Josephine is Busy

Yesterday I talked about my stamp album, which has resurfaced in my life after ooh ... more years than I care to think about. I was 9 then, now I'm 43. Looking through it I see the tell-tale signs of the me of yesteryear, in that I've written on every possible blank space. I was obsessed with writing - perhaps I still am - and the worst example of this appalling use of books is in my beautiful, 1918 copy of a book called "Josephine is Busy" by (very properly) Mrs H C Cradock. "Published in London, Glasgow and Bombay" - those were the days of empire of course.

Sadly, as you can see, I've written all over it - this page is one of the escapees really, with only one word (although it is in hot pink), and I think you'll agree, an ambitious attempt to write 'naughty', a tricky word in anyone's book, but especially a 4 year old's. Other pages have suffered more deeply; slashes of green chalk, whole pages of orange crayon, and monolithic dinosauric letters in pencil, including the legend "Rebecca is a poo and a we we" (which was true - she forced me off a 20 foot scaffolding once and I broke my pelvis).

Oh; how I wish I hadn't written on this book though.