Áilín Quinlan: Fights, a boyfriend, death: my old diary from when I was 10

Now there was something I wasn’t expecting to find.

Cleaning out my office in preparation for the big refresh – out with the stacks of old files, the shelves of used notebooks, the work diaries, the crammed plastic paper-holders, the unread self-help books, the broken ornaments, ancient memorial cards, and ceramic bowls that didn’t suit anywhere else in the house.

Tucked away in the far corner of the very top shelf of a book-shelf, so high up I can’t even reach without standing on a stool, is the diary I started when I was 10.

It consists of one thin little soft-cover notebook tucked inside a thick journal with a hard, battered red cover.

A lesson – never underestimate a child.

The entries last five years and cover everything from the first Star Wars movie to a national state of near-emergency over the threatened landing of the plane of an African dictator in Cork.

There is a Pope’s visit to Ireland and the potential discovery of the lost continent of Atlantis, all cheek by jowl with reports about parcels from granny and schoolyard fights.

The very first entry, on Thursday, November 29, 1973, describes the weather - “very wet” - and explains that we got home faster than usual that lunchtime and didn’t get wet because we got a spin up from the local priest. I don’t remember either the priest, or coming home from school for our lunch in the middle of the day.

A different world.

On Friday, November 30, 1973, I get into a fight in the schoolyard with my best friend. I report that she started it, of course (of course), by slapping me and I (of course) was then forced to defend myself. The fight takes place in a corner of the playground and lasts for only a few minutes. Onlookers, I record, are wildly entertained. My friend and I are both left exhausted.

On Saturday, December 1, I start reading The Diary Of Anne Frank.

A few days later, the same best friend and I get slaps on the hands from the Master (yes, there was still corporal punishment in schools back then) but, as I declare defiantly, “it barely made my fingers tingle”. I don’t go on to explain why we were punished. A pity, that.

December, 1973, rolls on. Granny sends us colouring books and crayons. We join the library. I get the flu. We go to see Santy. I complain that the Master is overdoing it in the homework stakes. Christmas tests loom. I worry.

Ah, but tucked into the pages is a folded letter from my granny, lovingly reassuring me that she has no doubt that I will do very well in all my tests because she and Granda brought me to Lourdes when I was seven.

I score 49 English spellings out of 50 correct, 92 out of 100 for Geography and 80 out of 100 for history. However, the Irish and maths results, always the dodgy ones for me, aren’t back yet – the Master is still correcting them and I’m hoping and praying Lourdes will come through for me.

The diary continues until April, 1979. There’s a three-month stay in a remote mountain farmhouse in the Gaeltacht that does wonders to improve my Irish.

There are swimming lessons. Many visits to and from beloved grandparents.

Bizarrely, the African dictator Idi Amin, one of the most brutal tyrants and despots in modern world history, utterly notorious for his regime of torture and murder, makes an appearance in the diary of this child living in a quiet village in East Cork.

I report that gardaí and the army are deployed to Cork Airport to protect us against the possibility that Amin, who has imposed a reign of blood-stained terror in Uganda, was due to land his plane there.

To my great disappointment, Idi never shows. Instead, I report in a later entry, he appears on television doing a pop dance. You couldn’t make it up.

The first years of second level school, the Inter Cert, a first boyfriend, the death of my grandfather. A letter from my grandmother explaining that she feels he is still in the house with her.

There’s an ancient photograph of myself in swimming togs and a really and truly vile cream, rubber swimming hat covered in beige rubber flowers.

At some point, I mention trying on my first pair of nylons. There are visits to the seaside. A circular yellow keepsake of the visit of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in September, 1979.

There is mention of second-level and disliking my Spanish teacher. A school trip to France. Parcels from granny. A newspaper clipping about the possible discovery of the lost continent of Atlantis. Going to see the first Star Wars film. Babysitting. Ceilis, which seemed to have been a bit of a thing for teenagers back in the ’70s. The theft of my prized roller-skates.

For a period, I write only in Irish after a family member confesses to having read my diary and spilled the beans on it.

There is a folded letter from a kind aunt, dated 1981, which I had saved and tucked into the diary. She has enclosed £20 and is consoling me about something – why is not clear but I suspect, given the year that was in it, the letter had something to do with me failing exams in college. Ouch.

The last entry, April 18, 1979, on the final page: “Someday when I’m older and wiser,” I write with utter confidence, “I’ll come back and read this and enjoy it.”

That was 46 years ago.

I never came back; never enjoyed it. Until now.

I set the diary aside.

I get on with the clear-out.

And what do I find next.

A book called The Journal Writer’s Companion.

This book is all about the benefits of journaling.

Writing a journal, the author says, can increase your sense of well-being, make you happier, more productive and fulfilled, helps you become more organised, develop ideas, solve everyday problems and blocks, and help you create a sense of purpose.

I knew it all when I was 10, didn’t I?