Alice By Accident. Lynne Banks Reid

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      My life? Well all I can think of that isn’t private. Talk about boring, but it’s what she asked for. I wrote it all in my grandma’s kind of writing, joined up and with loops for the b’s, h’s, g’s, j’s, k’s, q’s, y’s and l’s. Little f’s have two loops, top and bottom, they’re a tail-letter and a tall-letter. I can’t do the capital letters in Gene’s kind of writing exept the F’s and G’s. I practised F’s when she first showed me because they’re fun to write, it’s like drawing a fancy design, like this

      I’ve been sent up to bed. Mum got fed up with me because I keep talking about the row she had with Gene so she said “Go to bed and read, I want to watch TV.” She watches TV alot. She used to read me bedtime stories but she stopped. She said because now I can read for myself but I think it’s because I complained because she got sleepy in the middle and her voice sort of went away and I had to keep nudging her. She got really hurt feelings and wouldn’t read to me any more even when she wasn’t sleepy.

      Gene used to read to me. She read really well because she’s an actress, she did different voices for all the caracters in the stories. She used to sing songs to me too when I went to stay with her in the country. She knows millions of songs with all the words. I’m really upset with Gene but Mum says even if you get angry with people you should try to remember the good things about them. Mum said that for when I’m angry with her, but I’m using it for Gene. Only it doesn’t work all the time cos the anger is too strong. Well it’s not all being angry, it’s mostly being sad because I miss her. Still who wouldn’t be angry with a grandma who has a row with your mum and then doesn’t see you any more.

      When I wrote that last bit I started crying so I stopped. I cry alot when I think about Gene so I think I’ll stop thinking about her.

      I was quite pleased with getting a B+, and I copied the spellings, which I don’t always. Only three, it’s a miracle, I usually get a dozen, maybe the Brandy medsin is working. She is SO STRICT AND PICKY banging on about presentation. Putting in quote marks and paragraphs is just so fiddly I can’t be bothered. After the lesson she kept me back and said “I want you to stop this silly show-off writing.”

      I said it’s called cursive. She said I know what it’s called but we don’t do cursive writing in British schools any more it’s too hard to learn. Gene told me she’d probably say that and what she means is it’s too hard to teach. Gene said that for hundreds of years kids learnt to do cursive and do good penmanship and they still do it in America but here now they just do joined-up print which is babyish and a cop-out.

      I said to Miss Brand “but I like writing cursive and Brandy said quite crossly “Well you can’t, unless you can do it properly it looks like a spider that got drunk on ink. Everyone larfed and I felt a bit hurt. It didn’t put me off though. I’m going to practise the capitals secretly. You can’t join-up Brandy’s kind of capitals. Gene said if you have to keep lifting your pen between letters you write much slower and that makes sense. I want to write fast because I’m going to write alot.

      At least Brandy didn’t make me copy my life story all out again. Nicola and Alexandra had to cos they got Cs. You have to if you get anything under a C+. But she said “Basicly it was good. You see you could write your life story.” My life story will be ten years long in April. Till now it’s only nine and a half years long. (It’s true I don’t remember the first three and only bits after that until I was about eight.)

      I’ve decided I’m going to write my ortobiography in here in cursive in my special notebook. First I’ll practise some cursive capitals. I’ve got them all written by Gene on a piece of paper with extra lines on it so the spider doesn’t look so drunk. F and G first and then I’ll do the others that aren’t so fancy but they’re still fancier than Miss Brand’s boring print ones.