Jacky Daydream (31 page)

I can’t decide whether to write another volume of autobiography or not. There’s certainly plenty to write about. Maybe I’m a bit worried about setting a bad example! I didn’t work hard enough at school, I left home at seventeen and was married at nineteen. I wouldn’t advise any girl to do that now!

I was still a compulsive daydreamer throughout my teens, writing endless stories. My first school photo at my new school Coombe shows me with pen in hand, writing in my notebook. I think I must be eleven in the photo because my school uniform still looks remarkably new and neat. My hair is still short and permed, but I tried hard to grow it over the next few years. I often gave up in despair when it got to that irritating straggly stage and had it all cut off. Then I wouldn’t like the new short haircut either and I’d start growing it all over again.

My hair’s a little longer in this photo of Chris and me when we were about fourteen. I think that photo was taken in Chris’s house. I always loved to go there because her family life was so placid and peaceful. Hetty and Fred, her mum and dad, were very fond of each other, her big sister Jan was very kind and friendly, even the budgie Joey chirped at me in a cheery fashion. Biddy and Harry were rowing more than ever by then.

This is me a year later, on the balcony at Cumberland House. My hair’s now in a weird overgrown bouffant style because my boyfriend, Peter, was a hairdresser and used to practice on me. I had quite a few boyfriends but Peter was my first serious one. Here we are in Peter’s flat – and my hair’s even fancier now!

It looked as if my life was all mapped out. At sixteen I was sent to technical college to learn Shorthand and Typing because Biddy thought I should get a job as a secretary. I didn’t want to be a secretary. I didn’t want to settle down in Kingston and marry Peter. I wanted to be a writer and lead a glamorous arty life in a picturesque book-filled garret. But it all seemed a little-girl daydream . . . until I found an advert in the London evening newspaper saying ‘Wanted! Teenage Writers!’ I was a teenager and I desperately wanted to be a writer, so I wrote off for further information. The Scottish firm DC Thomson, who publish many newspapers and magazines and children’s comics like the
Beano
and the
Dandy
, had decided to produce a brand new full colour teenage magazine and were eager for material for it.

I was certainly eager to write so I sent them off a humorous article. To my astonishment they wrote back saying they wanted to publish my piece, and would pay me three guineas for it. Even in those long ago days in the nineteen sixties three guineas (£3.15p) wasn’t a lot of money, but it meant the world to me. Someone actually liked my writing and wanted to buy my article and publish it!

I wrote them a story or an article almost every day. After a month or so, DC Thomson offered me a job as a junior journalist in their Dundee offices. I jumped at the chance!

Biddy was a bit worried about me going up to Scotland at the age of seventeen and insisted I live in a hostel so that someone could keep an eye on me. I booked myself into the Church of Scotland Girls’ Hostel. The matron didn’t want to take me at first as all her rooms were full, but she saw I was quite small and squeezed a put-u-up bed into the linen cupboard and turned it into a weeny bedroom for me. This was
a
brilliant move because it was freezing cold that winter and the hostel didn’t have any central heating. My linen cupboard had hot pipes to air the clothes and was the only cosy room in the huge mansion. All the girls wanted to be my friend so they could squeeze into my room with me. We used to squash up together, giggling in the dark, having midnight feasts just like those girls in the Enid Blyton boarding school books.

This is a photo of all us girls at the hostel’s Christmas party (no boys allowed, and no alcohol either!). I’m in the back row on the far right.

Here’s another photo of me in the office at DC Thomson – I think I was modelling knitwear for one of the women’s magazines. I was willing to turn my hand to anything. I even wrote a weekly horoscope, though I knew nothing about
astrology
. I basically made it all up! I’m born on December 17th which makes me Sagittarius, so when I was writing the column, all Sagittarians were going to have an exciting love life, come into lots of money and achieve all their ambitions.

Well, it’s more or less all come true for me, though it took a long long time!

Here’s a photo of me on my wedding day, marrying Millar. I look like a child, much too young to know what I was doing!

This is me a couple of years later, with my lovely daughter. I must have been about twenty-two then. I’d already written three or four unpublished novels, but I was still feeling my way. I was just about to write my very first children’s book . . .

Also by Jacqueline Wilson

Published in Corgi Pups, for beginner readers:

THE DINOSAUR’S PACKED LUNCH

THE MONSTER STORY-TELLER

Published in Young Corgi, for newly confident readers:

LIZZIE ZIPMOUTH

SLEEPOVERS

Available from Doubleday/Corgi Yearling Books:

BAD GIRLS

THE BED & BREAKFAST STAR

BEST FRIENDS

BURIED ALIVE!

CANDYFLOSS

THE CAT MUMMY

CLEAN BREAK

CLIFFHANGER

THE DARE GAME

THE DIAMOND GIRLS

DOUBLE ACT

DOUBLE ACT (PLAY EDITION)

GLUBBSLYME

THE ILLUSTRATED MUM

JACKY DAYDREAM

THE LOTTIE PROJECT

MIDNIGHT

THE MUM-MINDER

MY SISTER JODIE

SECRETS

STARRING TRACY BEAKER

THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER

THE SUITCASE KID

VICKY ANGEL

THE WORRY WEBSITE

Available from Doubleday/Corgi Books, for older readers:

DUSTBIN BABY

GIRLS IN LOVE

GIRLS UNDER PRESSURE

GIRLS OUT LATE

GIRLS IN TEARS

KISS

LOLA ROSE

LOVE LESSONS

Join the official Jacqueline Wilson fan club at
www.jacquelinewilson.co.uk

JACKY DAYDREAM
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 407 04324 1

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company

This ebook edition published 2012