jmgoyder

I recently found an old notebook in amongst a conglomeration of stuff I packed into various boxes when I moved from the farm nearly three years ago.

The old notebook contains Anthony’s geography assignments from 1951, eight years before I was born. Initially, I was using the notebook the wrong way around, scoring myself on the blank sides of pages for my jigsaw prowess.

But, halfway into this old notebook, I realised there was something on the other side of every page, about 30 pages in, AND I discovered Anthony’s 15-year-old school self AND he was very good at geography! His eloquence, and lovely handwriting, got to me a bit – a weird nostalgia for someone I didn’t know back then.

I am still using the notebook to score my jigsaw wins against myself, i.e, if I get five pieces in, I give myself a score of 5 on the other side of the pages where Anthony was a teenager who loved geography.

There are now only a few pages left of the notebook because, even though I don’t want to, I force myself to throw each page away once it is full of my jigsaw scoring.

I wish now that I had talked about geography with Ants!