LETTER TO A 13 YEAR OLD FENNIE

Being tagged is a mixed pleasure: on the one hand one is pathetically pleased to be remembered; on the other it means that the mind can no longer roam free over the week’s events in search of something to set the keys a-clattering. Being tagged in fact actually forces you to think, which is what I have been trying to do, since I stumbled across the flattering message from ElizabethM and the summons to confront my 13 year old self.

Now my 13 year old self (a kind of sad cross between an erstwhile Mademoiselle Grognonne and Minnie the Minx) has long passed into history and a good thing too. But since being resurrected, last Friday, she has hovered again inside my head like the ghost of Christmas past, reminding me of all sorts of things I thought had been well and truly consigned to the oubliette of history. This experience has been akin to finding an old newspaper at the bottom of a drawer and marvelling at the gaucheness of the advertisements for soap.

Still I am not sure that the fads and fancies of the 13 year old Fennie - or Fenella - as she was in those starchly cold days of the waning 1950s, would really make amusing reading. Like every teenager she was a complete cake mix of hormones, nerves, angst, trauma, chronic mental instability, rebellion and general sadness. She longed to ‘grow-up’ - something that her parents promised would happen with unfailing regularity, but which never quite did.

Indeed, one of the most disappointing moments in young Fennie’s life was bouncing out of bed on her first teenage morning only to find she was exactly the same person who had gone to bed the evening before. Instead of being greeted in the mirror by a young Aubrey Hepburn look-alike, all smiles and confidence, there appeared only the same unflattering bundle of frizzy hair and spots.

Of course every teenager, believes, indeed knows for an incontrovertible fact, that the angst they are experiencing is the severest angst ever to have been experienced by anyone, anywhere, at any time. To imagine that grown-ups might have experienced the same thing is quite beyond comprehension and certainly just about the least comforting thing a teenager might ever wish to hear.

Besides Fennie at 13 was a little pig-headed. Everything that adults said was a plot to sabotage her free-spirit. Trying to work matters out from first principles is a slow and painful way of proceeding, though as a way of getting practice in ‘pick yourself up dust yourself down,’ it cannot be faulted.

So, little Fenella, I don’t expect you will heed any of the advice I shall give to you. But there are things that you don’t recognise now as important, partly because of your age and partly because of circumstances. So I shall confine myself to four pieces of wisdom - from which you neither need to recoil or rebel.

First, pay attention to family. Divorce has shattered yours but in later years you will come to appreciate the usefulness of being related to a wide web of people. You will bring happiness to them and they to you. Time invested in family affairs will bring dividends out of all proportion. And never be afraid of hugging!

Secondly, you know that what you get out of life depends on what you put into it. However, what you put in must be what life wants to have, not what you decide is good for it. If someone is hungry there is no point in giving them gold. Everybody needs something - possibly something as small as a smile. Learn what each person wants and give them that. Do not give what is not wanted.

Thirdly, learn to do the minimum. This may seem strange advice. Doesn’t everyone tell us ‘to do our best?’ Most people attempt much more than the minimum; they may aim high but they rarely achieve that minimum, properly and completely. They deliver not enough of what is really wanted and too much of what isn’t. So ask yourself always what the minimum is. Then deliver it - on time, properly, without fuss.

Fourthly, in a few short years you will be embarking on a career. My advice is to choose something that will always be in demand, which you can practice in any country, which you can step away from and if necessary go back to. Something like medicine, for instance.

Do not expect instant success. Do not expect to be a film star, or a great writer or to marry a fortune or any other shortcut that girls dream about. You have been through and will continue to go through some tough times. But soon you will shed your adolescent coat. Look inside yourself in the quiet moments and you will go far.