Claudio Costa | Updates

Everyone Forgets - Alex's Journals

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Before the valley, before the envelope, before the navy suit and the spreadsheets, and the three a.m. emails there was a girl in a bedroom with the window open and a notebook she had not written in yet.

Alex at seventeen was not the woman you met in Now or Neverish. She was louder, messier, more likely to laugh at things that were not funny and cry at things that were. Alex argued with her mum about everything and nothing, and ran on Saturday mornings not for discipline but because moving fast through cold air made her feel like she owned the day.

Alex ate toast with much butter and did not think about what that meant for anyone's perception, had a dog called Biscuit and a best friend called Mae who ate KitKats without breaking the bars apart, in her kitchen that smelled like onion soup and Earl Grey.

Alex was also already the one who held things together. You can see the seeds of it in these early entries of her diary - the friend who organises, the daughter who reads the room, the student who is so well prepared that when a colleague in her study group calls her intimidating, she spends an entire evening wondering whether that was a compliment or a diagnosis.

The thing about Alex at seventeen is that she still had space between the doing and the being, and could notice something as simple as a crack in the pavement to sit with a question she could not answer, however she would write three pages about nothing and feel like it mattered.

She had not yet learned that space was something you were supposed to fill with productivity, and had not yet met anyone who would teach her to measure herself by output. The gap between who she was and who she presented to the world was so small you could barely see daylight through it.

That gap would widen, year by year until it was large enough to lose herself!

These early years entries of her journal are raw, full of exclamation marks and afterthoughts and sentences that change direction through. They contradict themselves, overshare and trail off into observations about weather and dogs or what soup smells like when her mum makes it on a Sunday afternoon in autumn.

They sound, in words like someone who has not started performing yet. Someone who writes the way she thinks, which's to say in every direction at once, with a sense of humour that has not been handed down by professionalism and a curiosity that has not been narrowed into a job specification.

That's what makes them worth reading - because they are true, and not polished. This is who Alex was before the world started editing Alex, a version of herself that will spend a decade forgetting and a valley trying to remember.

Hold on to Alex - she's going to need you to.

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The Last Night Before Everything

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

23rd September 2011

Tomorrow I leave for university. My room is packed into boxes now and it doesn't look like my room anymore. It looks like a storage unit with curtains. The walls are bare, the shelves are empty, and there's a rectangle of paint where my corkboard used to hang. It looks like a wound the room hasn't healed from yet.

Everything that made it mine is inside cardboard, labelled in marker pen that Mum insisted on. She says I'll forget what's in them and she's probably right! She's always right about the things I don't want to admit.

Mum has been strange all week. Not strange just hovering but she keeps finding reasons to come into my room. She brings tea I didn't ask for, asks if I've packed my winter coat - three times so far - and stands in the doorway. Says things like "Have you got enough socks?" I think she’s trying to memorise the room before I leave, as well as memorising me in it for when I’m gone. I love her much it makes my chest tight. My throat does that thing where you know you could cry if you let yourself, but you don't because you've got packing to do. Crying takes time you haven't scheduled.

Mum made soup tonight, the proper one. The onion-and-thyme one from Saturday mornings. The one that makes the kitchen smell like everything is okay. We ate at the table, just the two of us because Dad had to work. She didn't say anything about tomorrow. She talked about the neighbour’s cat that has learned to open the side gate now and its treating the neighbourhood like a kingdom. She talked about a book she’s reading. She says it's fine but not as good as the one. That's her review of books. She talked about everything that wasn't the fact that her daughter is leaving.

I wanted to say something about how the kitchen will be the most important room and her soup is the reason I know what home feels like. I'm afraid I'll go away and become someone who forgets to call, and to notice the steam on the windows. I forget that some things matter more than whatever I'm going to spend the three years learning. I wanted to tell her that I know she worries. Her worrying isn't annoying; it's just the constant proof of love I've ever received.

I didn't say any of that. I had seconds instead. When I was doing the washing up she stood next to me, dried the bowls slowly, as that's how she says the things she can't say loud. By being close and useful and quiet. Then she said, "You'll forget to call. It's okay. Just don't forget to eat " Then she went upstairs. I heard her close her bedroom door. I think she was crying. I didn't go up. Sometimes the kindest thing is to let someone feel what they're feeling. Without making them perform it for an audience. I learned that from her.

I packed the last box, and the notebook went on top. Not inside. I don't want it buried under jumpers and textbooks. I want it where I can reach it. Where it can breathe. It's the thing that goes with me that doesn't need unpacking.

Mae texted: "Don't forget me." I texted back: "Impossible." I meant it completely. The way you mean things at eighteen. When the world hasn't shown you yet how things you swore you'd never forget end up folded into the back of a drawer you stop opening.

Biscuit is lying on my bed. On top of the dressing gown, I'm supposed to pack. I'm not going to move him. He can have it. He doesn't know I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm not going to explain it to him. He'll just look at me with his eyes. I'll lose it entirely.

Dad came home late. He stood in my doorway. Said, "You'll be brilliant." Then softer, "Come home whenever you need to." Then he picked up Biscuit. Carried him downstairs. That was unnecessary. Also, exactly the kind of fathering that ruins you with its gentleness.

Tomorrow I'm going to get in the car. Mum will drive. She'll have the radio on loud. That's what she does when she doesn't want to think. I'll watch the houses get smaller in the mirror. Then bigger again as new ones take their place. At some point the road will stop being the road home. It will start being the road else. That will be fine. It will be an adventure. It will be the beginning of whatever I'm going to be.

I cried in the car on the way. I should write that down now. Because I'll pretend later that I didn't. This notebook is for truth. Not performance.

The window is open. September is pretending to be summer. One last time. For my benefit. The soup smell has crept all the way. Biscuit is snoring downstairs on my dressing gown. Mums light is still on, under her door.

Okay. Here we go.

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Results Day and the Pavement Crack

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

18th August 2011

I got my results. Three As. The actual letters, printed on real paper, handed to me by Mrs Patterson in a brown envelope that somehow contained my entire future and also smelled faintly of the school photocopier. She smiled in a way that said, “I always knew,” which, respectfully, she did not. Mrs Patterson teaches Geography and has never taught me anything. But she looked genuinely pleased, and I decided that counted for something.

Mae got hers too. Two As and a B - she screamed in the corridor, properly screamed you know, the kind that makes everyone turn around and then start clapping because the joy is so obviously real it becomes contagious. I hugged her and we jumped up and down like children, which we technically still are, even though we’re supposedly adults now because we have A-levels and university places and a vague understanding of what fiscal policy is.

We stood there bouncing in the corridor and for about thirty seconds I didn’t think about what comes next. I was just there, with my best friend, and the numbers on the paper matched the numbers in my head and everything felt solved. Then I walked home, and this is the part I really want to write about, because it was strange and I don’t want to forget it.

There’s a crack in the pavement about halfway between school and home, that I’ve stepped over probably five thousand times. It looks like a river if you catch it at the right angle, or a lightning bolt if you’re feeling dramatic, which I’ve never really noticed it before. It’s just a crack. Part of the background. Part of the walk your feet know even when your brain is somewhere else.

But today, walking home with three As folded into an envelope that was already getting creased in my pocket, I stopped. I actually stopped and looked at it. I stood there on the road like I’d lost something - except I hadn’t lost anything. I’d gained everything.

And the crack was exactly the same.

The same as yesterday. The same as last week. The same as the day I was born. It didn’t care about my results. It didn’t know I existed and just sat there, cracked and ordinary, while people stepped over it on their way to and from the things they think will change their lives.

It is strange that a single piece of paper can change your life, open doors quietly close others make your mum cry before you have even got through the door while the pavement stays the same. The world does not care about your achievements. That is either the most depressing thing or the most freeing thing that exists.

Today it felt like both things, like two weather fronts pushing against each other making the air feel electric and at the same time. I think I will remember that feeling longer than I remember the grades themselves. The feeling of standing on a pavement crack. The feeling that the world does not care and that is okay. The feeling that you are not as important as you think and that is actually a relief.

I got home. My mum cried, although she pretended she was not crying and then stopped pretending because the tissue box was already on the table, which meant she had been crying before I even arrived. This is like my mum that it made me laugh, which made my mum cry more. My mum and her paper tissue box it is something that she does and it is funny. The grades on the piece of paper they are not as important as my mum and her feelings and the world and its indifference, to my achievements that is what I will remember. The piece of paper changed my life. My mum and the world they are what make my life worth living.

Dad shook my hand. This is his version of a full emotional monologue, and said, “Well done, kid,” and then went to mow the lawn, because in his world, processing feelings and grass maintenance happen at the same time. I could hear the mower for the next hour. The prouder he was, the more symmetrical the stripes.

Mae came over later. We sat in the garden with Biscuit, ate crisps, and talked about university like we knew what we were talking about. She’s going to Leeds. I’m going further away. We didn’t talk about that bit. The distance. What happens to a friendship built on proximity and telepathic disapproval and shared library tables when you put three hundred miles of motorway through the middle of it.

Instead, we talked about what we’d buy for our rooms, and whether you actually need a toastie maker or if that’s just very convincing marketing. Underneath all of it was the quiet understanding that this is ending. Not us. Just this version of us. The library table. The silent Oliver evictions. The study sessions, the grapes, the wordless looks.

All of it.

I stepped over the crack again later on the way to the shop. Still there. Still indifferent. Still shaped like a river going nowhere.

Good. Some things should stay.

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Exams and the Art of Pretending You're Fine

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

4th June 2011

A-levels start Monday and I have written the word "BREATHE" on a Post-it note stuck to my laptop and it's not working - the word just sits there, breathing, while I don't.

Mae and I have been living in the library for the past three weeks as we have a table near the window that we consider ours, even though a boy called Oliver sat there once on a Wednesday and we spent the entire afternoon radiating hostility until he moved. We didn't say anything and didn't need to. Mae and I can communicate disapproval telepathically. It's our superpower. Oliver now sits by the dictionaries, where he belongs.

The revision routine goes like this: I make colour-coded notes. Mae reads mine because hers look like a crime scene written by someone who was also having a crime scene. We quiz each other until one of us gets something wrong and the other one pretends not to be relieved that they're not the only one struggling. Then we eat something from the vending machine that barely counts as food, usually something with the word "crispy" in the name that is not, by any reasonable standard, crispy, and talk about everything that isn't exams until we feel guilty enough to go back to the notes.

Jamie Wilson from our History study group told me yesterday that I'm intimidating. He said this while I was eating a Twix, which slightly undermined the observation, I replied , "Intimidating how?" and he said, "You're just so... organised. Like, you've got a plan for the plan and it's a bit scary to be honest." I didn't know if this was a compliment or a diagnosis, still don't. Mae says it's a compliment wrapped in an insecurity, which is very Psychology A-level of her. She also says Jamie probably fancies me and that intimidation is his way of dealing with it, which I think is a stretch, but I also didn't entirely hate hearing it.

Here's what I didn't tell Jamie. Being organised isn't confidence. It's the opposite. It's what happens when you're so afraid of being caught unprepared that you build scaffolding around yourself before anyone can see the cracks in the wall. I make plans because the alternative is sitting with the possibility that I don't know what I'm doing, and that's a feeling I've been avoiding since I was about twelve. Maybe earlier. Maybe since the first time I put my hand up in class and got the answer wrong and saw the flicker of surprise on the teacher's face that said, "Oh. I thought you were one of the reliable ones." That flicker. I have been running from it since.

The difference between being prepared and being afraid is really small. Nobody really understands how small it is. From the outside they look the same. They both get things done. You make notes and plans for everything.. One of them lets you sleep at night and the other one does not. Lately I have been lying awake at two a.m. Thinking about plans for papers I could write easily. Stopping feels scarier than keeping going. Long as I am studying I am safe. Long as there are more flashcards to study more chapters to read more dates to remember I do not have to think about the question that is really bothering me which is: what if I am not as good as everyone thinks I am?

My mum keeps leaving food outside my door. She does not knock she just puts it there like it is a gift for someone who is really stressed. Night it was a banana and a note that said, "You know enough trust it." I put the note in my pencil case so I can see it during the exam. That is. Really sweet or really smart. Maybe it is both. She knows me enough to know that I do not need to study more. What I need is someone to tell me that it is okay to stop.

Mae sent me a text an hour ago: "We are going to be fine”. If we are not fine we will be not fine together which is basically fine." That is the kind of thing that would not be correct on an exam. It is true, in life. I think Mae knows that..

Monday. English Lit Paper 1. Othello, the one I'm good at. Iago and his understanding of people. Mr Calloway's voice in my head saying, "That's an insight, not an observation." Mum's note in my pencil case saying, "You know enough. Trust it."

I'm going to breathe, and if breathing doesn't work, I'm going to eat the banana and trust Mum's note and remember that being prepared and being afraid can look the same, but only one of them gets to drive.

Okay. One more set of History dates and then bed - for real this time. I mean it, bed, actual bed. Not lying-in-bed-staring-at-the-ceiling-running-through-fiscal-policy bed. Real bed. With sleeping. Starting now.

...after one more flashcard.

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The Argument That Changed the Kitchen

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

9th April 2011

Mum and I had a fight today, not the kind where people slam doors and storm out of the house but the kind that just sits there in the kitchen and will not go away like a bad smell that you cannot find the source of - it was about university. Mum wants me to study something that will get me a job, like business or economics something that has a job at the end of it like a car with a trailer attached to it. Something that will lead to a desk job and a salary and a life where I do not have to worry about money all the time like my mum has had to worry about money. She will not say that out loud. I want to study something that will let me keep learning, like English or maybe a combined degree something that will let me ask lots of questions of just finding one answer right away. I want to figure out who I am before I decide what I want to do. She said, "You can ask questions for the rest of your life, Alex but at some point you need to be able to pay your rent while you are asking them."

Which is a point. It is annoyingly fair. That is the thing about my mum she is not wrong she is just very practical in a way that makes you feel like dreaming big is a luxury that we cannot afford. My mum grew up with little she does not talk about it much, but it is always there underneath everything like a low sound in a song that changes the whole mood even if most people do not notice it. When my mum says "practical" she means "safe" when she says "applicable" she means "I do not want you to feel stuck like I once felt stuck". But she does not say those things she just talks about rent and university. Getting a job like university and jobs are the only things that matter like my mum and I are just talking about university but we are really talking about something much bigger like our whole lives and what we want to do with them like what kind of person I want to be and what kind of life I want to have and my mum wants me to have a safe life, a life with a steady job and a salary and a place to live but I want more, than that I want a life that is meaningful a life that is mine..

I said something about not wanting to pick a box before I know what shape I am. She said something about boxes keeping the rain out. Then we both went quiet in that particular way that means neither of us is backing down but neither of us is sure we're right, nor the kitchen got very loud with the sound of a kettle being filled more aggressively than necessary.

We had tea. That is what we always do in our family. When we argue we boil some water. Sit down with a cup of tea that is too hot to hold. We just sit there. Let the silence do its job because sometimes words are not enough. We did not fix anything. We just sat there. After a while Mum said, "I do not want you to struggle." Her voice got softer at the end because she was trying not to show me that this is about love not, about making plans. I could have said, "I know that Mum." I should have said it.. I said, "I will be fine Mum," which is something that is true but does not really help.

I think some problems are not meant to be solved. We just have to get through them. You have to sit with the feeling drink your tea and let the argument calm down. Then you can keep going, a little different because of what happened a little more aware of what the other person's going through. Mum does not know that she taught me this. She did teach me that tea is a part of our family’s way of dealing with things. We have tea when we argue and it helps us get through the times. Mum and I we had tea. It was what we needed. Every argument we've ever had has ended with a kettle, never with a winner. And I think that's actually a philosophy of life disguised as a beverage habit.

Dad came home while we were still sitting there and said, "Who died?" because he reads rooms the way some people read instruction manuals, badly and with too much confidence. Mum said, "Nobody. We're discussing Alex's future." He said "Ah". Then he made himself a sandwich. This was really the helpful thing that my dad did all evening. My dad has a way of not making things worse. This does not sound like a deal until you meet people who always make things worse. Then you think it is an ability.

I am going to apply for degrees. I want to do lots of things. My mum will be worried. I will be worried too. I will worry about different things. My mum and I will talk about it. Drink tea. The kitchen has seen a lot of arguments. It is like the kitchen absorbs them. Week everything will be okay. That is how we do things. We do not really fix problems. We just move on.. We survive them, and the surviving is the fixing. I actually think that's the most important thing anyone could learn that not everything needs resolving. Some things just need company. A mug, a table, someone sitting across from you who disagrees but isn't going anywhere. That's enough, that's more than enough. The kitchen smells like arguments and Earl Grey and whatever Dad put in that sandwich, honestly I think this might be the most important room in the world.

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Saturday Mornings Before the World Wakes Up

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

5th February 2011

It is six on a Saturday and I am the person awake in this house. The heating has not come on yet as I walk into the kitchen. It is mostly dark except for the light, above the cooker because Mum always leaves this light on because she thinks a dark kitchen is depressing. I think Mum is right a dark kitchen is depressing.

I am sitting here with a piece of toast that has a lot of butter on it and a cup of tea. This cup of tea is still too hot for me to drink, and I do not care because I feel like I own the morning. It is like the morning was left here for me and nobody else knows that the morning is here. I am happy that I get to enjoy the Saturday morning by myself.

I like that I get to have the morning to myself it is a feeling, as this is a time of day and I am glad that I am awake to see it. I will just sit here and enjoy my toast and tea and the quiet morning.

I run on Saturdays. I do not run far I do not run fast I just do this loop through the park. Back that takes about twenty-five minutes if I do not stop to look at things, which I usually do. There is a point where the path goes between two rows of trees and if the light is right you can see your breath and the steam rising off the grass at the time and the whole thing looks like the world is still deciding whether to wake up properly. The geese on the pond are always awake before me, which I find both impressive and judgemental. One of the geese hissed at me week and I hissed back at the goose. The geese. I have an understanding now.

I think best when nobody needs me. I know that is a thing to notice about myself at seventeen. There it is. When the house is asleep and the phone has not started and nobody is asking me what the plan is or whether I have remembered the thing or could I just quickly do that thing my brain gets quiet enough to actually hear itself. It is like the difference, between trying to listen to music in a room and listening to music alone with headphones. The music is the same. You hear different parts of the music.

During the week I am always on. At school I am the one who knows the schedule, who has the pen, who remembers that the meeting room is booked and the homework is due and the permission slip needs signing. I am the one Mrs Danvers asks to collect the textbooks because she knows I will count the textbooks properly. I'm the one Mae texts when she can't find the classroom because she's wandered off again, physically or mentally, both happen with equal frequency. At home I'm the one who notices when the dishwasher needs emptying or when Dad's in a mood or when Mum's pretending she's fine when she's clearly been on the phone to Auntie Rose again about something that isn't really about kitchens.

I don't mind it. That's the thing. I like being useful. I like the way people relax when I walk into a room because they know someone competent has arrived and they can stop pretending they've got it handled. Is that weird? Is that a good quality or a warning sign? Mae says I have "eldest daughter energy" even though I'm an only child, which is both accurate and slightly concerning. She says it like a compliment. Sometimes I hear it like a diagnosis.

But Saturday mornings are mine. The toast is mine. The run is mine. The twenty-five minutes of cold air and tree-breath and geese-related conflict and nobody asking me for anything, that's mine. Nobody is watching me be anything. I'm just here, being a person who runs slowly and eats too much butter and notices the steam on the grass. No performance. No audience. Just me and the morning, keeping each other company.

I wonder if I'll always have this. A time in the day that belongs to me before it belongs to anyone else. A window between sleeping and being needed where I can think thoughts that aren't to-do lists. I hope so. I'm going to hold onto Saturday mornings like a policy. A personal rule that doesn't need negotiating or justifying or explaining to anyone. The kind of thing you protect not because it's productive but because without it you start to forget what your own thoughts sound like when they're not answering someone else's question.

I can hear the pipes making a clanking noise. It sounds like the house is waking up and stretching after a time of sleeping. The house is waking up. It is making a lot of noise. My dad will be getting up in twenty minutes. He will come downstairs wearing the jumper he wore yesterday. My dad will make the joke that he always makes. He will say that he needs a cup of coffee before he can actually make himself a cup of coffee. My dad always makes this joke.

My mum will be up in forty minutes. She will ask if I have run already. I will say yes. My mum will say " girl" even though I am seventeen. The house is still waking up. I like it when my mum says " girl". My mum says this to me even though I am seventeen and I should be beyond this stage. I still like it when my mum says " girl”, to me. By then the morning will have shifted from mine to ours, which is also fine - just different.

Going to lace up and go before the world wakes up and wants things from me. The geese are waiting or hissing. Same thing.

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The Teacher Who Actually Listened

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

12th November 2010

Something happened in English today and I can't stop thinking about it, which is annoying because I have an Economics problem set due tomorrow and my brain has decided that critical analysis of fiscal policy can wait while it replays a forty-minute conversation on a loop. Brains are terrible at priorities, mine especially.

Mr Calloway kept me after class. Not in trouble, just, he wanted to talk about my essay on Othello. I wrote about how Iago isn't evil in the cartoon villain way, he's evil because he understands people so well and uses it against them. Which is emotional intelligence, without a moral guide. I really liked that line when I came up with it. I wasn't sure if it was good or if I was just trying to sound smart which I sometimes do. Mae calls it my "show-off spiral."

Mr Calloway read one of my paragraphs back to me and then did something that no teacher has done before - he asked me what I thought? Not what Shakespeare meant, not what the mark scheme wanted, and not what the "right" answer was. He wanted to know what I actually thought, as a person with a brain and an opinion!

I did not know what to do with the question at first because I felt like being handed a microphone when you are used to being in the audience. The question made me feel that way. My first instinct was to say what I thought the person who asked the question wanted to hear. This is a reflex I am starting to notice about myself. I am starting to notice this reflex about the question. I am not sure I like it. The question and my reaction, to the question are making me think about this reflex. But he waited, properly waited, not the impatient waiting that's really just a polite countdown to giving you the answer themselves, the kind of waiting that has actual space in it. So, I said that what really scares me in the play isn't Iago’s actions, but that Othello believes him. This is because people usually go for the story that confirms their fears, about themselves. Mr. Calloway looked at me properly the way grown-ups do when they suddenly see you're not a kid anymore. He said, "Alex, what you just said is not something a seventeen-year-old would say. That's a deep insight.". There's a difference."

I walked home the long way because I needed to think about that as an observation is seeing something and an insight is understanding why it's there. I have been seeing things my life. I run my eyes over classrooms and family dinners and friendship groups. I notice who is comfortable and who is pretending to be. I see who is leading. Who is letting them lead. I see who is laughing because something is funny and who is laughing because silence felt scary.. I thought everyone did that. I thought that noticing was just what happens when you are paying attention to the people around you like the people in your family and your friends. I thought everyone was paying attention to the people in their life like I was paying attention to my family and my friends. Noticing people is something I do like when I am at school or with my friends I am always noticing the people, around me like my family and my friends.

Maybe it's not. Maybe most people are paying attention to something else entirely, to themselves, or to what's expected, or to the noise. Maybe what I do, this constant reading of rooms and people and the spaces between what someone says and what they mean, is different, and I just haven't found the name for it yet.

Mae says I overthink a lot - she told me this the other day while eating a KitKat without breaking the bars apart first, which tells me everything I need to know about her relationship with overthinking. For her things arrive at her brain, she processes them and moves on, like a conveyor belt made of common sense. I love her dearly, but she is a chaos agent wrapped in a sensible coat. Just realise that she might read this one day and throw another grape at me!

Mum was on the phone when I got home, talking to Auntie Rose about a neighbour's kitchen renovation that apparently "went badly wrong" in a way that required forty minutes of detailed analysis. I sat at the table and ate an apple and listened without meaning to. Mum noticed me after a while and mouthed, "You alright?" I nodded and she went back to the kitchen disaster. She looked at me again before she hung up the same way Mr Calloway did. It was like she was seeing something she had not expected to see on a Tuesday afternoon. It was as if I had grown slightly while she was not looking. She was trying to catch up without making a fuss, about the kitchen disaster and me.

I have decided something. I want to be the kind of person who asks people what they think about things, not what they know about the kitchen disaster or anything else.. Knowing is just memory. Thinking is alive. Mr Calloway gave me that today, and I don't think he even realises it. One conversation, one question asked with actual curiosity, and something shifted. If that's what teaching is, it might be the most important job in the world. Also, I still haven't done the Economics problem set but Fiscal policy can have me tomorrow. Tonight belongs to Iago and insights and the difference between seeing and understanding.

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The Notebook With No Rules

Claudio Costa — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

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