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Me

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John's hypertextual youth Why? Who? How? Really? Leave this self-indulgent tangle!
In 1972 I kept a diary. It is now lost, along with most of its memories. The diary itself was a small black book with thin smooth pages and a short pencil that slotted into a tube along the spine. The edges of the pages were gilded. I wrote in tiny pencilled letters of my experiences and opinions, each entry occupying only a third of a very small page. Two memories, described in the diary, I have still.

The City of Sheffield Schools Concert Band rehearsals were every Tuesday evening. From my oboist's chair I had a direct view of the conductor, but, when I was tacet (resting), I watched the drummer. Drumming was so cool, even in a concert band. I decided that one day I would learn to play percussion. This has been my unfulfilled ambition to the present.

Several of my diary entries described the power blackouts we had during 1972 as a result of the miners' strike. In one (occupying only a third of a very small page), I tried to describe the candlelight in the living room at Ric and Anne's, as we friends sat eating teacakes, toasted just before the power cut, and talking of nothing. I think it was on this occasion that I first fell in love, though I didn't put that in my diary. Instead I was trying to write a prose poem on a candle and its shadows. I wish I still had the diary.