You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you...

...as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

I was so excited to get this utterly gorgeous award from la mia amica Peculiar Tallulah! And part of the deal involves revealing "ten useless/interesting facts about myself." In fact, at the moment, I've been *pondering* a lot about the continuity of all of our 'selves' - what remains from who we were when we were small. As for me, I fell in with a 'bad crowd' at infant school when I was five [Yes! There was, indeed, a 'bad crowd' at the age of five!], and I was so unhappy that when I was nine I persuaded myself that I had a mysterious stomachache and couldn't go to school. For a whole year. Analyse as you will. My poor parents!

But lately I've been thinking that, as I have grown up and right through most of all that sadness and confusion, I've grown into who I was again, when I was really, really small - before note-passing and kiss chase and science homework got in the way, when I would wake up every morning and [apprently] demand of my mother, "Who are we going to see today?" When everyone around you was someone who loved you and could imagine along with you.

"You go back. You search for what made you happy when you were smaller. We are all grown up children, really... So one should go back and search for what was loved and found to be real."
-Audrey Hepburn [one of my favourite quotes ever]

So here are ten things about Smaller Me that are loved and found to be real, I suppose!:-

1. My first memory is my bedroom in my old house. The walls were white and my Mama had painted little pink hearts and yellow triangles around them. My dad is singing me to sleep with 'Moon River', and my cousin Theo comes in to borrow one of Dad's old Tintin books from the top of my wardrobe.

2. I had to go to nursery when I was three, and the children were evil. I used to insist on wearing my Superman suit and cape, "to make me brave."

3. I used to cry at the end of Beauty and the Beast, when the Beast turned into the 'imposter' ponytailed Prince.

4. Lady Cluck from Disney's Robin Hood sent me into hysterical, stomach-splitting, fifteen-minute-long fits of cackling. "That sccuuuurvy Prince John!"

5. My favourite place in the world was Salcombe. Every summer, we would go and stay in a little pink house by the sea next door to another family, with a little girl the same age as me and a little boy the same age as my brother [up above, being pulled along by a donkey with me!]. We would catch crabs, eat sticks of rock and 'swirly biscuits', clamber over the rocks to the ruins of Neptune's Castle or up the scree slope to a little wooden shack christened 'Noddy's House,' make ourselves mermaid tails in the sand and eat fish and chips at the Parrot Cafe. A print of my duvet cover design used to hang on the wall there, so whenever I snuggle under it I always feel comforted in some strange small way.

6. One night, a mouse darted across the floor of my bedroom in our old house. I awoke my [equally terrified, but courageously hiding it] mother with my screams - but instantly calmed down when she explained that the mouse was just like Gus from Cinderella, and that we should leave some little clothes out for him. I enthusiastically designed some for her to sew [whilst she covertly called in pest control, alas].

7. I created hugely entertaining imaginary lives with all of my friends - Joseph and I were head agents of the F.L.Y detective agency [our cover was blown by a terrifying elderly neighbour who caught us 'making notes' in a tree in her front garden], and Jeddy and I were pupils escaping from an evil boarding school run by the Headmaster [my brother]. But with my little brother, I created an entire imaginary world, populated with dozens and dozens of bizarre characters assigned to each of us, all carefully chronicled by me. It still makes me laugh whenever I rediscover those notes! To give you some idea of just how bizarre our world was, the 'villains' were the presenters of that pleasant children's TV show Blue Peter. We just didn't trust them, and cast them as the pirates.

[I kept my eyes open and tried to see
The point of what went on in front of me
I kept what moved me, forgot about the rest
And took my young imagination to the acid test
And it was easy then to say where love could go
It's so easy when love is all you know
About my imagination, it got me through somehow
Without my imagination, I wouldn't be here now
-Jackson Browne]

[One of my favourite photographs of me and my little brother. I love how you can see 'Tale as old as time' from Beauty and the Beast on the TV screen.]

8. I wrote [and illustrated, no less!] my first book at the age of five. It was called 'Spikey and the Circle' and starred two grapes who "grew old together through the years..."

9. My mama was hospitalised for dramatic weight loss whilst she was pregnant with me because I was, apparently, eating all of her nutrients - and by the time I was onto solid foods, I would cry until lunchtime unless I had four Fromage Frais yoghurts and three Weetabix for breakfast. I am hardwired for gluttony!

10. When I was four, my mama had to play James Taylor's Carolina In My Mind every morning before we left for school. I was furious when I realised that it was written about a state, not my name.

[Me to a T! The story behind these photos: Mum: "Darling, don't lean against the windbreak, you'll fall ov- oh. Too late."]

Hmm, and another thing. I have always been consumed by projects. When I was ten, [and, alas, far more compassionate and environmentally aware than I am now], I set up 'Delphi Club', recruited every other child in my class, and *published* a weekly newsletter [thank you, Dad's office's photocopier!]. I even divided 'members' into houses, like Hogwarts! And galvanised my classmates into sending in letters or solving puzzles to earn house points and sweets!

But this story does have an actual point.

I am so excited - all summer, I have been grappling with the rudiments of basic Italian, determined to reach a passable fluency. Now, at last, I am starting to think and even dream in Italiano. But sometimes, it's difficult to stay motivated - especially when faced with dry and crummily arranged coursebooks rented out from the little local library.

Which is why I am so delighted that the camerado has decided to spread her linguistic wings with me! Even though we won't be seeing each other face to face until Christmas [eep!], we're dedicated to a one hour Skyping session a week [we're calling it Italian Wednesdays] and learning one new Italian word a day to start with. And the best part is, we now have a purpose - if we scrimp and save, we're going to make it back to Italia for a few weeks next summer, and our goal is to converse like a native with the local Fabrizios and Gregory Pecks [well, a girl can dream]... Now I just need to get her up to speed, and we're away!

We've christened it:

THE SPARKLES AND CRUMBS 'ROMAN HOLIDAY' PROJECT

and you must all join in! Believe me, I'm the failure of the family when it comes to languages [my uncle worked for customs and spoke fifteen fluently] - but few things set the mind working and the heart swelling like mastering how to demand cake in a foreign tongue! You shall never have an excuse for boredom again. And it truly is as simple and cheap as borrowing a CD and a book, like Miss Chuck Charles from beloved Pushing Daisies.

The only unpleasant aspect of our Interrailing around Europe was that everybody in Spain, Italy, Greece, Slovenia and France seemed to speak around four or five languages - and everybody spoke English better than most of our contemporaries. It felt terrible to visit all of those amazing countries and only use a few tourist-y phrases.

So, here is my tag and my challenge! Pick a far-flung place and learn the language. Learn Arabic and go to Egypt! Fly to Indonesia and speak Malay! Multi-task with Spanish [Argentinia, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba...]! Just choose one from here and

Begin. Keep on beginning. Nibble on everything.
Take a hike. Teach yourself to whistle. Lie.
The older you get the more they’ll want your stories.
Make them up. Talk to stones. Short-out electric
fences. Swim with the sea turtle into the moon. Learn
how to die. Eat moonshine pie. Drink wild geranium
tea. Run naked in the rain. Everything that happens
will happen and none of us will be safe from it.
Pull up anchors. Sit close to the god of night.
Lie still in a stream and breathe water. Climb to the top
of the highest tree until you come to the branch
where the blue heron sleeps. Eat poems for breakfast.
Wear them on your forehead. Lick the mountain’s
bare shoulder. Measure the color of days
around your mother’s death. Put your hands
over your face and listen to what they tell you.
-Ellen Kort

Who knows where it shall lead?

Comment if you're joining in!

Love, train tickets and adverbs xxx

PS. Can I bequeath the award unto Plain Jayne, Let's Go Find A Rainbeau, The Storyteller's Diary and So About What I Said, please?