My Lost Toddlerhood

In the summer of 1985, I spent weeks painting a railway tunnel without understanding why the site unsettled me.  This is a true story about secret messages in my landscape paintings . The journey is dark, but the outcome is unexpected and heartening. Introduction: The Summer That Would Haunt Me It is late August 1985. I’m 20 and about to begin my third and final year at University. The summer holidays are coming to a close and I have no idea what I’m going to paint for my Fine Art degree show. I’m beginning to feel tetchy. Dad tells me of a railway tunnel where he takes the dog for a walk. It might be a good spot for alfresco paintings. On 23 August 1985, I accompany him to encounter an old railway bridge with a cattle gate. It seems ok, but something is missing. I mention this to Dad, but he doesn’t see what I mean. He likes the site and believes it has everything needed for good landscape painting. The Railway Tunnel: A Place That Felt Wrong Dissatisfied, I accompany Dad to a...

At around the age of 14, I began to draw a man’s face. The man had broad features, shaggy dark hair and a fierce glower. I didn’t know where he came from. Before long, I was compulsively drawing this man in the margins of sketchbooks and puzzlers. When I was bored or when life seemed to hold little meaning, I would draw him. I disliked and feared him yet I sensed he needed something from me. As no one of that description lived with us, I assumed he was a fictional character. Aidan who was never a childhood familiar The Drawings That Haunted My Adolescence Before long, something psychologically dangerous happened.   I imagined living his life and I put myself in his shoes. I injected part of myself behind his face. As a result, my feelings for this man grew conflicting. My dislike for him remained but now I felt guilty and responsible for him. I even cared about him. This is because I had placed my humanity behind the face of a man who was in fact callous. The resultant concocti...

On 3 August 1981, I went on a mystery trip with my sisters and brother-in-law. What I didn’t know was that the destination was Portmeirion, in North Wales, the location of where the 70s TV series, The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan was filmed. What no one knew was that I was afflicted with private terror of this ‘thing’ that used to make an appearance in the show. First, a brief overview of what T he Prisoner was about. Portmeiriron, Wales (Tom Parnell Wikimedia Commons) The Prisoner Plot Patrick McGoohan is a secret agent who is abducted from his London apartment to find himself in a sinister seaside village where he is held captive. People from all walks of life appear resigned to living there, allowing a controlling regime to dictate their lives.   Residents are known only by numbers; McGoohan is Number Six. Number Six doesn’t know who is an inmate or a guard and therefore can trust no one. ‘Number Two’ (who takes on various identities) heavily monitors Number Six and Num...

The following are meticulous records of my Sunday school activity, taken from my 1981 diary (1 February – 1 November 1981). All entries are (mostly) verbatim. In order to retain anonymity, I have changed the names of my family members and I am writing under a pseudonym. For clarity, Eve is my twin. Mrs. Lackie is the church warden who oversees the Sunday school classes. Delia and Anita are other Sunday school teachers.   I’m 15 when I begin my teaching. Unless otherwise stated, every day is Sunday. Or Read how my Sunday school teaching reveals my horrific toddlerhood The Double Life of a Sunday School Teacher The diary entries illustrate my physical and psychological niggles about doing Sunday school teaching, explained in another article . My Sunday School Records: Winter Period 1 Feb 1981 Wore blue cords, T shirt and a jumper. Mum gone to church. When she had come back, she told me she had fixed for me to be a Sunday school teacher at the parish hall. Sat outside on the sw...

Between 15 February and 1 November 1981, Mum arranged me to be a Sunday school teacher. She probably did so because I didn’t socialize much. I now know I was different because my toddlerhood had been brutalized by an uncle who lived with us for over a year in 1968. I was 3 and my adult self was completely oblivious to this fact until I was 51 .   Becoming a Sunday School Teacher at Fifteen During my Sunday School teaching, I had no conscious awareness of my vile toddlerhood but I kept a diary of a life that did not seem extraordinary on face value. On 1 Feb 1981, Mum arranges me to be a Sunday school teacher The Persona I Adopted: A Separate Identity So I begin Sunday school teaching when I am 15 in 1981. I never enjoy it, but I am successful (the church warden, Mrs. Lackie said she couldn’t do without me).   However, I am mortified to find hidden clues to my difficult toddlerhood in how I behaved whilst I was Sunday school teaching.   Firstly, I am by nature a tombo...

One of my earliest childhood memories is of tumbling down the stairs that leads from the guestroom at the north of our cottage. Dad had built the guestroom for Nan to stay, but when he became mentally ill in 1970, he used the room for himself.   My memory of falling down the stairs has been there throughout my life. My eyes speckle over. Floor and ceiling appear to swap places and I fainted. I felt sick. When I come-to, I hear Dad coming through the back door. It was a sunny day, feeling like mid-morning. My early children's stories contain creepy stairs and attics. These stories have been analysed in T ales from Daler Cottage . The Room I Couldn’t Enter: What my Diaries Reveal I had never questioned this memory for I had assumed my young brain was wiring up. Having said this, there was a feeling of sickness around the incident, of something vile. I had assumed it was to do with Dad’s mental illness. However, Dad had entered the back door as I came round. Dad wasn’t mentally ill a...

My diaries are extraordinary because they were written by someone who was unaware that her toddlerhood had been stolen by an uncle who lived in her childhood home throughout 1968. I was 3 at the time. In October 2016, a month before my mother’s death, the message about my toddlerhood would finally get through: via my novels. I would then see the clues to lost innocence stamped all over my artwork, my stories and my diaries.   This article is about my diaries. My diaries My First Diary (1977): Innocence on the Page I kept a diary between 1977 and 1988. I had my first diary for Christmas when I was 11. This first diary, which was a Letts Schoolgirl’s Diary was small and therefore contributions were brief, being a sentence or so. My first ever entry was on Dec 26 1976: “Went to church. Had a fight with an older sister. She had the blame. Played organ and games, Mastermind and Top Form.” My 1977 diary On 9 January 1977, I made my first mention of writing a story: Solomy’s Tre...