Diaries written in childhood can be both a delight and a disturbing revelation. They can solidly confirm those misgivings which we, in later years, had hoped might be due to no more than a sense of modesty. They can shatter in a few entries any illusions that, perhaps, on the whole, we were not as children entirely undistinguished. Turning the heavily pencilled pages we look in vain for an illuminating disclosure which might have brought as now to a more than anonymous maturity.

The entries, as we suspected, are decidedly earthbound. On a certain day in January we read: 'Nuthing good hapened'. And later the same month: 'I have got the hooping cof I have been sik'. In the first fifty pages there is nothing to suggest that tender little world of children in which our fancy has often indulged. The sunshine which, in retrospect, glowed so consistently through all our young summers is curiously non-existent. Any reference to the weather is rare and oblique. There are but few allusions to the straw hats and pinafores in which nostalgia has determinedly presented us.

However, early entries show that we were not without pride for anything new which came our way: 'I have got some new boots with very long lasis'. An Easter Sunday entry reminds us that a once burning desire for plaits resulted in, as compensation, a long satin ribbon being attached to the back of a straw hat. It was long enough to reach the waist and it could also be draped over one shoulder, like the plait of Queenie Vulcan: 'My best hat has a red riben as long as Kweenys plat’. Several pages of the diary are devoted, not without good reason, to the affairs of Queenie Vulcan. We are not surprised for we have never quite lost sight of Queenie and her liquorice stick: "Kweeny spilt likris all down her pinyfor': 'Kweeny is my best frend': 'Kweenys granny ses no more likris'.

It must be assumed from certain entries that, apart from the sweep and Mrs Drayton the washerwoman, our social sphere never ranged beyond the ordinary. No celebrities ever came our way, or if they did they were not recognised as such. We were given no opportunity, as happens to more fortunate off-spring, of standing at the knees of the great and catching in our pinafores, so to speak, a store of verbal 'plums' so invaluable later to the would-be-recorder.

Our most unprosaic - and indeed heroic - caller seems to have been Mr Myerscough, the sweep. Two entries for late autumn show that his art and daring with the brushes did not go unrespected. The first one records: 'The swep came and swep sum chimdys he is the best swep in the werld he is very brave'. In the second entry the statement is upheld: 'The swep came and swep the siting room he is very brave and the best man I no of all'.  

Mrs Drayton, the washerwoman, follows, in regard, closely behind. She, too, was not without her touch of drama. When we read for August 21: 'Misis Draten came to wash she liks hot-pot Amy has been bet agen' we remember that Mrs Drayton's daughter, Amy, was unfortunate in possessing a husband who frequently beat her. Mrs Drayton also has a son called Willy who was a coal-man and was simple-minded. She lived in a dark house near a railway bridge. But perhaps her claim to unique favour was that she owned a tremendous brown tea-pot with two spouts. It is recorded in the diary that, one April morning, we were taken to her house in Travis Brow and actually saw this wonder with our own eyes: 'Mises Draten showd us her teapot it has two spowts and I lik it...' As the diary proceeds it is evident that arithmetic as well as spelling were not quite all they should be: 'Lily Mars did all her sums rong', and 'Lily Mars and me got ate sums rong and are bad spelers to', are dismal entries

It must not be supposed that we were entirely without merit of one kind or another. We may have been undistinguished children but we had our points. It was not every little girl, for instance, who could wedge a half crown - with room to spare - between the space in her two front teeth. And one day it is recorded that Mavis Horn's plaits had grown to such a length that she was able to use them as skipping rope: 'Mavis plats are so long that she tid them up and jump thru them I wish I cud...' There is an entry, too, which tells of a feat of endurance on the part of little Beatrice Higgins who had skipped two hundred times without stopping.

We were not without, also, our more dramatic moments. There was the dark occasion when, in an excess of loyalty towards an adored Sunday School teacher, a round dozen or so of us conspired together to cut off the cherries from the hat of her unfortunate successor. The entry in the diary for this June Sunday is necessarily very guarded: 'Don't menshun what hapend in sunday skool Lily Mars and me sed swer not to tell and cros your hart...'Then follows a brief and practical statement, in bold red crayon, to the effect that, THIS IS THE END OF THE BUK. On the back of the diary itself, written with a sweeping flourish and with commendable attention to detail, is the diarist's name, age and address which ends with NR MANCHESTER ENGLAND THE WERLD.

Re-reading the diary has been a pleasant, if astringent, experience. Like a ball skittling down ninepins it has served to knock over those extraordinary little images so long and carefully cherished, to which time has lent a certain enchantment. There is only one thing left for us to do and that is put away the idea of our having been more than very ordinary children.