feeling listless

Dad gets the chop! On sunday at about 3:30 I began to make and write a book to go with the game I made. All of a sudden, Just like that, the words rand out like a foghorn in a destresable state, tand the worlds "!£$%&*+" (sorry for any incovenience coursed). I ran out like a bat out of hell, to see that my dad was hopping around ore garden like a dimented rasberry. Mum Quickly rang for a taxi; and told the driver to take us to Broad Green Hospital. We were there for about an hour and my dad got four stitches in his foot. Luckily he was all right but he had the day off today. [from my Personal Writing excerise book, 19th May 1986 aged eleven]

[The health service in 1986 everyone -- seen to in an hour. What my teacher failed to point out when he marked the piece with 'Glad he's alright now Stuart' was that I don't actually point out why he went to hospital in the first place (it's accompanied by an extremely abstract picture of a foot in crayon with about three toes). My Dad had actually been chopping the branches back on the trees in the garden when his axe missed, hitting his foot hard in the slot next to his big toe. I do remember him hopping about in a cartoon manner and swearing loudly, and crying -- you can imagine the pain. This was the first time I'd been to a hospital (I've only been again twice since) and thankfully it was relatively benign. I think I spent the whole time pestering my Mum to buy me a packet of crisps from the machine. The other bit at the beginning to do with creating a booklet for a game that I'd written was an ongoing fiction I'd created for the journal that even at that tender age I was able to code the most fabulously complex games. Of course if I was embellishing it now there wouldn't be a computer in sight ...]