Completed the werewolf chapter grandly with theories and cases. Now I am working on the big bang and big crunch. That means I can have my own theory published if the book does. It's already better than Jane Goldman's "Book Of The Unexplained". Mine covers more.

The second edition of her "Book Of The Unexplained" covered both seasons two and three. The year after I awaited the third book. It never came.

Saturday 30th December 1995

I have finished SHC and have now moved onto lycanthropy, werewolfism and congenital porphyria.

Scott phoned to invite himself round. I've only been round his twice ever. He wants to go down the town sometime this week. I told him I'd think about it, after recalling what happened last time. For Christmas he got "The X-Files: Whirlwind" so now I'll have to buy it to get ahead of him.

Friday 29th December 1995

Wrote some more for my book. The chapter I am doing is spontaneous human combustion and other fiery matters. So far, I have done 4 pages and still have quite a lot to write.

Thursday 28th December 1995

I have just settled in to the holidays and I only have a week left.

Wednesday 27th December 1995

Went to the town to buy X-Files magazine, but couldn't find it.

Tuesday 26th December 1995

I have had a fabulous new book idea. It won't be fiction, it'll be fact. I have done some research for it. It'll be about UXP.

In other words, it was fiction.

Monday 25th December 1995

I got the X-Files video #3, X-Files novel "Ground Zero", X-Files Book Of The Unexplained, fancy pen and nick-naks.

Sunday 24th December 1995

1 day. And that day was the longest for a very long time.

Saturday 23rd December 1995

2 days. I finished "Aliens: The Funny Edition" today. You can find it at the beginning of this exercise book.

Before my laptop crashed this year I had typed this up with an eye toward posting it. I may yet do so again. It was very obvious, adolescent humour. Actually, it was surprisingly clean and innocent given I was fourteen. The best joke in it was changing Newt's name to Sally Mander (salamander, geddit?) but I can't claim to have come up with that myself; my mum knew somebody with that name, and it always made me laugh. Actually, that might have been the sole reason I tried to write a spoof version of "Aliens".

Friday 22nd December 1995

Andrew came round and programmed a more interactive P-Mail. Only the person the message is aimed at can read it. It is Simon's idea for the P-Mail Christmas Compo. It means I have to give him a choc bar. And also one for Scott as he won The Truth! compo. His idea for a feature was Levitation. 3 days.

Thursday 21st December 1995

I have had 2 fabulous story ideas. One; Dinosaur Valley is like Jurassic Park crossed with Predator. The other is called Death. It is like T Pratchett's Mort and Beetlejuice. It is about a 14 year old Death who has to rescue the PM from Hell and Limbo.

4 days.

Wednesday 20th December 1995

Andrew wrapped my present in loo roll so I took off the paper on his present and wrapped it in something Marc found in the bin. When I gave it to him he tore off the loo paper, gave it to me and showed me the wrapped up disk underneath. I let him have the wrapping paper and ran off before he could stuff the loo paper back in my pocket.

Sutherland's homework was to enjoy the holiday. I said to Andrew not to enjoy it so you would have to do it again.

Tip 9: laugh at the jokes made by language teachers.

Body has been expelled and Cobbe suspended. Mr Valencia, Mr Tkacziw and Mr Frampton told us. 5 days.

Tuesday 19th December 1995

6 days. Andrew said he'll wrap up my present in loo roll. And that I'd have to wait until tomorrow to collect it.

Monday 18th December 1995

Ben gave me a present at MND, but before I knew it, James MacClelland had ripped off the paper. Talk about spoiling the surprise. It is a 400g of Dairy Milk. It is now under Otto (unopened).

Chris got a Homework Report in Biology whilst I got the complete opposite, A HOUSE CREDIT! Andrew is envious; I could tell.

Popped along to the library at 1.01pm, but somebody had beaten me to it and had bought all the Dr Who books. Went back to MND, but I wasn't needed.

7 days.

That wasn't the only occasion that McClelland should have kept his hands to himself. A couple of years later just after I had got a Psion Series 5 he wrestled it off me and managed to break the nib off the stylus and scratch the screen in the space of a couple of minutes. When he realised what he'd done, he gave it back to me and ran off. Only then did I also realise what he'd done.

Sunday 17th December 1995

I wonder if Ben has opened my present yet. It is a facehugger. He said he was getting me one. I have reserved space under Otto for it.

I must remember some money as the SHSB library is selling off Dr Who books tomorrow.

8 days.

Saturday 16th December 1995

Camilla asked me if I could video "The X-Files" on Monday. Silly question, so I gave a silly answer; "Can I move into your old room?" 9 days.

Friday 15th December 1995

Gave in the English Open Study between Noah's Castle and The Day Of The Triffids and got back my story. I had a 9/10 whilst Andrew got 8/9. He (Mr C not Andrew) said I was a better storyteller. Andrew said the opposite. 10 days.

Thursday 14th December 1995

Marc has submitted a quiz for The Truth! Special.

During a horrible football game in the cold, me and Simon made several mistakes. David screamed at us and called us stupid. I told him if he wanted a better game he could join the A team as he was told. 11 days.

Wednesday 13th December 1995

I have around 25 lines. But as they are by Shakespeare they're difficult. Now; how did it go; In this same interlude it doth befall...

12 days.

That I, one Snout by name, present a wall. And that's all I can remember. Seeing as the guy who had the Snout role before me had had a plumb role in "The Roses Of Eyam" a year before, I later wondered whether he considered a 25-line part something of a climb-down, and that's why he quit. However, I also heard rumours of manic depression, and seeing as this was the same bloke who I noted in this diary being fired from the last play for running around the school hall with a stereo, maybe not unfounded rumours.

Tuesday 12th December 1995

Went to MND to see if fairies were required; they weren't. About to leave when Mr Clark called me back from a group of 5 fairies to tell me Theo had dropped out because of illness and he wished me to play Snout, a character as good as Chris'. 13 days. Gave Ben present.

My assumption back then was that I had been chosen because I was the most talented of the five non-speaking fairy extras present at the time. Years later I started to expect it had more to do with the fact that during Chris's audition for another one of the Mechanicals, I helped by reading the part of Snout. Though I had told Mr Clark I wasn't auditioning for the part, he must have written my name down as a reserve.

Monday 11th December 1995

Ben wasn't at Drama club so I couldn't give him his present. 14 days.

Sunday 10th December 1995

15 days. TOS was boring. Ben liked the face-hugger last week so I set about making another one for him.

Saturday 9th December 1995

Went Christmas shopping in the town. Bought a two-pack of video's for Camilla and Keith. I got a camera magazine for Dad. For myself I bought "Encounters", a UFO/Paranormal magazine. 16 days.

Friday 8th December 1995

How did I guess that Marc wouldn't give me any questions? 17 days.

Thursday 7th December 1995

X-Files #8 is out today. Marc Tobit is boasting to everybody that he is The Truth! quiz master and investigator.

18 days.

Wednesday 6th December 1995

Oh no, 19 days. Everybody went to 'Goldeneye' without me, non-pupil day.

Tuesday 5th December 1995

20 days. The face hugger is finished. It went as well as I could expect; it looks realistic, is fully poseable and feels very rubbery.

I made it out of insulated wire I'd stripped out of some power cable somewhere and covered it in the stuff you get in a tube to line the edges of a glass pane in a window frame. When it sets it doesn't set hard, but becomes like a tough latex.

Monday 4th December 1995

21 days. I have brought Otto back, washed him and dressed him in tinsel. My "Aliens" model of the Sulaco is now on the chest of drawers. I change the figures' positions regulary. I am making a model face-hugger using wire and sealent.

The model of the Sulaco's hangar bay (complete with opening bay doors for the re-enactment of Ripley's disposal of the alien queen at the end of "Aliens") was one of the things I got rid of during my big clear-out this summer. I wish I'd taken a photo of it first now.

Sunday 3rd December 1995

22 days. Star Trek: TOS (The Original Series) featured a race on an almost identical Earth in 1960 who when, aged 16, develop a disease and die. The kids won't let Kirk and crew leave and they begin to die. Even the older kids and Kirk's love interest, Miri (Also the episode's name) develop it. In the end, the vaccine is administered and everything is okay. It was much better than some recent TNG and DS9 episodes.

It's funny how so many of the worlds the Starship Enterprise visited in the original series looked like Earth in the 1960s, or how most time travel episodes always took the crew back to California at that time.

Saturday 2nd December 1995

23 days and stomach upset over at last.

Friday 1st December 1995

24 more days. Drew a very, very good chestburster on my Tech project's front cover before my personal courier (Dad), delivered it. I hope I get it back. I still haven't show it to Ben yet.

Thursday 30th November 1995

Shall I bring back Otto the Swiss Cheese Plant. I gave names to them in Year 6. My rubber plant, Nicholas (after fox-expert, Nicholas Curtis) died ages ago. I've forgotten the otehr names.

I still have 'Otto'. He is now in my room, but as it's north-facing it gets no direct sunlight, so he's looking a little peeky. You can tell when a Swiss Cheese Plant is healthy because the leaves have large notches in them. When it's not in the best shape, the leaves are whole. All the new ones have been completely whole lately.

Wednesday 29th November 1995

Ill. Lay in bed wondering how to rearrange my room.

Tuesday 28th November 1995

Had a rather horrible stomach upset in the evening.

Monday 27th November 1995

The X-Files "Die Hand Die Verletzt" featured a sacraficial cult. The Truth! magazine, now in it's fourteenth issue, has similar articles.

Die Hand die Verletzt is German for 'the hand that bleeds' or something similar, if I recall. It remains one of my favourite episodes.

Sunday 26th November 1995

Searched high and low for Christmas presents, but with no avail. I'll have to go shopping soon. It'll be hard; shopping for everyone whilst being escorted by one of them. In this day and age, paranoia is useful.

In other words, I was afraid to go around Southend High Street on my own. These days that 'paranoia' is reserved for after dark hours, particularly at weekends.

Saturday 25th November 1995

Scratched a tiny corner during the Generation Game. I think anybody, be he with cold, flu, no nose or coffin could smell the stench of socks.

Oh, the wit. Actually, I still have that scratch-and-sniff book somewhere, and never scratched more than a corner of any of the boxes. All the smells smelled exactly the same, anyway.

Friday 24th November 1995

I have a Cold. So Ironic, as it's Smell-o-vision tonight. That means I have to sacrifice sacred space on the tape I reserved for The X-Files and video the entire Children In Need.

Thursday 23rd November 1995

The Channel Tunnel was so interesting. That is meant sarcastically. We had giggling girls on the same tour. Lunch in an old train that's suppose to be so thrilling and exciting you can't notice it stenches of tramps and dog pee. Found the cheapest souvenir I could; a Euro Tunnel ball (75p). I bought a Mars bar for the way home. Back to that previous point. What is so good about sitting in a decrepid, stinking, boring, inanimate carriage? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I don't know why I had it in for the train carriage in particular. This was a Geography field trip to the museum at the Dover end of the Channel Tunnel, and whilst it initially sounded like it would be an improvement over previous field trips, it was actually a tremendous bore, with a long coach trip there and back, and no toilet stops en route.

Wednesday 22nd November 1995

Multiple murderer Rosemary West has got life for the Cromwell Street murders. They suspect she has killed an extra 9.

The Evac-Fighter has been bought. Maybe as one of my birthday presents.

Channel Tunnel trip tomorrow.

Nicholas Pratt doesn't know where my Psion SSD disk is.

That solid state disk went missing for months. In the end I think I found it in the pocket of my light jacket, where it stayed all winter whilst I wore a thick winter coat instead.

Tuesday 21st November 1995

Ozzie doing exams.

Monday 20th November 1995

The child benefit doesn't come until tomorrow.

Sunday 19th November 1995

Should I buy an Aliens Power Loader?

Saturday 18th November 1995

This year we finish on the 20th December. Not long to go.

Friday 17th November 1995

Tip 8:- Never buy from a young enterprise company unless you run it.

Thursday 16th November 1995

Still no keyring.

Wednesday 15th November 1995

Truth! 11 was a hit this week.

This was clearly an uneventful period as I didn't seem to have much to write about.

Tuesday 14th November 1995

Part II of the Getty documentary.

Monday 13th November 1995

At school I am writing stories about a new Star Trek generation. I got the idea from Star Trek Monthly. A magazine I bought last Saturday.

Sunday 12th November 1995

Star Trek was on.

Saturday 11th November 1995

Andrew came round.

Friday 10th November 1995

Still no sign of a keyring.

Thursday 9th November 1995

I've got a Ghost book of Scott's I really should return.

Wednesday 8th November 1995

A young enterprise company took my order for a key ring last week. So far I haven't heard from them. I hope they don't ask me for a commendation.

Tuesday 7th November 1995

A Jean Paul Getty documentary was on ITV. I videoed it.

Getty always appealed to me during my days aspiring to be mega-rich because he was precisely the kind of philanthrophic multi-billionaire I fancied being: money coming out of my ears, which I would use to bankroll good causes.

Monday 6th November 1995

Old people on drugs in "The X-Files".

Sunday 5th November 1995

Guy Fawkes night.

Shocker Of The Day: Paul Eddington from "The Good Life" has died. Bad week for famous people.

Saturday 4th November 1995

Went to town with Chris and Simon.

Shocker Of The Week:- Jewish activist Yitzhak Rabin has been shot dead in Israel! Also, comedienne Marti Caine (of "Joker In The Pack") has died of cancer.

I didn't actually understand the significance of Rabin's assassination, I was only noting it down as shocking because I'd picked up on the hoohah. As I understand it now, he was making headway co-operating with the Palestinians and was killed by a right-wing Zionist who thought this a betrayal of the Jews.

Friday 3rd November 1995

Mr Cartwright is tightening what we can read and write in English.

Good English teacher though he was, telling me I was only allowed to read books out of the school library was counter-productive. I had stopped taking books out a year before because of the snide, patronising, bullying attitude of the school librarian and indeed, managed to go the rest of my school career without spending more than a couple of hours in there total. So when he told me to stop reading my own books, my solution wasn't to get a book from the library, it was just to stop reading. Which I did, at some point in year nine. I think I read about three novels of my own volition between the end of the third year and the time I decided to start reading again properly at the beginning of the sixth form.

Thursday 2nd November 1995

Sold my Star Wars stuff to Time Tunnel. They wanted to give me £10 when I'd only expected £4.50.

The Time Tunnel was this second-hand sci-fi, movie, cult TV, geekboy paradise. It used to be tucked away in an archaic little backstreet undercover market, but then it moved into the drab grey 1960s concrete shopping centre that is the Victoria Plaza and I stopped visiting. It recently went bankrupt.

Wednesday 1st November 1995

Andrew came round before I went back for the Prospective Year 7 evening.

Tuesday 31st October 1995

I waited for the Trick Or Treaters with a water pistol but none came.

Monday 30th October 1995

X-Files not bad. Some stars are reocurring.

Sunday 29th October 1995

Hell, sorry school, tomorrow.

Saturday 28th October 1995

At Andrew's we managed the "Funland" on his "Theme Park". Also, we ate food. Or at least I did. Everybody else seemed full.

Friday 27th October 1995

I have got Andrew a "Starship Enterprise" Card and a "Babylon 5" book.

Thursday 26th October 1995

Arrived at the Science Museum and decided against the "Star Trek" exhibition. The eye was five hours long!

Went to "Forbidden Planet". Data's head and a Dalek were there. But not as customers.

Wednesday 25th October 1995

Andrew came round but left 3 disks when he left. I can't get them working and they're not AGA.

Or, in other words, they mysterious slipped under a piece of paper that I didn't put there at all and I didn't move them either and neither did I say I had checked underneath the paper that I didn't put there and say there weren't any disks there.

Tuesday 24th October 1995

We went and researched "The Southend Conspiracy". I have asked him to write a field journal for Sunday. I'll doubt he'll do it.

Monday 23rd October 1995

Arranged for Scott to come round tomorrow.

Sunday 22nd October 1995

The Original "Star Trek" weren't as bad as I remembered. That is, if you don't compare it to the new versions.

Saturday 21st October 1995

Half Term at last. And only one half term until Christmas. So I made my Christmas List.

Friday 20th October 1995

After reading Aliens vs Predator in English, went to Sainsburys to buy some Sunflower Seeds. Mulder eats them. They were also on TV.

And I've got some right here as I copy this up. Yum.

Thursday 19th October 1995

He did turn up but I wasn't needed after he told me I was. Agh!

Wednesday 18th October 1995

Mr Clark didn't turn up to MND. And he calls us unreliable?

I think this is the first mention of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which was the school play in my third year at SHSB. I didn't audition for any part specifically, too afraid of the rejection, but because Chris wanted to be one of the Mechanicals, several of us helped him audition by reading the other parts in a scene of theirs. I read the part of Snout, which is an important detail, bearing in mind what happens later. At this stage in the production I was, alas, only a fairy, who had no lines and just danced around Titania.

Tuesday 17th October 1995

Got SFX #5. The prints were Terminator, Mulder, Scully and Facehugger. 3 are on my wall; guess which?

Monday 16th October 1995

Hurrah! Scully has been found. A new thing for "The X-Files" is the lack of anything weird.

Sunday 15th October 1995

Reruns off the original Star Trek are being shown on BBC 2 at 11.40. Chris will run out of tape what with this, TNG and DS9.

Saturday 14th October 1995

I still can't find SFX and X-Files mag, both issue #5.

Tip 7:- Deny Everything.

Friday 13th October 1995

Unlucky day! The last Friday the 13th we had was the last day of the year 7 exams.

People expected The Truth! #8 to be out. I said no, as the only issue not going to schedule is the Halloween special.

Sean Doggett's dad in accident.

Thursday 12th October 1995

This is turning out to be an interesting week. Today, the German exchange students came to school. Mr Harnden had the cheek to go on about them and us not being trained.

He frequently liked to equate children with animals. He's most well known around these parts for a newspaper column he used to (and may still) write, which was basically Simon Heffer's column from the Daily Mail with a local flavour.

Wednesday 11th October 1995

Predator 2 was good but with a rubbish ending. I spotted the alien skull as pointed out in "Aliens: Terror In Space". It also starred Bill Paxton, Hudson from Aliens.

Tampons in PSE.

That was a fun lesson. If you held them at the right angle and pulled the string the right way you could make them shoot across the room.

Tuesday 10th October 1995

Recorded Predator 2 to watch tomorrow.

Monday 9th October 1995

The X-Files "3" had vampires and Scott is going vampire mad.

Predator 2 tomorrow.

Sunday 8th October 1995

Sigourney Weaver's birthday.

And I'm sure her sleepover would have been more fun than Scott's, but I wasn't invited.

Saturday 7th October 1995

Found a hacking game on the AMOS CD. You have to steal money from others.

Friday 6th October 1995

One of Chris' friends has died from an allergic reaction to a measles jab. What I meant by dead is that he is braindead and paralysed.

Yesterday Body told Mr Harnden that he wanted to be in another German class. Harnden got him to write it down and sign the paper.

Thursday 5th October 1995

After an afternoon of Royal Artillery Band, Mr Dr Short let me go immediately. Only Scott was kept behind to right out results to an experiment.

Wednesday 4th October 1995

Mr Dr Short plans on keeping most of class back tomorrow because they spent 5, not 6 minutes on an experiment. Scott & I aswell.

No, that's just what I told my dad. Mr Dr Short seemed to have something against Scott, and either Scott was determined to push him, or Mr Dr Short had just cause. Anyway, for some reason we hadn't got enough results from a physical experiment to find an average, so Mr Dr Short scrawled in our homework diaries that we were to come back after school. It wasn't most of the class, it was just us. With regards to the 30th September entry's notes, this was pretty much when I lost patience with Scott. He'd pissed me off in a big way twice within one week. I even tried to save my own skin by having a quiet word with Mr Dr Short to land Scott in it even more, but Mr Dr Short was having none of it.

Tuesday 3rd October 1995

What a bore!

Monday 2nd October 1995

Chris wasn't away as we all predicted, but David was.

Sunday 1st October 1995

Scott didn't mind about the Annual. Slept rest of day.

Everything goes metric; it's Metrification Day!

Saturday 30th September 1995

Went to town and bought "Aliens: Special Edition" and Scott's present; Judge Dredd Annual 1988. Only to find it has many loose pages.

Later
Now at Scott's, everybody is playing addictive Mega Bomberman or relaxing PGA Tour Golf 3. Scott's sister is in year 8, not 5 as I thought. She has been pestering us a bit. Apparently Scott cuddles and suckles soft toys in bed.

I didn't take my diary, so I could only have been pretending to write it whilst there. Now, ten years later, I think I can get away with saying that sleepover was the worst birthday do I ever went to. Scott was either in a mood about something or he was enjoying being the centre of attention so much he'd got drunk on it. He seemed to take much delight in not letting me play on the games as much as Chris Wilkins or David Stevens, and when I asked for a second cup of Coke he said he'd spit in the bottle. His dad came in before 11pm and told us it was time to turn the lights off, and whilst that was soundly ignored, being laughably early for a 14th birthday sleepover, part of me was sorry he wasn't obeyed. Perhaps that's why I pretended I was writing this entry whilst there, and enjoying it. Soon after, Scott and I pretty much stopped speaking to each other, beside casual banalities, for nearly three years.

Friday 29th September 1995

Watched Ellen and Friends. Also prepared for Scott's.

Thursday 28th September 1995

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was really just a big budget Babylon 5. Odo the shape shifter is good though.

Wednesday 27th September 1995

Maybe I'll stop buying magazines and buy a PS. But I'll have to save aswell. Perhaps not.

Tuesday 26th September 1995

SFX #5 is out today with a free gift.

Out this week is the Sony Playstation. A state-of-theart games system. I would like one but I doubt I'll ever get one.

And I was right, though when the PS2 came out, I was planning to get one had I actually started university in 2000 as planned. I didn't, so I didn't buy one, and never got around to it. Probably the right decision, seeing as I only really like multi-player games these days anyway.

Monday 25th September 1995

Simon was away at the Jewish new year.

Sunday 24th September 1995

Like Ben, I am angry about missing the Alien convention in Bristol today.

Saturday 23rd September 1995

Went to the town with Simon and Chris. Si bought rare Star Wars cards, Chris bought Ro Laren figure and I bought; Alien 3 set of cards; Alien vs. Predator figures; Rembrandts tape and Alien vs. Predato comic set. I have £6 left.

Friday 22nd September 1995

Watched "Friends", an American comedy like Ellen. It has a superb soundtrack by The Rembrandts.

In fact, I only used to watch "Ellen" (this was was before Ellen DeGeneres came out), but it was on at 9pm and "Friends" was on at 9.30pm, and I used to leave it on to see the opening credits just to hear the music, then switched it off. Then one day I kept on watching, and did so until the series ended.

Thursday 21st September 1995

Watched a film about circumsion ... I may ban Simon from the Psion.

Needless to say there was a rather unenlightened comment that I have snipped (ho ho) out; it was a rather graphic documentary about the unprofessionalism of some mohels.

Wednesday 20th September 1995

Everybody fought over who was going to read "The Truth #4" first. It had articles on Bigfoot, Essex spooks and an update to the Southend Conspiracy.

Nobody fought over it.

Tuesday 19th September 1995

Sold 2 disks to Paul Thorogood; he is a main PDA customer.

Monday 18th September 1995

New Gerry Adnerson series, "Space Precinct" was good. So was "The X-Files".

Sunday 17th September 1995

Scott liked "Aliens" so we met Chris, Marc and Glenn at the park. Marc had the cheek to invite two cousins. He thought Chris was in charge and only told him. But it got worse. After we abandoned Marc + cousins for spoiling the game, we ran into some yobs who chased us round the park. We waited at the cafe until they got bored.

I don't know what their problem was. They were just gunning for an excuse to gang up on us. The ring-leader had taken his top off (in mid-late September) and was smoking a cigarette (he was about fifteen), so I suspect he was probably trying to impress the two girls hanging around him by pushing around the younger kids. They didn't dare pull anything whilst we were sitting at the cafe. I gave Chris 20p to call his dad to come rescue us, and I seem to remember him going in and coming back out with an ice cream instead.

Saturday 16th September 1995

Planned a town trip but Andrew came round and we programmed "Aliens".

Friday 15th September 1995

Mr Cartwright wants us to read a library book and not our own. He said I could finish "The X-Files: Goblins" though.

Excellent English teacher though Mr Cartwright was, these limits on reading did serious harm, because I had no interest in going to the library because of the horrible librarian. So instead of reading library books, I just stopped reading. Just stopped. The librarian at SHSB was a cliched battleaxe, and I don't think that school realised what a detrimental effect having such an off-putting woman in charge of the books has on developing minds. In year nine I pretty much stopped reading for pleasure and didn't really start again for nearly three years.

Thursday 14th September 1995

We had a 12 minute run in PE, which went into lunch. I must have stamina; running with a bad knee.

Wednesday 13th September 1995

Body has "Rasta" written all over his GNB. I think somebody has been talking to Theo.

James Paviour sent me flying as I ran to Physics. So I spent 40 minutes in MedLab with a bad knee.

Medlab, ha! For some reason, when diminutive Physics teacher Mr Dr Short (never my favourite teacher) marched Paviour off to the then head of middle school Mr Valencia, and said toublemaker claimed he didn't see me, I covered for him and agreed. I have no idea why. Last year I wrote this story that features this incident pretty much verbatim.

Tuesday 12th September 1995

The Truth! is doing well. Everybody likes it. In Issue #3, out tomorrow, there is Lycanthropy, Bermuda Triangle, Eidetic Memories and The Southend Conspiracy. At the moment, Scott and Marc are fighting over who should be my staff writer. Scott says he know's most whilst Marc says it's all lies anyway. That's clever, a new motto; The Truth! full of lies.

They weren't fighting.

Monday 11th September 1995

Glenn suggested Ozzie. I suggested not. In drama, I made a mockery of Star Wars.

My bag has broken so I am using my old Year 4 'Head' bag for school.

Tip 6:- Never buy anything from a market.

"Lone Gun Man" writers in "The X-Files". It is like "The Truth!"

I still have that Head bag. It's very well travelled, having been down to Devon more than once, carried across the wild wet moors of Dartmoor on many occasions. I also took it with me that time I went to Belgium with the school (see forthcoming 1997 entries). I was also using it in my first year at UEA. It's outlasted all my other school bags through sheer sturdiness. Indeed, recently I found all my cinema ticket stubs from 1996/7 through 2000 were still in the pocket.

Sunday 10th September 1995

Returned to play the game, this time with a gun. Scott wants to return next week with Andrew, Chris and Marc.

It wasn't a real gun, obviously. It was this electronic laser game of Glenn's, but it was broken, so we took it back to mine first to solder some loose wires together. It didn't make much difference. I never was very good at technology.

Saturday 9th September 1995

First of all we used the whole stretch of park but this didn't work well so we limited it to a maze of bushes. This was much better.

It was basically just another themed game of It, or Tag, with walkie talkies (that didn't work over large distances, and which weren't worth using over smaller ones). The maze of bushes we used was cut in half a few years ago to build a flower garden area. In 2001, I wrote this story which featured scenes set in the spot.

Friday 8th September 1995

In fact, Scott's book was on "Monsters & Mysterious Places". I got some things I wanted. Plus an aerial for my television.

Glenn likes my Alien games so much that he has organised a trip to the Park for a huge game tomorrow.

Thursday 7th September 1995

Tip 5:- Trust no-one but yourself.

Scott says he's got me a book from Ckechslovakia.

I obviously wasn't aware that Czechoslovakia hadn't existed for almost three years at this point.

Wednesday 6th September 1995

Sutherland = Satan (basically).

Perhaps my favourite entry ever. Concise, and to the point. Actually, I learnt more French in one year under the iron fist of Monsieur Sutherland than I did in two with Mr Bellingham and two with Dr Sutherland-Harper. I was too afraid not to.

Tuesday 5th September 1995

Only Glenn and Mark haven't confirmed their invitations.

Tip 4:- When you are invited to another's birthday, buy something early and keep them in suspense.

Today went okay. We are having double French 1st thing tomorrow!

Monday 4th September 1995

Went to the town to do birthday shopping. We got Tank Girl; a novel, Giger's "Alien", Aliens: Colonial Marines Tech Manual. My mum and sister will be going back on Wednesday.

To cheer myself up from the depressing thought of school tomorrow, I bought an alien queen figure with chest-burster.

The lady in The Time Tunnel told me all about expensive alien merchandise.

Sunday 3rd September 1995

Scott came round and went on about 'lumpy boobs' and hormones. He is obsessed with his body. When I asked him what he meant he rolled up his top and showed me. Before everting my eyes I saw these huge nipples, like a woman's! I called him a freak and he said I'll get them too. God, I hope not!

He is also obsessed with "Judge Dredd".

Made Ripley, Hicks, Drake, Weapons and Alien queen out of cardboard. They are intricately designed so I won't paper mache them.

Saturday 2nd September 1995

Sue Townsend, who wrote Adrian Mole doesn't know much about 13 51/52 year old boys. In her book, his 'thing' is 11cm at full length.

Scott invited himself round tomorrow.

"Medicine Man" with Sean Connery.

Friday 1st September 1995

Only a week till 14 years old am I.

Came home and set about adding a paper mache chestburster and newborn Alien 3 to my facehugger.

Now, who shall I invite to my birthday.

Tip 3:- Don't invite those who don't invite you.

Thursday 31st August 1995

Went to The Victory, Nelson's ship. As far as I'm concerned, he was a complete bastard. He collected people off the streets, put them on his ships and fed them maggoty biscuits. If they took up too much room sleeping they were put in leg irons for 24 hours as to make their own whip. Then the bosun would strap him to the cannon and fix sharp lead pellets into the whip. After 100 strokes, with the back bones poking out, vinegar was put in the wound.

In SFX there is an Alien convention '95 in Bristol.

Tip 2: If you ever get sci-fi serious, move to Bristol.

You'll note I never featured Tip 1. Or perhaps you won't, but anyway, it wouldn't make any sense, because I cut the bit in the 30th August entry it referred to.

Wednesday 30th August 1995

I am now at Grandma's have braved the journey with SFX#4. It should have ticked off the letter writer who claimed he was the greatest Alien fan; it was X-Files orientated.

Tuesday 29th August 1995

Also watched "The B.R.A.T Patrol". Another film along the lines of "Little Spies" and "Goonies". It was on when I was at Grandma's last summer.

I wrote something in the Psion code in this entry, but seeing as I can't remember how to decipher it, I'm not going to put it up in case someone else does. If I coded it, it was sure to be embarrassing.

Monday 28th August 1995

What a hopeless start to a new series. And to think, I was looking forward to the new season of The X-Files. Next week should see improvement.

Season two of "The X-Files" went on to be (and remains) my favourite. It was the season that threw out the formula for episodic TV of this nature and rewrote it, and even though it wore out its own formula by the end, you can still see other American TV shows (from "CSI" to "24", to a lesser extent) singing from the same hymn sheet. There were only two weak episodes in the entire season, and this was one of them. The other was "The Calusari", near the end.

Sunday 27th August 1995

More Sci-Fi. People are wondering why I haven't become sick of it. Maybe I'm dedicated, with a case to prove. Bah!

Huh?

Saturday 26th August 1995

The first evening of Sci-Fi weekend and I could hardly stay awake.

Friday 25th August 1995

My palm says I will live till 85 and then split into 3 people. I will be rich, famous and successful. Marry twice, very dull both times in which I will have siamese twins who will grow up to be my final wives. I better go and check the instructions again.

With wit like that I should have been writing "Two Point Four Children".

Thursday 24th August 1995

Simon came and Scott arrived (uninvited) seconds later. Both were quick to contradict my stuff.

I think I meant 'criticise' here.

Wednesday 23rd August 1995

Every time I have been out this holiday I have seen David Aldridge (Stanley in ROE) and his girlfriend. Now they are 16, they could marry.

That's more a testament to how little I went out than it is to their outgoingness.

Tuesday 22nd August 1995

The second series of The X-Files starts on Monday with "Little Green Men"!

Monday 21th August 1995

Ha! Ha! Went to town and got "Dissecting Aliens: Terror In Space" with that glossary. It is great. Didn't look for X-Files mag so will have to return to Cartoon Shop.

Sunday 20th August 1995

When Scott called the first time we were out having a large lunch. His book has a glossary of Alien merchandise. Although I am the largest fan, I have very little.

Saturday 19th August 1995

Alien rip-off "The Thing" was good. Scott had recomended it to me. He has invited himself round tomrorow with his Aliens book, lucky sod!

Friday 18th August 1995

The tide was high at 6.35pm and when out there: well, does this sum it up?

"Final report of the Southend Dinghy Nostromo. First officer reporting. The other members of the crew - Eyers and Seaweed - are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the coast in about 3 minutes. With a little luck, the beachers should pick me up. This is Eyers, last survivor of The Nostromo, signing off."

The funniest thing is, perhaps, that I wasn't trying to be funny. I was truly lamenting the demise of my dinghy, which I'd perhaps used all of a dozen times. This speech was based off Ripley's final speech at the end of "Alien". Perhaps my school chums were right that I was wee bit too obsessed. Still, that doesn't excuse what some of them used that as an excuse for: "Oh, it was agreed you shouldn't come to [the cinema/Megazone/my birthday party] with us because you would try and turn it into something to do with 'Aliens'." Fortunately, like the Murphy's, I'm not bitter. Though, naturally, should I ever get superhuman powers and the ability to shoot lightning bolts out of my hands, they shall pay. With interest.

Thursday 17th August 1995

Grandma came round and I planned another beach expedition for tomorrow.

Wednesday 16th August 1995

There is a Star Trek convention in Southend on September 2nd. I will have to tell Chris.

After some work, I found 2 more channels!

Tuesday 15th August 1995

Tuned the TV into Veronica, a Dutch TV station and watched a holiday programme and part of an action series. Unfortunately, no sound!

In the evening I read some of Jean Paul Getty's Autobiography (As I see it) and watched hedgehogs in the garden. ...

Monday 14th August 1995

Date much like something in "Star Trek".

Watched "Little Spies" about a gang setting out to rescue a dog from experimentation.

Sunday 13th August 1995

We might be going to Shoebury East beach again. This time The Nostromo will be mended and Andrew may join us.

That's right, I named my dinghy after the spaceship in "Alien".

Saturday 12th August 1995

Not only "Alien" but "Lord of The Flies" ... It was better than the book as the savagery was more savage. Jack whips a baby to death!

It wasn't better than the book.

Friday 11th August 1995

The eye is much better so we went to the beach. The dinghy has a tiny puncture but still it stayed afloat. ... Met Marc Tobit.

Thursday 10th August 1995

My eye got infected and bulged at Andrew's so I can't write properly. Night! James Henderson popped round. He now lives in Harlow.

James used to live around the corner, and went to school with a neighbour's kid. He lived with his step-father and step-grandparents who owned several massive dogs, of which I was too petrified of to go past the front gate when they were there. I was attacked by a jack russell when I was about four or five and had a phobia of the things for another five or six years, but then I went on a country walk with James's step-grandfather and one of the dogs, and got over my phobia completely in the space of a Saturday morning.

Wednesday 9th August 1995

Bought "X-Files 4" at Forbidden Planet and didn't use my voucher when I purchased a bull alien model and b&w giant Aliens comic book.

The British Museum got boring after a while. I think it should be called The Japanese Museum because there were hundreds of them.

At home I discovered a facehugger alien with the bull alien.

Tuesday 8th August 1995

Andrew is back and his brother is better. He is inviting me round on Thursday.

I hope my dinghy is working as we are going to the beach this Friday if the weather keeps up.

Monday 7th August 1995

Went to Wilton Bird & Exotic Pet centre to view their stocks. My Dad liked the chipmunks whilst I liked the Iguana out of it's vivarium.

Sunday 6th August 1995

Abbrev/s b/cause I'm r/ning out of ink.

Bill & Ted was on today. One of the songs was actually quite good.

Saturday 5th August 1995

After Jaws The Revenge was abismally cut, I discovered Alien is on next week. Hurrah!

There are two different versions of the third "Jaws" sequel that are exactly the same right until the end: in one, Mario Van Peebles's character falls into the water and is mauled by the shark, and dies; in the other, he still falls into the water and is mauled by the shark, but right at the end he is fished out and survives. Until recently I was beginning to convince myself I had imagined this alternate ending, even though I wrote a "Jaws 5" story in junior school which had Mario Van Peebles's character in after I saw the video version. This isn't the version they usually show on TV, but last time it was on BBC 1, Mario Van Peebles did indeed last until the end credits.

Friday 4th August 1995

I wrote an epitaph in my GNB for Beloved Bartholomew, by ex-pet.

In the afternoon I attended Priory Park with Scott who went on about masturbating whilst I discovered a hazardous materials warehouse. Is he trying to put over a point?

Bartholomew was over two years old when he died, which is pretty good going for a mouse. When he came around (uninvited), Scott wondered why there was a sheet over the cage, and just couldn't help himself from having a look. As for that hazardous materials warehouse (which was continually referred to in "The Truth!" under 'The Southend Conspiracy Update' whenever Scott and I went to the park), I suspect the hazardous materials was just weed-killer.

Thursday 3rd August 1995

It's Andrew's older brother, not younger as I previously thought.

All of Andrew's brothers are younger than him, but I thought it was the youngest (full) brother, Chris, whilst it was actually the middle child, David. I think.

Wednesday 2nd August 1995

Chris is off to the USA.

Andrew's brother is having his appendix out today. His mum phoned my mum to let me know. Why should I really be bothered? Not to be nasty.

Wrote my conspiracy magazine "The Truth!"

Tuesday 1st August 1995

Watched Babylon 5 for the sake of it. It was rahter good; Talia Winters died.

Monday 31st July 1995

Andrew came round although his brother is ill. Probably appendicitus.

Sunday 30th July 1995

Simon's birthday. 52 weeks back, Aliens was on.

Watched "Stand By Me".

Saturday 29th July 1995

Watched "Mission Of The Shark". It is like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Jaws" in one.

Friday 28th July 1995

Modl went to the vet and was diagnosed seriously ill. I bugged the phone so that I could hear the results. This kind of thing goes on in "Chandler and Co", a BBC detective show.

By bugged the phone I meant I hid a small tape recorder inside the hollowed-out phone book I was referring to yesterday and then put the phone book back near the phone.

Thursday 27th July 1995

Started the unexplained paranoia mag "The Truth!" for my Psion users.

I am to get £5 a month, sorry week (I'm tired). I have found out "Ice" is my favourite X-Files episode. It is out on video now, I may buy it.

Adjusted by phone-book safe into a 'bug'.

Ah, "The Truth!" Now there's a story. I was inspired by The Lone Gunmen in "The X-Files", so sat down and wrote about unexplained phenomena on the Psion. I covered everything from UFOs, ghosts, conspiracies, weird science, and later even copied horoscopes out of the local "Yellow Advertiser". I wrote it all throughout Year Nine, Ten and Eleven, weekly at first, and then when I got the Psion Series 5 and started incorporating photos into my articles, fortnightly. I reached the one hundredth issue just before we broke for GCSE study leave, and thought that was a good place to stop. I had almost exhausted the subject. Contrary to some accusations, I didn't make it all up, though a lot of the articles were just extended summaries of things I'd read elsewhere. The most readers it ever got was eleven, but I considered it a successful week if just my three regulars (Andrew, plus Marc Tobit and Tim Wratislaw) read it.

Wednesday 26th July 1995

Went looking in the town for SFX; no luck.

Tuesday 25th July 1995

Terrible wind, but it was 27 degrees; hotter in the tent. Cooked (partially) pasta and beans in a stew. I nearly puked on the pasta so I put it on the snakes nest and ate the beans instead.

SFX 3 with my name in is out today.

It wasn't until a good seven odd years later that I actually learnt how to cook pasta. It needs a stronger heat than a couple of smouldering twigs, and the water needs to be simmering away for minutes before the pasta even begins to cook. I assumed the spaghetti was almost cooked when it went limp in the pot, when in fact it was merely soggy, and cold.

Monday 24th July 1995

I set up a tent in the garden as it was 23 degrees and sat about all day. They say the heat won't last. I shall cook some pasta on a fire tomorrow then.

It wasn't really a tent. It was the large umbrella from our mouldy old picnic table, lying on its side, with a huge yellow sheet pinned to the edge of the canopy, and the ground beneath the end of the pole.

Sunday 23rd July 1995

Alien was on a year ago today. 51 weeks since Aliens was on TV. I am making a FaceHugger out of Paper Mache.

Saturday 22nd July 1995

We've won £10 on the National Lottery with 2, 22 and 40!

I went to the town and bought an Aliens modelling kit at the Cartoon Shop. I've glued it and put it on my desk along side it's egg and base. It was rather dear but very good.

The first and last time we ever won anything playing the lottery. We put on a pound a week from the time it started until August 1997, so lost far more than we won. I later did a syndicate with Andrew but was so slack on the payments he might well have won something without me ever knowing. I lost interest when they introduced a second weekly draw: it meant Saturday rollovers were rarer, and the jackpots were smaller.

Friday 21st July 1995

We're having Mr Tkacziw as form tutor next year. Mr Pethen and Dr Short for sciences. Mr Cartwright for English. Mr Gee for PSE. Miss Chilvers for Maths. Mrs Mulinder for Geography and AAGH, Sutherland for French.

Some of those changed, but unfortunately not Mr Sutherland, of which more in a few weeks. Mr Tkacziw was of Polish descent, I believe. It took just as long to learn how to pronounce his name as it did to spell it. There were disagreements as to how to say it, but I always reckoned it was pronounced: t-cat-choo.

Thursday 20th July 1995

Ben loved the Sulaco which I also used for my logo we designed in technology.

Wednesday 19th July 1995

Endured the heat of Sports Day to meet Ben. He is in 7T and is the greatest Aliens fan. Well, 2nd greatest. Drew the Sulaco for Ben.

I used to like our school sports day, even though I hated sports. We got an afternoon off lessons and were actually required to sit out in the sun and do nothing. And for once you were allowed to eat on the school field. We knew Ben Mortimer through the drama club, and he sidled up to us with a model of the chestburster from "Alien" that he'd made and asked us if we liked his pet. I was overjoyed to find I wasn't alone in my fandom.

Tuesday 18th July 1995

We are having Mr Hume for one of the sciences next year.

Monday 17th July 1995

Homework is on a decrease and restlessness on an increase.

Sunday 16th July 1995

I have had the Psion for a year now. Andrew gave him a game, Block Catch and I gave him my technology storage unit.

We gave my electronic organisor presents. And called it "him".

Saturday 15th July 1995

It's about time we won at least £10 on the national lottery.

Friday 14th July 1995

The Junior Showcase went well but John Arnold messed up yet again. He didn't detonate the pyro technics last year. This year he brought in sound effects too early. The Cyclops was given a radio mike inside it's head.

Dad's birthday.

He would have been 72 today (2005). I can't picture him as a septugenarian at all. It still surprises other people to hear one of my parents was born the year Hitler came to power. Indeed, my father was born on the day democracy died in Germany: as of 14th July 1933, all political parties apart from the Nazi Party were banned.

Thursday 13th July 1995

Launched rockets in science.

Junior Showcase tomorrow.

Wednesday 12th July 1995

Marc can pay for the TG if he damages it like all the other books I've lent him.

Sampled the X-Files theme tune. I can only get 15 seconds of it.

Tuesday 11th July 1995

Andrew thinks he can be the best actor but is giving us a chance. He probably thinks Hamlet is the hero in A MudSummer Night's Dream (School play '96). Ofcourse it isn't. It's MacBeth. Ha! Ha!

Monday 10th July 1995

Interest blossomed around the TG book.

The Hole isn't getting very deep recently. I have compiled an inventory of items for it.

Sunday 9th July 1995

There wasn't any Assault Course due to nobody coming in to set it up.

Andrew alone messed up 4 drama scenes (Cyclops, Sirens, Whirlpool and Scyla). In the cyclops he demanded to have a face cut in my mum's best sheets so everybody could see his silly face below mine.

I was sitting on his shoulders, and he was carrying me around. Admittedly, when we had the sheet over us to conceal it was actually two people (chance would have been a fine thing), he could only see his feet.

Saturday 8th July 1995

The book is good and I'm sure Scott will be jealous when I show him tomorrow.

Chris phoned to see if I could setup the assault course this afternoon. He gave 5 minutes notice. I was busy.

This being centenary year, every class was meant to have at least one stall at the summer fete, and every member of the class was supposed to man it for a 15-20 minute shift. Nobody complained when Chris and Marc took it upon themselves to organise an assault course, but leaving it to the day of the fete itself perhaps wasn't wise.

Friday 7th July 1995

A nice centenary holiday in which Andrew came round. Where is that Sound Sampler?

Watched 'Alcatraz' movie about Clint Eastwood escaping the prison. Then discovered two posted packages for me, late at night. One is the sampler and the other is my prize for the TG/SFX competition. It is 'The Making of Tank Girl' from Titan books.

My name appeared in either issue three or four of "SFX". I still have the issue somewhere.

Thursday 6th July 1995

As Jonathan 'the Psychic Medium' had said, the cyclops caused a stir in RE. Sean Dogget leapt for joy as he discovered the wig. He then pranced around singing Tina Turner songs as that's who he looked like. Even Mr Peglar was amused.

No PE. Instead we sat in a classroom with Mr Clark who then relieved me of the cyclop parts.

Graham is attempting to do Draw on his hand-held before I.

Wednesday 5th July 1995

Took in some props which people took and said were theirs. The teachers (except Mr Clark) were not amused. Cyclop's head will cause a stir tomorrow.

I have learnt all my lines.

Tuesday 4th July 1995

AGGH! Nobody has done a Cyclops head, so I set to work with a cardboard box, paper, glue and pens!

It was a rather dodgy cyclops head in a very Year Eight kind of way. It was basically a cardboard box large enough to fit over my head, covered in sheets of A4 paper, with a single eye drawn on the front and a slit cut out for the mouth so I could see. I made no attempt to make it look any less square, but my mum did offer me an old wig of hers to bung on top.

Monday 3rd July 1995

So far the cyclops is 2 people (Andrew and I) with 10 fingers. Tim Wratislaw should be bringing in a cloak and somebody a head.

Unlike 90% of the drama club, Tim wasn't in our form group. This is the first time I mention him, but he features more heavily in entries over the coming years as he started hanging around with Chris and myself outside of drama as well.

Sunday 2nd July 1995

We have drama all week this week. But we're not doing Doctor Who; we're putting together the Odyssey as we are doing it next Sunday. I havenearly learnt the Cyclop's lines.

Saturday 1st July 1995

Julie Kirby has had a boy called Luke Reese Kirby!

Sent off TG competition.

This competition was in the very first issue of "SFX", which self-styled itself as Europe's biggest and bestselling science fiction magazine before it even went on sale. It's still around, though. The question was: what was Lori Petty's last film role before "Tank Girl"? The only film that everyone was namedropping in their reviews of "Tank Girl" was "Point Break" with Keanu Reeves, and I was going to enter that, but in the local paper from this week in 1995, the reviewer actually said she was last seen in "Free Willy".

Friday 30th June 1995

PQT Fishcake (Mr Hill) took us for Science as I had predicted to Chris. We all found out he was quite nice and friendly. Chris was surprised.

Chris gave him the nickname. PQT stood for Peace, Quiet and Tranquility, of which the softly spoken Mr Hill was a keen exponent (it was his catchphrase). He was of the old school of teaching, and a stickler for proper grammar. You could ask "Can I go to the toilet?" but even if he said yes, that didn't mean you could go, because the correct way to ask is "May I go to the toilet?" I don't know where the fishcake bit came from.

Thursday 29th June 1995

Had Mr Brown (physics) taking us for mechanisms in technology. He's okay.

Watched the Twilight Zone movie and TG review I recorded last night. The premier was good but the latter better. Booga is daft and likes soft toys. He prefers to eat than kill.

Wednesday 28th June 1995

Mr Clark didn't like Star Trek so Chris started Coward [sic] Rangers. He never gives up.

Which is no bad thing.

Tuesday 27th June 1995

TG will be on a movie show tomorrow. I'm running out of tape.

Chris and Andrew were at first aid so Star Trek wasn't performed. What we did do is Doctor Who and I am a violent youth. I have designed a bandana for him.

I really went to town for this "Doctor Who" idea. Wimbledon was on at the time and it was hot, so one of the players (Andre Agassi, perhaps?) was wearing a bandanna. I tried to make one out of a teatowel, but it kept coming untucked, so in the end I just wrapped it around my head and fastened it with a safety pin. I also found some overly large glare-free cycling shades and a plastic gun, and my sole line whenever the Doctor (played by Robert Mitchell, in a fetching Farmer Giles hat I had found for him) stopped to investigate something was "Can I kill it?" in as Essex an accent as I could manage. See how long our "Doctor Who" sketch lasts...

Monday 26th June 1995

We might be doing Doctor Who for Drama. I want to be a companion.

Everybody liked the script; especially Chris. He wants to be Picard and extend the script. We don't even know if Mr Clark will like it yet.

Sunday 25th June 1995

The last Ocean Odyssey.

I continued adding bits to the script to make it more realistic; Picard meets a criminal who has been wanted by the Romulans for a long time. He takes the criminal under his wing and tries to reason with the Romulans but is in turn, killed. The story is much better.

"More realistic", eh?

Saturday 24th June 1995

I saw clips from Tank Girl (TG) on MGV and Steve Wright's People Show.

Continued work on 'the Hole'.

Friday 23rd June 1995

Lori Petty, star of Tank Girl is on "Movies, Games and Videos" and "Steve Wright's People Show" tomorrow. I'll have to find some tape.

Wrote a script for a Star Trek sketch for Drama and the Junior Showcase.

Thursday 22nd June 1995

The Psion shut itself down and I have lost Draw! I have restarted it but it'll never be the same again.

Finished Psion holder in Technology and gave in the project. Not much use.

John Major resigned as Conservative Leader, maybe Prime Minister.

This was the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party. Actually, it wasn't, that probably happened when Thatcher was ousted, but in terms of 1997's Labour landslide, this was probably the point of no return for the Tories.

Wednesday 21st June 1995

The Duchess of Gloucester landed in a 20ft helicopter on the school field. She was met by Paul ... and Robert ... It is not fair. They do everything. Nobody else is important according to the school. What have they got; they are the worst in the class. They should be punished, not praised!

Got The X-Files; Goblins.

Ooh, dig the cattiness. This entry should be read side by side with this assessment I made of the kind of things that school put in my head. See? I wasn't just ranting after all.

Tuesday 20th June 1995

And;

There was a bright kid called Jonathan,
Who had a Series 3 Psion.
He had computers,
Which he required no tutors.
And, oh yeah; His fave film was Alien.

Andrew and I started PSION Draw on the Psion. It has line drawing, fan, spray, help, menus and nifty other bits.

These limericks just keep on getting worse, don't they? You'll be glad to hear this looks like the last one that I managed to squeeze out. This one isn't even very accurate. I made a terrible wannabe computer nerd and was always needing help with them. And my favourite film was "Aliens", it's just the pluralised version of the word didn't rhyme (not that Jonathan, Psion and alien rhyme particularly well, anyway).

Monday 19th June 1995

The Psion code is a special one used in the OPL/W that any snoopers without the Programming Manual can't find.

How about;

There was a young boy called Andrew,
Whose hair, it smelled of dog poo.
For the computers he had,
They turned him mad.
And turned his brain to goo.

Continued with what I did yesterday.

Outer Limits starred Josh Brolin (Brandon in The Goonies).

Julie dead in Neighbours.

I can but apologise, seeing as the same Andrew now generously and selflessly and so kindly hosts this website. It wasn't meant maliciously. Anyway, you should all go and make him feel better by visiting his website here. If you're lucky, he might even have updated it this month.

Sunday 18th June 1995

This is the Psion code in practice:

GPS NT DUEAR ...

Also made a hidden safe for the hideout.

Wrote a music programme on OPL for me to use on the Psion at school.

Because I no longer remember how to decode my own code, and can't remember what it was that I wrote, I'm not posting the rest of it, just in case someone else manages to work it out. If I was writing in code, then clearly it was 'scandalous' than some of the things that I didn't write in code, but have still felt need to censor. Of course, if anyone can work out the code, tell me, and then I can find out what I wrote myself...

Saturday 17th June 1995

Scott came round and helped me fit the roof. You can now sit upright on the floor.

Wrote this;

There was a bad kid called John,
Who knew a lot of German.
He stole a fag,
From his mum, a hag,
And said very politely "Danke schon!"

It's rather true to life.

No, it's rather tragic. But I had plenty of giggles writing it. SHSBers will know who it was about, the first smoker in our midst, who was the bane of Mr Harnden's German lessons for probably being more fluent in German than he was.

Friday 16th June 1995

As Scott is coming round and other people after him I will continue to write the journal secret entries in a code.

This code was somehow based around the numbers each character was given in the back of the manual for my Psion palmtop.

Thursday 15th June 1995

Answer: Not sure but it is either 15 or 18. Boo!

Watched some and videoed a documentary on a problem child, Evan. He is 11 and fights, smokes, abuses drugs and drinks. He also starts fires. They think he's a problem...

Wednesday 14th June 1995

Scott is coming round on Saturday to help with the digging. He borrowed ANOES 2 today. ANOES 6 is directed by Rachel Talalay who is directing Tank Girl.

Question: What certificate is Tank Girl?

Tuesday 13th June 1995

Gave ANOES 6 to Scott. He wants to help me dig the hideout.

The suicide was at Westcliff High School For Boys not at SHSB!

Monday 12th June 1995

SHOCKER of the Millenium! Early this morning at 7am the caretaker investigated the boiler room to find a hung body, dead! Fair dinkum and all that. It was on the radio but the teachers weren't letting on.

The boiler room sounds much like ANOES. (Which I lent Scott!) It could be a normal suicide or a start to a mass murdering spree by a psychopath!

Digging is below 1m and it is looking a lot like a room now. If not a mucky room.

Sunday 11th June 1995

My back aches but I am continuing with digging. I reached the 2ft mark and discovered I could bury the whole thing so that nobody would know it was there. Found ladder, chair and door for it. I also found a newt trying to move in!

Saturday 10th June 1995

Started digging today. I have gone down 1.5ft x 4ft. I found a roof and other nifty aids. Being an intellectual it'll probably be a library more than a bowling alley.

Watched Freddy's death in ANOES 6 and his revenge in ANOES 2.

The 'roof' I found was half a metal garage door. I made the hole itself several inches narrower than the door and when it was deep enough, placed the door over the hole. Then I spread earth over the top, completely concealing the door. I left an entrance hole big enough to access the hole, but the entrance was small enough to be hidden beneath a dustbin lid.

Friday 9th June 1995

After French Orals and school I got A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and 6 for watching tomorrow when my parents are in London.

I have just had a brilliant idea. In Tank Girl, TG and the 'roos have an underground bowling alley as an HQ. I can't build a bowling alley but a hideout should be no problem. I have done plans and will start tomorrow.

Thursday 8th June 1995

In the English N.U.C. meeting sweets were found more important than schools. It was only pretend. Marc not agreeing with mine and Scott's grammar school talk got him fired an hour after hiring.

French orals tomorrow.

Scott and I had an argument over Tank Girl. TG is about a girl and her mutated kangaroo chums. I think Booga is the best 'roo but Scott likes Dee-Tee. Marc settled it with him liking Ice-T. Who cares what he thinks?

"Tank Girl" was indeed about a girl who rode around a post-apocalyptic Australian Outback on a customised tank, sleeping with mutated kangaroos called Rippers and battling with Kesslee, the corrupt government official whose control of the water supplies made him all-powerful. It was drawn by the guy who designed the Gorillaz characters. The comic was riotous, profane, explicit and plotless. The film adaptation was quirky and anarchic, but it was made by the same people who made "Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves" so instead of hardcore bestiality it had... Busby Berkeley-style musical numbers. Ice-T wasn't the name of a Ripper, by the way, but the rapper did play T-Saint in the movie.

Wednesday 7th June 1995

Got 29 out of 30 in German orals.

There's been a major fire (again) on the pier. Today the bowling alley caught alight. It is totally gutted according to the news. We will go and have a look tomorrow.

Southend Pier has a bizarre habit of going up in flames every few years. The pier itself usually survives, but whatever's built on it usually ends up being torn down. It's hard to fight a fire at the end of the pier; it is nearly two miles long, after all, and it's not like fire engines can just drive down it.

Tuesday 6th June 1995

Phew! We didn't have German orals today. Let's hope that it will be on Friday and not tomorrow.

Monday 5th June 1995

Got the science fiction magazine SFX aswell as the X-Files magazine. In it is about Alien 4; Ripley's fingers are salvaged from the furnace and she is cloned by her DNA. Also Doctor Who, Star Trek: Voyager and more!

Another comic strip and new features in the X-Files magazine. Both are Xcellent. Ha! Ha!

Finally saw the white cat next door. Not as nice as Domingo but seems friendly. I don't know if Dom'll share my views.

"Alien: Resurrection" finally came out in November 1997.

Sunday 4th June 1995

After laughing at Spike Milligan's 'White-eared elephant' joke, I got up and re-watched yesterday's "Steve Wright's People Show". I recorded part of it with Gillian Anderson. She spent 9 years of her life in London!

Watched The Vet...

A man goes up to a woman and asks, "Have you ever seen a white-eared elephant?" She says, "No." So he shows her one. If you are a guy, you can make your own white-eared elephant. Just pull your trouser pockets inside out to make the ears and I think you can work out the rest for yourself.

Saturday 3rd June 1995

I've lost my periscope! Maybe it's been stolen. Maybe by them next door. He is a psychiatrict nurse and is interested in my mum's charity.

Added more to the PDA Christmas catalogue. It has the Pink Panther theme and many titles. Why does Andrew always have to go out at Weekends? I haven't been to his house since his birthday! I need to phone him over important PDA matters.

Friday 2nd June 1995

The Wilcoxes; Karen, Keith, Katherine and Kat (sic) have finally finished moving in next door. I have rigged up a periscope and bug so that I can hear and see all movements. Maybe they're criminals!

Parliament want to withdraw from Bosnia. They are also silly gits! The Labour party want to make marijuana legal whilst the other ones want to close Grammar schools! How dare they even think so!

I've deleted a paragraph here that I was tempted to post if only because it was one of the funniest things I've ever come out with in these diaries - and this time it was intentional, too. Rest assured, if I ever write a smutty teen sex comedy, I'll slip in one of the lines I wrote on this date. As for my grasp of politics, the irony is that during her reign, Margaret Thatcher closed more grammar schools than any Labour government ever has. I don't know what's worse: closing good schools out of political correctness, or closing good schools to save a few bucks.

Thursday 1st June 1995

Are entries too long again?

Whilst everyone was out; found book I shouldn't have. In fact, two books! Each full of dirty pictures; people (naked) together doing what the title suggests. The Joy Of Sex by some PhD freak. ...

At last, Escape from Jupiter lived upto it's name; Colonists and robot escape Io.

You better believe I've cut a lot out of this entry! It's actually a good book. It's not really a sex manual at all, despite plenty of graphic pictures (all drawings; and seeing as the copy I found was the original 1970s edition, the men are all bearded and I thought they looked like Tom Skerritt in "Alien"). It basically says the key to great sex is the right attitude, not the right position. Though I was only interested in the 'dirty' pictures back then, really.

Wednesday 31st May 1995

V? Waht is the V in V Dawkins? Violet? Victoria?

SHOCKERS of the Week! Christopher (Superman) Reeve has injured his back in a horse accident. He might not live and will be paralysed if he does. Fergie thinks she's hard up.

On the Fergie case, it proves how out of touch the royal family really are. Silly gits! She owns more a week for doing nothing than a full paid, non-holiday-taking, over-time-working businessman does in a year. If I said that in 1660 I'd be burnt at the stake. What is this fascination with the C16th? Probably sprung up from the Roses of Eyam.

Unhappy time in the soaps: Neighbours; Julie hates Philip. Brookside; Mandy & Beth are in jail. Star Trek TNG; Geordi and Ro Laren temporarily died. Home and Away; Angel may be paralysed and Shannon has nightmares.

On dreams; I rented out A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child for a week, cost=£1!

Whilst I don't know about her being hard up, Fergie was no longer receiving money from the civil list, having divorced Prince Andrew. And I doubt that even when she was that she was receiving as much as some fat cats, but then, I still idolised the idea of humongous wealth at this stage, so thought fat cats deserved it.

Tuesday 30th May 1995

Watched the "Empire of the Censors II" last night. Today it had a scary moment from the "Exorcist" film. Scott wants to see that. There was a film about under 15s watching 15 and 18 rated videos. Unfortunately, the yobbish 11 year olds were the only ones who share my tastes (Aliens, Nightmare On Elm Street). That is very disconcerting for an intellectual like me. (Yes, I'm reading AMD again!)

They don't expect to find anymore survivors at Neftegorsk. Some say God is perfect, but say, if he does exist, maybe all these disasters are his mistakes. In C16th UK I'd be accused of blaspheming and being a witch if I said that!

Monday 29th May 1995

Watched the Red Arrow display for the airshow.

Misty died 4 years ago today.

Misty was a big fat Siamese cat with an almost human personality. She used to raid through the dustbins like an old tramp and had several houses down our road where she used to visit when she wanted an extra meal. She was riddled with cancer in the end, and the call came through from the vet that she had died when I was in the middle of watching the first "Star Wars" film on video for the first time. I stopped it during the Mos Eisley scenes and returned later.

Sunday 28th May 1995

Watched "Empire of the Censors". It contained all the censored bits from nasty films; most of them on this week!

A 7+ Earthquake has struck Neftegorsk, Sakhalin.

I didn't know where that was. I still don't. As with several other entries this week, I've cut a lot out of this entry that I'm not really comfortable posting yet. It's not really embarrassing; I wouldn't say I was having a sexual awakening, but it's clear to me now that there was a sudden onset of curiosity that continued from here on in, even if I didn't realise it was happening at the time.

Saturday 27th May 1995

Andrew came round for PDA work now it's half term.

Oh yeah, Scott is now writing an inferior diary after reading AMD. Remember, this is a journal, not a diary.

Had dreams about girlfriends. Wierd! ...

Friday 26th May 1995

I took in some bits for the collage which we scanned whilst the others were at a first aid lesson.

SHOCKERS of the Week! Kenny Everett (Who?) has died of aids! Julie Kirby (15 years) across the road is pregnant!

Though from what I gather, she's still with the guy who got her pregnant, even ten years later.

Thursday 25th May 1995

Cleaned Bartholomew using a hose. Not usually nice but I wore protective clothing and switched the hose on at high pressure.

Adjusted Maths Trivia. There was a bug; something dividing something by zero=infinity. Andrew says computers don't understand. Scott is addicted anyway. Talking of Scott. He has started an X-Files collage on the Nimbus. He wants me to take in my bits. Is he using me? (David is in Paris)

Wrote opinions of God in RE. Scott said Jesus was/is an alien. (?!)

By clean Bartholomew with a hose I didn't mean clean the poor mouse personally; the glass-fronted wooden two-tiered cage my dad made for my mice had lots of awkward nooks and crannies that were impossible to scrub out. I usually found an excuse not to clean him out for a week, putting extra layers of woodchip down to cover the poop.

Wednesday 24th May 1995

Simon, Glenn, Graham and 8T's studious bunch are off to France whilst we have Miss Amanda Chilvers for French.

Surprise! We played computer games in maths. Truthfully! Some were maths orientated, some weren't. There were mazes, darts, number puzzles and strategies.

At home I programmed Maths Trivia... on the Psion! I'll get Scott and Andrew to test it.

Had Fast Food!

Tuesday 23rd May 1995

Whilst others jogged all day in the marathon relay, we had to suffer French. But we found out Mr Harnden has written a French book!

Graham has been suspended due to running away during the AGM. I am buying a sampler, by the way. Oop! I've already told you that!

Mr Harnden was an old-school disciplinarian who frequently detailed his theory that school-boys were all animals that needed training. He met his match in John Body who, despite being the most disruptive person in the class, was flawlessly fluent in German, having lived in Germany or something. Before he even left the school, Gerry Harnden was writing a column for local papers such as "The Leigh Times" which were generally just more polite versions of the things Simon Heffer and Peter Hitchens write for "The Daily Mail". After he wrote one diatribe against people who ride bikes and championed the art of jogging instead, my mother and I coined the nickname Gerry The Jolly Jogger for him.

Monday 22nd May 1995

Simon's Gerbil, Frisby, has died like his sister's hamster weeks back. During Maths, Glenn and I discussed possible reasons; ebola, plague, old-age (young-age more like!)...

Naked ladies in The Outer Limits.

Sunday 21st May 1995

Watched Bugs and Seaquest DSV.

Also prepared items for the AGM.

Saturday 20th May 1995

Looked through photo. Found me, Andrew, Marcus Eyers (My cousin), ..., Richard Skinner, ROE cast, teachers...

Recorded Bugs and Seaquest DSV.

PDA is going to start a new range; guides. Andrew will do AMOS and I'll do Workbench. That'll add to our 13,000 titles.

Aswell as the Dwelling I am also writing "AL(I)ENS: Ripley's Diary". It's the triology from Ripley's point of view.

Watched "West Side Story".

Yes, I really had taken to emulating the "Aliens" logo's glowing I by surrounding it with brackets, and this only worked if you wrote it in capital letters all the time.

Friday 19th May 1995

The PDA AGM is on Tuesday. I am going to talk on Samplers and Graham about Scanning. He isn't doing too a good job so far.

My Mum & Dad went off to a Heidi Peglar concert at SHSB. She was on "Songs Of Praise" earlier this month and was my first Sunday School teacher! Ha! I bet you didn't know that!

John Body and Oliver Duprey used Psion during History.

PDA had three or four Annual General Meetings a year. It was usually just me and Andrew, and if anyone else turned up at all they usually got bored and walked away after ten minutes, so we fired them in absentia.

Thursday 18th May 1995

Non-Uniform day and I just wore casual clothes.

I now have AF72 and the X-Files picture in it. That reminds me; in Nimbus all week there have been boys scanning X-Files stuff.

I am going to buy a sampler and record my own voice into the computer. Andrew is sceptical over whether PDA money should help. If he wants to use it free he will let me. Anyway, I only have 50p left after buying disks.

Wednesday 17th May 1995

Mandy and Beth Jordache have been found guilty in Brookside.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Clara Sutton, a young girl is terrified when her imaginary friend comes to life and wreaks havoc. Picard investigates to find that Isabella is actually an alien scout.

Tuesday 16th May 1995

Went down the town for an X-Files or AL(I)ENS T-Shirt but was disappointed to find out they were in XL or L sizes.

Graham Stoneman has got a scanner and brought in AL(I)ENS merchandise lists. He will work for us now.

Yes! Chris was away!

Monday 15th May 1995

I have beat Suresh in the Maths exam! He missed out a few pages. Ha! Ha! Chris got low - Will he skip tomorrow?

I watched the Outer Limits. Trolls under the bed start to kidnap children.

Sunday 14th May 1995

Camilla and Keith watched "Life Pod" & "Leviathan" with me. In "Lifepod", a ship is destroyed and the saboteur is aboard a shuttle with many others. "Leviathan" was an underwater version of "Alien" with Amanda Pays (X-Files:- Fire!) as it's Ripley.

"Lifepod" is a science fiction version of Alfred Hitchcock's World War Two naval drama, "Lifeboat". It was a cheaply made TV movie but it had some good ideas behind it, like the dwarves who sell themselves into a life of service and have robotic appendages grafted onto their bodies. There's a great lingering death scene due to radiation, and the way the saboteur is finally revealed is classy and thrilling.

Saturday 13th May 1995

First I watched Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. Kirk and his crew kidnap whales in 20th century San Francisco to save 23rd century Earth from a whale-talking alien probe.

Also, The Andromeda Strain about an alien virus and the 4 Day race to investigate and eliminate it!

Friday 12th May 1995

Camilla came round as it was her birthday!

German listening (Pa!), History (Well?) and Maths (RIP me) for exams.

Thursday 11th May 1995

The Amiga is 72 today. Amiga Format 10 is out. Sorry, the numbers are mixed up. I might buy AF72 but at £4.50 The X-Files mag is better. I worked out; 1 XFM page=5.99p, 1 AFM page=7.02p.

Had French and English - both hard.

Wednesday 10th May 1995

I gave a tape to Scott with soundtracks on for his DAS Amiga demo. He'll probably like "Air" off CDPD best.

Had RE and Tech, exams wise.

There is a new plague with no cure in Zaire. It is called Ebola and "can kill in days and decimate towns". So the Daily Mail says anyway. I have incorporated it in the Dwelling.

"The Daily Mail" certainly appealed to my interest in doom and catastrophe. "The Dwelling" was a sequel of sorts to "The Roses Of Eyam": a modern day developer moves to the village of Eyam and renovates an old house, but when he knocks through an old wall he finds a preserved body dating back to 1665, carrying an evolved form of the plague.

Tuesday 9th May 1995

Exams continue today with Music (Easy), Science (Emm) and Art (Ha!)

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em; today I joined The Dwarf Appreciation Society. It won’t last. I just want free PDA advertising.

This was the first entry in my third diary, which was written in a pink music book I hardly wrote in before it was replaced. I also wrote a very unfunny spoof of “Aliens” at the other end, of which more later on.

Monday 8th May 1995

Today is VE Day so we didn’t have school. I watched “the Outer Limits” around spider things called Sand Kings.

This was the last entry in my second diary, a ring-bound jotting pad with Bart Simpson on the front.

Sunday 7th May 1995

Cleaned pond and organised PDA mailing lists.

Saturday 6th May 1995

Boring!

Friday 5th May 1995

Finally got “The X-Files” magazine. It was great. Cartoons, features, News, programme guide and competitions. There was also a badge.

The first exam was hard maths with light relief in the form of German. Geography remained the hardest and Scott & I laughed at our camel pictures. I sat next to him all day.

I am bored with Scott’s and David Steven’s Dwarf Appreciation Society (DAS).

The Dwarf Appreciation Society produced a couple of issues of their amusingly (but unoriginally) named news circular, "Vertically Challenged". I've still got them somewhere. The main article in the first one was a review of the "Streetfighter" movie - which had nothing to do with dwarves. On the back was an advert for the fantasy-themed Trumps games that were quite popular a decade ago (I don't think they were paid to put it there, they were just using it to fill up space). The second issue featured a big advert for mine and Andrew's little company, PDA. I think we paid about 20p for it.

Thursday 4th May 1995

Still haven’t watched “The Outer Limits”. Exam tomorrow. “X-Files” mag out today.

Wednesday 3rd May 1995

Watched “Working Girl”. Secretary Melanie Griffiths fights boss Sigourney Weaver (“ALIENS”) over a business plan. Harisson Ford (“Star Wars”, Indy Jones) also stars.

Tuesday 2nd May 1995

Marc showed me an advert in his Manga comic. Apparently, an “X-Files” magazine is out on Thursday.

Monday 1st May 1995

Videoed the first “Outer Limits”. I don’t think it will be as good as “The X-Files”.

Sunday 30th April 1995

Continued with “ALIENS” quiz. I’ve run out of questions!

Saturday 29th April 1995

Disappointed, Andrew and I began work on “ALIENS” quiz.

Disappointed that we weren’t invited to Chris’s birthday, I’m assuming. And he was meant to be Chris’s oldest friend. I can’t remember why I wasn’t invited, but alas, I was true to my word, and Chris wasn’t invited to my 14th. Everyone else was, including plenty of others that had never invited me either. Yep, I was a meanie. But I wasn't the only one. Some people had secret birthday do's and told me they weren't doing anything for their birthday, would you believe?

Friday 28th April 1995

I loaned my copy of AMOS to Simon Brown. Chris has not invited me to his birthday so he shall not come to mine.

And that was the last I saw of that disk. RIP AMOS Creator. Serves me right for giving him my master copy (which was a copy of Andrew’s version), I suppose. Soon after we progressed to AMOS Professional anyway.

Thursday 27th April 1995

Day off and I went to the Imperial Way museum. There was a real bomb scare at a station.

Wednesday 26th April 1995

Spent 1hr+ outside in a panoramic photo.

After receiving a disk, Simon Brown wishes to start programming.

Tuesday 25th April 1995

Space is becoming scarce! Simon Brown wishes to become a PDA designer. Andrew taught him the ropes while I assessed work and made a disk.

Monday 24th April 1995

Frogs are invading the garden. Mr Ball must’ve cleaned out his huge pond yesterday.

The first day back went well, taking into account it was school. Watched the new “Home Improvement” & “Goodnight Sweetheart”.

Sunday 23rd April 1995

Saw Mr Leeding’s garden. I’m envious! Built new pond and tidied up a bit. I also finished my “Smith” project on Newgate Gaol.

Mr Leeding was the guy whose house backed onto our own. He might still live there, in fact. He had an aviary right at the bottom of his garden and you could see the little birds in it if you looked through the knots in the wood fence. Once upon a time a friend and I theorised that he was an exotic bird smuggler and kept a dossier on his activities. He was actually the man who came and collected the Pools forms.

Saturday 22nd April 1995

My Pond Snails are dying! I must build a new pond and get some more.

Friday 21st April 1995

Mum got her Dom & Mo T-shirt for her birthday.

Thursday 20th April 1995

Andrew round till late.

Wednesday 19th April 1995

When is… Andrew going to invite me round... and Simon going to send me a postcard.

Tuesday 18th April 1995

“Johnny & The Dead” can’t be finished a) it’s only episode 3, b) the story isn’t finished!

Monday 17th April 1995

Watched James Bond, “A view to a kill”. The newspaper rated it bad but I liked it.

Sunday 16th April 1995

Yum! Nice Easter Eggs. I am now reading “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. It’s good.

I didn't find anything that happened in that book particularly shocking or unlikely; as far as I was concerned, I went to school with plenty of boys who would turn into Jacks, Piggys and Ralphs put in the same situation. Incidentally, I only started reading that book because it was quoted at the front of the "Aliens" book (which I never finished).

Saturday 15th April 1995

Bought a computer mouse and “Aliens: Earth Hive” in the town.

Here’s a trivial additional memory I can add here: I remember getting back to school a week later and talking to Simon, and discovering he’d bought the same book on the same day. Ooh. Of course, he may have been lying.

Friday 14th April 1995

Got up early on Good Friday to see 2 minutes on “the X-Files”.

This entry was a complaint. As in: I got up early on Good Friday for JUST two minutes on "The X-Files". It was a preview of the "Colony"/"End Game" second series two-parter, which starts with Mulder going into cardiac arrest and flatlining. I probably still have the clips on tape, in fact.

Thursday 13th April 1995

There will be an “X-Files” feature on tomorrow’s “Big Breakfast”.

Wednesday 12th April 1995

I have had to check worm living conditions all week. Today I released it.

I'm not sure what I was going on about here, but can only assume I was referring to the various earthworms I kept in pots of earth in my room at various points in my youth. Most of them died pretty quickly, I imagine. It's not like they make the most visible of pets.

Tuesday 11th April 1995

Andrew is trying to copy my prehistoric “Dateline”! He came round at 2pm.

Mad Johnny, fat Wobbler, clever Yo-less and ‘hard’ Bigmac help the dead in “Johnny & The Dead”.

Monday 10th April 1995

I don’t usually watch “Bottom” with Rik Mayall but today it was funny. The pair camp in a park and go Womble-hunting.

That park being, of course, Wimbledon Common, which didn't occur to me the first time I saw it. It wasn't a real park, anyway, just a set, though I didn't notice this the first time, either.

Sunday 9th April 1995

I have begun to compile a stock list out of PDAs 13,000 titles.

Saturday 8th April 1995

I planned to sell the “PDAC” by post but Andrew hasn’t got them ready yet.

Friday 7th April 1995

I am writing this around 2:22:22am. I have just finished watching “Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes On Manhattan”. Jason hitches a ride on a boat, killing nearly all passengers. 5 survive whom 3 are got in New York. Rennie and Sean finally free Jason from his evil body.

Nick Ingram died at 2:01:00am. If he hasn’t got another stay of execution in the US that is.

Thursday 6th April 1995

Stay till tonight. Kew project in!

Wednesday 5th April 1995

Ingram to die at 12:00 tonight.

Tuesday 4th April 1995

Briton Nicholas Ingram facing electric chair for murder tomorrow or Thursday. “The Mail” has a supplement on it.

That being the second reference to a newspaper in one week, I can only imagine that I'd actually started to read the articles instead of just the cartoons.

Monday 3rd April 1995

Didn’t have much time to do anything but Kew Gardens Project.

Sunday 2nd April 1995

Simon is going to American next saturday.

“The Daily Mail” are trying to solve the greatest enigmas.

Saturday 1st April 1995

“Live & Kicking” was full of Rabbit eggs and aeroplanes as prizes. Yes. It was April Fools Day.

I feel a lot better now. A lot, or alot?

Watched “Bugs”. It’s a new series about a trio of investigators who use gizmos to search things out.

Also “Licence To Kill”.

"Bugs" was quite a good Saturday evening semi-science fiction action series. It starred Jaye Griffiths, Craig McLachlan (ex of "Neighbours" fame) and Jesse Birdsall (now of "Footballer's Wives" fame). After a couple of years they got rid of McLachlan but kept the character. Then the private investigators became part of a government agency and it all went a bit James Bond-like. In the final series they jumped the shark and were having virtual reality viruses infecting human brains and if you realised you were infected, it killed you. The last ever episode saw the three stars being kidnapped at a wedding and you never find out whether they live or die. Eyes were rolled, yes.

Friday 31st March 1995

Watched “The Big Breakfast” with Julie Mullins who plays Julie Martin in “Neighbours”. She is to die within 4 months.

Thursday 30th March 1995

Missed “Chiller” because I was printing out “PDAC” items all day.

Wednesday 29th March 1995

Pat Farnham’s boy is recovering now that his father has reappeared.

Last “Willy Fog”.

Tuesday 28th March 1995

Jean Crosbie is still alive.

Sick again.

Monday 27th March 1995

“Johnny & The Dead” is on TV next Tuesday.

Ill, so I stayed in bed.

"Johnny And The Dead" was based on the Terry Pratchett novel, which either Simon or Scott lent me to read during exam week in the first year, when we weren't allowed to talk between tests. As always when you need to keep silent, you find something that makes you laugh, and for me it was the line in the first chapter where one of the characters mistakes tortillas for tortoises.

Sunday 26th March 1995

Watched TV.

Saturday 25th March 1995

Sick in the middle of “Clarissa”!

Not physically, though I do remember pretending I had been on more than one occasion to try and get off school.

Friday 24th March 1995

Bing’s wife says she wants to die at home! Shock! Horror!

Thursday 23rd March 1995

Watched “Chiller”! A pregnant woman’s dead baby returns to haunt her.

Chris back.

Wednesday 22nd March 1995

Audrey Manners shared the same fate of death as her husband. Mrs Crosbie, David (Bing)’s wife is okay. Jimmy Corkhill tried to escape.

Chris away 6 days more than me.

Tuesday 21st March 1995

Chris away 5 times more than me now!

Bing’s wife has collapsed.

I knew Chris had been away five times more than myself because I kept a chart in my GNB (general notebook; not an acronym of my own devising, I hasten to add). Every time one of our group was absent, they got a little mark in my book. Of course, it was hardly scientifically accurate, because if I was ill, I wouldn’t know whether anyone else was ill, and thus deserving of a mark as well.

Monday 20th March 1995

On “Brookside” there’s a plague in the Close! 2 People have already died and many others are ill. They are even going into quarantine and shops will be shut down, perhaps for good.

Chris ill.

Sunday 19th March 1995

... I’ll look up Rasta on CD-ROM.

Saturday 18th March 1995

Had this weird dream which was more like Déjà vu as it happened the other week; Graham has some Iced Gems and I am after them. We go outside and laugh as Alex Wood burns himself with a lighter ... Graham asks “Have you been smoking?” ... He left well alone after that.

Something to this effect happened backstage during the school play. Backstage constituted the music room to one side of the stage and the storage room beneath it. The music room had a door leading outside, and certain members of the cast were regularly using it to sneak outside for a covert cigarette.

Friday 17th March 1995

... Worth investigating?

I was in two minds whether just to leave out this date's entry or not. Of course, I'm not going to say what it was I thought might be worth investigating, but suffice to say, it was me wanting to see criminal activities where there probably were none.

Thursday 16th March 1995

Kew was great! I liked the tropical Venezuelan area in the Palm House best. There was also the Alpine & Temperate house and The Princess of Wales Conservatory like an Indiana Jones set.

Mulder is shot and Ranheim killed in “The X-Files”.

Back then, when “The X-Files” had only been going for a few months, I was yet to get my head around the idea that certain characters were never given names, and had monikers, like the Cigarette Smoking Man. Ranheim was what I thought Mulder’s secret informer Deep Throat was really called. I saw an extra credited with a character called Ranheim in the end titles of one episode, and because I couldn’t remember any character with that name, naturally assumed it must have been Deep Throat.

Wednesday 15th March 1995

Continued “Aliens: The Animated Version”. Ripley has just met Newt.

The Kew Gardens trip and the last “X-Files” tomorrow.

Watched “Arachnophobia” starring Jeff Daniels.

Tuesday 14th March 1995

Took “Aliens: Newt’s Tale” as an example of a cartoon strip for art. I have begun transforming “Aliens” into a cartoon strip although it is taking a long time.

"Newt's Tale" retold the story of "Aliens" from the point of view of the little girl Ripley saves from the aliens, Newt. The first half of the comic book was very good, detailing the initial fall of the deep-space colony to the aliens, which is only hinted at, even in James Cameron's director's cut. The second half suffered from the fact that it had to retread all the main story beats of "Aliens", for which Newt wasn't always present, so it stopped focusing on her, defeating the point.

Monday 13th March 1995

Marc IS jealous.

Sunday 12th March 1995

Did homework like usual.

See how quickly things returned to their boring monotony?

Saturday 11th March 1995

Theo has been sacked again! Marc is not back. Chris nearly didn’t turn up. This would’ve let me do the Carter. Autographed Richard Skinner’s program. I am going to tell him he was the only one who didn’t sign one.

This would probably be a good place to point out that until I did “The Roses Of Eyam”, I didn’t really have much interest in drama, to be honest. In fact, I only went along to Act One Drama Club for the first time in September or October 1993 because Andrew, Chris and Scott were going, and I didn’t want to be left on my own. Sure, I enjoyed doing it, but I didn’t really get passionate about it until this point. It wasn’t even the acting so much as being part of a close-knit group of disparate people of all ages coming together to create this thing. Plus as an extra you had all the fun, with no responsibilities, and could spend half the rehearsals playing chasing games backstage. Indeed, I dare say “Roses” was a bit better an experience than “The Dream”, because I was ill throughout the latter, and actually had lines to say.

Friday 10th March 1995

Question: Will Theo Rowswell be back?

Answer: Yes. He played Unwin again but missed an important cue. Apparently he had dissapeared.

During the first two performances, Scott and I had found a mysterious dark passage going under the stage from the music storage room where we extras hung round when not on stage. Remembering that time in the first year when we theorised there were secret rooms (haunted by demons, of course) under the school, Scott got me to bring a torch so we could explore the dark passage. It went about three feet. It was just a rather large cupboard. Most disappointing, that.

Thursday 9th March 1995

Answer: A Rastafarian is a religious person who believes Blacks are God’s people. I don’t think Theo is a member for that but because Smoking is a sacrament. Hmm!

Theo has been banned from the school play for running around yesterday with Ghetto Blaster.

It’s not smoking itself that’s a sacrament for Rastafarians, it’s what they’re smoking: namely, marijuana. I didn’t really understand what that was back then. For what it’s worth, Theo was white, so it wasn’t too shrewd an observation to realise what the attraction of Rastafarianism was. Drama teacher and play director Mr Clark played Unwin in this performance, except he didn’t know the lines, so took the script on stage, hidden inside some rags. When it wasn’t his turn to speak, he’d take a quick shifty, memorise his next line, and so on, and so on, for the entire play. Admirable. And apparently people didn’t notice, either.

Wednesday 8th March 1995

The First performance went well except Simon missed a line, Theo dissapeared (?) and a body fell apart.

Simon said Theo was a Rastafarian.

Question: What is a Rastafarian?

Simon didn’t have many lines, but he did have what I considered the most important piece of dialogue in the entire play. His character, caring for a man lying in bed, dying of the plague, looks at the buboes on his skin and says something to the effect of “It’s like a ring of roses” (hence “The ROSES Of Eyam”). And what would you know, that’s the line Simon forgot to say. As for the fake body falling apart, when we weren’t on stage, most of us extras were beneath it, in a music storage room (teaching each other to play Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” on the keyboards stored there), and we heard the roar of laughter and applause from down there.

Tuesday 7th March 1995

One day left and spent the night upto 9.30 at the school. That Theo is a mad-man!

Perhaps literally. I did hear things years later with respect to his mental health, though they might have just been rumours. He really was a terrific actor, and in this play he played Unwin, one of two bickering old men in the plague-ridden village of Eyam. In the next school play, he got the role of Snout, one of the Mechanicals, but pulled out early on, and I got the role as his replacement. I dare say he would have done it better, though.

Monday 6th March 1995

Had “Roses of Eyam” ALL day except for Maths. Some people haven’t learnt their lines yet!

Whilst I didn’t have any to learn, so could hardly criticise others. Unfortunately, the person who had the most trouble was a guy named John Kelly, who played the main character, a vicar called Mompesson. During the performances he needed someone sitting by the side of the stage to occasionally prompt him. Though in his defence, he was only 15 or 16 at the time, and he was truly a gifted actor, I just think he got a bit swamped by the responsibility of being the main character with so many lines. In the next school play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, he got the smaller role of Peter Quince, which I think he was more comfortable with.

Sunday 5th March 1995

My mum suggested that my only birthday present this year be an Amiga 1200. Now, Innovations or Computer Combat pack?

You know what, having now copied up all but the latest one of these diaries, I think I can say that this week, each of the next seven days in 1995, represent something of a peak for me. It was just this period where everything came together, things seemed to be - no, WERE - going right, and I would wake up in the mornings and just be glad to be alive. All my usual worries, like French lessons with Mr Bellingham, or whether they’d make us have showers after Games, were just rendered insignificant by the fact that I was enjoying myself so much doing the school play. At least as far as my SHSB days are concerned, it’s all downhill from here on, I’m afraid.

Saturday 4th March 1995

Decided against today’s rehearsal, got an old fashioned waist coat instead.

Friday 3rd March 1995

A bit better.

Thursday 2nd March 1995

Still ill. Watched “The X-Files”; Mulder & Scully investigate a posessed man.

Wednesday 1st March 1995

Ill. Lay in bed reading.

Tuesday 28th February 1995

Had test. Marc realised afterwards he hadn’t done any working. Oops!

Monday 27th February 1995

Went to the hairdressers and did some more of my science project on Fabre due in on Friday.

Jean Henri Fabre was a French naturalist who didn't really discover anything of any significance. Of course, that's not what I wrote in my project. I was away when the project was announced. Everyone had to pick a scientist to do their project on, and nobody could do the same scientist as someone else. Of course, being away, I had missed out on throwing my lot in for Einstein, Newton, Galileo, any of those, which would have been easier to find anything on. As it happened, I based my entire project on two pages from a Gerald Durrell book and made the rest up. I got a B. I'd be lying if I said this didn't set a precedent: a couple of years later I completely made up my GCSE Geography coursework on parades of shops. And I got a B for that, as well.

Sunday 26th February 1995

Doing this late at night I wrote today’s entry yesterday. I actually watched television (“Clarissa”, “The Munsters” etc) yesterday.

Saturday 25th February 1995

Watched a weird Michael (“ER”) Chricton film starring Yul Brynner; “Westworld”. Like many of his films, the focus is man’s creations turning against him. This time it is robots in a Roman, Medieval and Western theme park.

I also videoed the new “Taggart” minus the actual Taggart.

Friday 24th February 1995

Went to Charitybase and worked on the computers. I should get some money for doing some unpacking of envelopes.

Thursday 23rd February 1995

In “the X-Files” Mulder and Scully investigate an 8-year old who projects what she thinks.

Wednesday 22nd February 1995

Went to see “Star Trek VII: Generations” with Scott, Marc, Chris, Simon, Andrew & Naiyan. When Captain Kirk saves the Enterprise he is killed, or so the crew thinks. He is trapped in a field called the nexus which the evil Doctor Soran wishes to return. To do this he must blow up a 2,300,000 population planet. Then Picard & Kirk intervenes, blowing Soran up, Under Guinan’s guidance. Kirk is killed and the Enterprise 1701-D is destroyed.

I also bought “Treasures of the Earth” 2 & 3 With Sapphires, Amethysts & quartz.

"Star Trek: Generations" really was as convoluted as I described it, though it was one of the better odd-numbered "Trek" films. Apparently the entire ending was reshot. Originally, Malcolm McDowell's Soran shoots Kirk in the back, but test audiences didn't think that a particularly fitting end for one of the most famous personas in American pop culture. That alternate ending's on the DVD (allegedly), and was reshot so late in the day that the ending in the novelisation is the original one. I remember standing in Hammicks before we went to see the film and reading the last few pages.

Tuesday 21st February 1995

Andrew came round and my mum went to London and bought me “Treasures of the Earth” with a ruby & Fools Gold.

Monday 20th February 1995

I didn’t need to goto the toilet for all the 3 hours while Scott went twice!

On the way home I saw the new “Treasures of the Earth” magazines with free minerals and gemstones.

See how dedicated I was? It was half term and I went to school. It was actually quite fun, with the school all but deserted except for those involved in the play. I could have skipped it and not missed anything. Us extras spent a lot of the time chasing each other around. On this day they broke out the props and Simon claimed a black gangster's hat left over from the previous year's play, Bertolt Brecht's "Arturo Ui".

Sunday 19th February 1995

Prepared Costume for the “Roses of Eyam” rehearsal tomorrow.

Saturday 18th February 1995

The Holidays at last!

Watched “Seaquest DSV” on Meridian.

Friday 17th February 1995

We are going to the town on Wednesday.

Scott is miffed because I said Sculder & Mully instead of Mulder & Scully.

Chris invited the whole class to the town. Until I told him that the bill wouldn’t fit on Marc’s dad’s credit card.

Thursday 16th February 1995

A killer who fits through any space goes after Mulder and Scully in “The X-Files”.

This was, of course, infamous recurring baddie, Eugene Victor Tooms. He appeared in the third ever episode and was clearly considered such a successful guest star they made a sequel even before the first season was through. Though, alas, this episode saw the end of the character - Mulder liquidises him with an escalator.

Wednesday 15th February 1995

A time travelling historian causes amoc aboard the Enterprise in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.

I remember this one very well. It had a great twist by which instead of a historian from the future collecting artefacts from the past, he's actually a thief from the past stealing futuristic gadgets so that he can make his fortune claiming he invented them in the past. He even stole his time machine. It's not often you remember guest stars from one-off episodes, but Matt Frewer must have made some impression on me, because I knew straight away where I'd seen him before when I spotted him in last year's "Dawn Of The Dead" remake (as the bald dad; is in the movie about five minutes before being killed).

Tuesday 14th February 1995

In a fortnight we will be having a maths’ test! Agghh! Valentines Day.

That's "Agghh! We're having a maths test!" not "Agghh! It's Valentine's Day!" Not that I got anything, naturlich.

Monday 13th February 1995

The others have agreed to do “5000 Degrees”. Scott is Producer, Andrew is gaffer. The cast is Mesk - moi, Jameson - Marc Tobit, Davies - Scott, Reynolds - Chris & Andrew - Rossier.

Though that should be 'Rossier - Andrew', because Rossier was the character's name (and one I used in several stories after this). At least one of these characters was a female, and I suspect Jameson, given to Marc Tobit because of his infamously high pitched voice. Or maybe I was just feeling mean.

Sunday 12th February 1995

Did designs and preparations for “5000 Degrees”.

Saturday 11th February 1995

As I have written a story, “5000 Degrees” for another writing competition I have decided to make an animated film of it. I will be director and will talk to the others on Monday.

“5000 Degrees” was basically just “Alien” meets “The Towering Inferno”. A fire breaks out on a spaceship, but after one person is burnt to death, it mysteriously disappears, only to reappear in another place, even bigger. It went on like that until the entire crew was dead, the fire-monster had grown massive, but the hull had been breached and all the oxygen was being sucked out.

Friday 10th February 1995

Chris is organising a trip to see “Star Trek: Generations” in about 2 weeks time.

Wrote obituary for Cosimo de’ Medici in History. Bor-ring!

Thursday 9th February 1995

Answer: YES!!! In assembly he got it out to show me. There is a word processor, database, agenda, world time, clock, 256k RAM, 1-2mb of ROM, graph plotter, spreadsheet, recording item + more. On the way to PE I met and told Nicholas Pratt as it is better than his. I think he is miffed.

Wednesday 8th February 1995

Graham claims he has got it and will bring it in tomorrow. Hem!

Tuesday 7th February 1995

Question: Will Graham get his Psion/Acorn?

Monday 6th February 1995

Making a display board about Floods in Geography. Like usual, I am Editor.

Graham claims he is getting his Psion/Acorn tomorrow evening. I very much doubt it.

Sunday 5th February 1995

Made a joke mangy finger from candle wax and soldering iron.

Watched “As Seen On TV”. No “Doctor Who” fans this time though.

Saturday 4th February 1995

Tuned the television into Meridian to watch “Seaquest DSV”. Today, the submarine took on board a murderer who escapes and threatens to blow up millions of people with the Seaquest’s defensive missiles.

"Seaquest DSV" (DSV being an acronym for Deep Submergence Vehicle) was a much-maligned update of "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea", kinda like "Star Trek" underwater. The captain of the Seaquest for the first two years was the police chief out of "Jaws", but then the submarine was taken away by aliens for a decade at the end of season two, and returned with only half the original crewmembers (i.e. those under 30 and/or with sex appeal) at the beginning of season three. They called it "Seaquest 2032" or something like that afterwards. It was produced by Steven Spielberg, and at the end of every episode the guy who found the Titanic would pop up during the credits to explain the 'real' science behind the show. He was mysteriously absent during the credits of "Seaquest 2032", by which time plotlines included the Seaquest happening upon an island of man-eating killer plants. Actually, that was a pretty good episode, if I recall.

Friday 3rd February 1995

I have been watching “Brookside” about the Jordache murder. Today, The Jordaches and Sinbad are finally caught by the police.

The first time I saw "Brookside", I didn't know what I was watching. I just flicked over and it was the now infamous hour-long episode devoted entirely to the story-line of battered wife Mandy Jordache finally killing her husband and with the help of her lesbian daughter, Beth, burying him under the patio. When I found out this was a soap and not just some random movie, I kept tuning in, and by the time the Jordaches were caught (i.e. today), I was hooked. Later storylines I remember included the plague, and heroin addict Little Jimmy Corkhill's death. I stopped watching after a year or so, but I tuned in for the last ten minutes of the very last episode. From what I could gather, the land on which Brookside Close was built had been bought by a developer so everybody was moving out as the bulldozers moved in. Should have had another plague, I reckon. Killed them all off this time, not just a bunch of extras brought in a week before.

Thursday 2nd February 1995

F F F F F F F. Those are F’s, not J’s.

Watched “the X-Files”.

Wednesday 1st February 1995

Well, I can’t possibly win the lottery anyway!

Tuesday 31st January 1995

Did some chemistry experiments using a candle instead of spirit burner.

If I win the lottery I will buy a Compaq Contura. It is a 486 PC with MS-DOS 6.1.

I was clearly at the tail end of my interest in science at this point. At this point we had Mr Rogers for the subject, who I didn't really like, and a few months after this we got Mr Dr Short, who killed any interest I had left dead.

Monday 30th January 1995

J J J J J

Got up early to do more soldering.

Gerald Durrell the Naturalist has died.

Sunday 29th January 1995

Watched James Bond, “The Man With The Golden Gun”. When an important solar energy device is stolen, James Bond hunts down renowned assasin Scaramanga. Roger Moore & Christopher Lee star.

Saturday 28th January 1995

Andrew came round but he was absolutely rubbish at “Alien Breed ‘92”. His CD-ROM has got it but the stupid thing doesn’t work.

Friday 27th January 1995

Tough Luck! The school hire out “Doctor Who” and Sports Videos so I don’t see why I can’t. He’ll owe me £2.00 on Monday. Maybe 50p for “Aliens”.

This was the fiftieth anniversary of the day the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz. Completely passed me by. Still, do you remember reading anything about the Rwandan genocide in any of my 1994 entries, as it was happening?

Thursday 26th January 1995

I won’t charge Simon, it’s illegal to hire the video out. Andrew got CD-ROM.

Wednesday 25th January 1995

Have to watch “Die Hard”!

I will charge Simon. 50p a week. £1 a week?

Tuesday 24th January 1995

Played more “Alien Breed ‘92”, invited Scott round to play it on Saturday.

Simon is borrowing my “Alien” Omnibus book and “Alien 3” video. Shall I charge him?

Monday 23rd January 1995

Found level cheats for “Alien Breed ‘92”. In level 6 there are flamethrowers, face-huggers and queens.

"Alien Breed" wasn't an official "Alien" game, but I'm surprised Fox didn't sue for the similarities. It was a top down shooter set in a maze of rooms and corridors, where you are attacked by humanoid aliens with elongated heads, and spidery things with tails.

Sunday 22nd January 1995

Watched “The Goonies”. A gang of teenagers battle against crooks in an adventurous hunt for pirate treasure. Sean Astin and Corey Feldman star.

Sean Astin later went on to greater fame as Sam Gamgee in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. And Corey Feldman, well, I last saw him in an episode of "Sliders" about a decade ago.

Saturday 21st January 1995

Andrew is getting a CD-ROM!

Scott and I went down the town but the weather was apalling so we came back with “Alien Breed ‘92”. It is based on the film “Aliens”.

I remember this expedition. I had made a holster for the SASIYE out of garden wire that fitted over my shoulder and I wore that the entire time. It got rather uncomfortable. We didn't stay down the arcades long. All the 'junkies' I thought I saw two weeks previously were mysteriously absent, even in my perception. It was a very windy day, and Scott and I ended our reconnaissance mission running down the hill behind the Royals shopping centre with our coats flapped out like sails to give us that extra boost of speed.

Friday 20th January 1995

I don’t mind the Aliens “Cannon Fodder 2” level.

Mr Mark Valencia was in the paper yesterday & today is meeting the queen of the Netherlands.

Thursday 19th January 1995

Somebody planted a cigarette packet (empty) in my bag! It had been on a shelf in the toilets for a long time but when I returned to my bag, it was gone. Suspiciously I checked all the pockets and with great happiness found it. With my finger & thumb I picked it out disgustedly and threw it away.

Got February “Amiga Format”. “Cannon Fodder 2” on disk!

Wednesday 18th January 1995

I changed my Maths book & everything is okay! Phew!

Scott & I are going to the town with a SASIYE & shall be buying another down there.

Yes, that’s because a SASIYE was really a spray can of Mr Sheen, so far from being an exclusive gadget of my invention, could be bought in the supermarket.

Tuesday 17th January 1995

Scott and I designed the plans and swapped them. We are collating and merging our ideas.

MUST REMEMBER TO CHANGE MATHS BOOK TOMORROW LUNCH TIME!

Monday 16th January 1995

It has been settled. The HQ has been set up with 3 computers and gadgets; there are SASIYE’s and SPARK Guns. These are my inventions, the SASIYE (Sas-sie) is a detterent with stinging liquid and the SPARK Gun shoots sparks. Tonight I designed new HQ for up in the attic, Scott should do the same.

I can’t remember what SPARK stood for, but SASIYE was an acronym for Slip And Slide, In Your Eye. I’m going to claim Scott came up with it, but he didn’t.

Sunday 15th January 1995

It is 00:35. I am about to set up a network of involved youths. Scott has shown potential. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with “Mission Top Secret” & Underground bases! I’ll fill you in after I have discussed it over with the others tomorrow.

Actually, it had everything to do with "Mission Top Secret", which was an excellent Australian TV movie about teenage spies in proper underground bases. They were called Alpha Centauri. Scott and I called our group Global Tentauri. Nothing to do with the movie, eh? I even wanted to call it Global Centauri. I only wanted to use the 'Global' tag because there's a property agent in Southend called that and they had a neat logo involving a globe I wanted to pinch. And did.

Saturday 14th January 1995

Camilla brought back “ALIEN 3” whilst I videoed “Mission Top Secret” and watched “Clarissa” & “2010”. It is the sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Brody from “Jaws” & “Jaws II” sets out to retrieve the spaceship Discovery from the 1st film. Sabotage, aliens & death stand in their way.

A Girl with every “Doctor Who” video but 4 won 3 of those 4 on “Live & Kicking”. I’m sure no-one knows as much about “Alien”, “Aliens” & “Alien 3” plus the books as I.

Friday 13th January 1995

What a straight line!

Do you prefer F or F. F I got from Fox Mulder’s signature.

This the first unlucky Friday 13th since our exam week last year.

Rumours are flying that “ALIEN 4” is on the way. Ripley was only dreaming “ALIEN 3” it seems. This is all I know. They should call it “ALIEN DREAMS”. It sounds good!

"Alien: Resurrection" came out in November 1997. Rumours are flying as I write that "Alien 5" is on the way, and that Ripley was only dreaming both "Alien 3" AND "Alien 4". In other words, people who didn't like said films are just speculating of ways they can write over the top of them and bring back their beloved characters from "Aliens". I don't think "Alien: Resurrection" was green-lighted until a year after this.

Thursday 12th January 1995

Finished “All Hallow’s Eve”. Only a few people from the book survive.

I am filling up my new diary with important items and dates. My mum got it from Southend District Mental Health Association.

This was the second Richard Laymon book I read. I thought it bore some peculiar similarities to the first one, "Funland". The plots both purported to be supernatural horror but turned out to be the machinations of a serial killer, and Laymon's stock character was a teenage male loner who took advantage of chaos to rape and kill the girls he fantasised about, but who had knocked him back. About halfway through my third Laymon book, "Midnight's Lair", I realised I was actually reading the exact same book for the third time, and, having guessed who would turn out to be the perverted teen, gave up on it.

Wednesday 11th January 1995

Still ill.

Now reading “All Hallow’s Eve” by Richard Laymon. It is a horror and although I’m only on page 100, many people are dead.

Tuesday 10th January 1995

Ill with Andrew’s cold. Phoned Andrew for homework, he’s ill. Phoned Chris, he’s also ill. I won’t bother with Scott.

Monday 9th January 1995

That’s quite a nice J.

Andrew has a dreaded cold and Scott is persuading me to go back. Had a headache in Maths. So did Chris. So did half the class!

Somebody has won that computer from CBBC!!!

Sunday 8th January 1995

Mrs Wright came for lunch and a game of Trivial Pursuit.

Scott wants me to go back next week. And to quote “Aliens”; I am not going back! And I would be no use to you if I did.

Saturday 7th January 1995

If what we saw today was an average day in the life of a narcotic’s squad, I am not becoming a cop! Everywhere we were sandwiched between underaged smokers and junkies! Scott wanted to stay down the arcades and spy but I wouldn’t hear of it. I had only intended on a visit to Southend Library and hadn’t brought and useful gadgets.

I bought a reduced “Making of Alien” book in Dillons that Marc Tobit has been bragging of.

We saw Dean Freedman, several SHSB pupils, Oliver Duprey and I think I saw John Body. Scott denies everything. Marc Tobit in Silica.

This is the first occasion on which I think I can say it really doesn’t feel like a decade ago. Scott and I had numerous expeditions like this over the next couple of years, so maybe that’s why. We didn’t see any junkies, by the way. But my over-active imagination saw in every corner of the shadowy arcades a drug deal in progress, a local Mr Big hovering around the Sonic The Hedgehog machine with an itchy trigger finger on his concealed Uzi.

Friday 6th January 1995

Scott doesn't want me to plan tomorrow's expedition. He says to take it as it comes. What does he expect us to find; a spy-ring or drug baron. I have taken home a riddle to work out tonight.

Provisionally we were only going to town as to visit the library and use the big hundred-whatever-volume encyclopedias to crack the riddles in his "Treasure" book.

Thursday 5th January 1995

These clues are hard! Scott won't let me take the book home so I have to try the riddles in the hustle & bustle of the school. Ozzy's quest has been upgraded to OQ II.

I think this version was the one where we played It behind the dining hall, and you were safe from whoever was It if you could get off the ground (the steps, or a drainpipe). Unless Marc Tobit was It, in which case you were pretty much safe wherever as long as you kept moving in the other direction.

Wednesday 4th January 1995

Scott has introduced me to "Treasure". A book he got for Christmas where you have to work out clues and riddles to locate 6 coins & win £250,000.

Tuesday 3rd January 1995

I like January because it gives me a chance to practise my J's. J. J. J. J. J. 1 day left.

Monday 2nd January 1995

Went to Doris Kempe's house in Croydon. There is snow & ice on the ground so we went on the train. She let me have a go with her new organisor that takes disks! Had snack at that Chinese place again.

Sunday 1st January 1995

Have to get into the habit of writing ’95 instead of ’94.

Watched "Star Wars 2: The Empire Strikes Back". Just when the rebels think it is safe to start moving again, the Empire attacks and Han Solo is left to help Leia escape on the Millenium Falcon. Unfortunately, his chosen hiding place has been invaded by Darth Vader and he is frozen for transportation to Pizza The Hut, sorry Jabba The Hut. Whilst this is going on Luke Skywalker is learning Jedi skills with Ben Kenobi and some Yoghurt dude.

Some woeful, woeful "Star Wars" jokes yanked straight out of Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs" no doubt, and losing all the wit and humour in the process. This was, of course, "Star Wars 5", though I didn't know George Lucas was actually planning to make any prequels, even if he had numbered the films oddly otherwise.