Wanting the best

I have an amazing capacity for hoarding and for trivia... and for hoarding trivia. Having recently transcribed my diary for 1975 I see that at the beginning of that year, I was five feet, two inches tall and took a size eight shoe. That shoe was occasionally one with a four inch stack heel (well it was the seventies after all) and I clumped onto a bus every morning at 8.15, arriving at school between 8.40 and 8.45.

On 12th February that year, my brother found a frog at school. I received a Valentine's card from Anne Windsor two days later and on 20th February I went to bed in clean pyjamas and between clean sheets. I bathed my sore toe in salt water on Friday 14th March and exactly two months later, my sister's goldfish nearly choked to death on seaweed in its bowl. (I don't know if goldfish can actually choke, but that's what I wrote). Looking back now it amazes me that I chose to record some things over others. Why for instance would I note that on September 21st I killed five wasps and on October 9th, my sister sewed the ear on an elephant she was making? Surely something more exciting or notable happened on those days didn't it?

In any event, I find it quite fascinating reading about the little flirtations at school, the games of football with friends long-forgotten and narrowly missing an IRA bomb blast in Oxford Street, London.

But I also recorded the trips we made; journeys to visit our grandparents in London and in Dorset, visits to Hylands Park, Central Park, Admiral's Park, Danbury Lakes. Days out to Cambridge, Canterbury, London, Finchingfield. I was a fairly naive twelve year old for most of 1975 but I appear to have been quite active, most of that summer seemingly spent in swimming pools or having kick-abouts with friends.

And as I was typing up these thoughts from long ago I wondered what, if we stay in Bangalore for much longer, my children would write about in their diaries. We have Cubbon Park and Lal Bagh, both of them scruffy and overcrowded, and the only decent swimming pools are not public baths like the ones we used to go to, but membership or guest-only affairs in clubs and 5-star hotels. Nandi Hills is a reasonable trip and not too far away but whereas we had a huge choice of parks and opens spaces within ten minutes' reach, and London and Cambridge were an hour's car journey, in Bangalore - at the wrong time of day - we'd be lucky to make it from Indiranagar to City Market.

It's horses for courses. Bangalore is home to over seven million people, Chelmsford was maybe a hundred thousand or so in those days, I don't really know. But what I do know is that some of those qualities of life just aren't here in India. They are is in some respects but it's the little things like parks and open spaces and cleanliness and a good infrastructure which, over time, can begin to niggle.

Originally published on Blogger on 26th June 2008. In the year since I wrote that entry we've moved house twice and we now live in an apartment complex - Sriram Stepford - where the children have grass to play on, swings to swing on and a pool to swim in, a facility they use daily. They also have sunshine throughout the year. So yes, horses for courses as I wrote back then, and it's not so bad. The photo is of Hyland's House, Chelmsford.