Mum said I should do something “applicable.” English because I have to, and History because it’s basically gossip with footnotes and I love that.

Most people in my year already seem to know what they want to be: Doctors. Lawyers. Engineers. The full list of things you write on UCAS forms that make adults nod approvingly. I do not know what I want to be. I know what I enjoy which is figuring out things and taking a bunch of thoughts and finding a pattern, in them.

I do not know what job that is. Maybe it isn’t one. Maybe it’s just a personality trait that occasionally earns money.

Mum’s downstairs she’s making soup. I can smell the onion and thyme. It makes an evening feel cozy like a Sunday even if it’s not.

When I was a kid I used to sit at the kitchen table and do my homework. Mum would be. The steam on the windows would make the room feel all warm and fuzzy.

I still do it sometimes. I just pretend I’m a kid again because the light’s better here. She knows I’m pretending - she always knows – and just lets me do it.

I often think about what I’ll be, like when I’m twenty-five. Will I be living in a city? Will my flat smell like my cooking or someone else’s? Will I still leave the window open? Will Saturdays still belong to me, or will they belong to a job or a timetable or a person who needs something from me?

I hope I still notice what soup smells like. I hope I’m not so busy being something that I forget to be someone. I hope I still write in this notebook, or one like it, and that whatever I’m writing still sounds like me - not someone else I became because of life.

That’s a lot of thinking for a Tuesday of an age so I’m going to go eat soup now.

Rule one of this notebook: no rules. Rule two: write the big thoughts and the small ones. The soup-smelling ones and the scary ones. All of it, even the bits that don’t make sense yet - especially those. Okay. Here we go.