Last month I wrote about collecting beads and diamonds when I was a little girl. (Pay attention at the back)
When I was eight though, I moved from London to Cork, and as anyone who’s ever been to Cork will tell you, they do things differently there. In my new school no-one was interested in my collections – and one girl called them ‘a box full of broken necklaces’ – true but harsh!
In Cork, all the girls collected ‘scraps’ – small coloured pictures, which they stored between the leaves of a book, and spent all of playtime swapping. This was tough on me, as the other girls had spent years building up their collections, and I didn’t have a single scrap to my name. I was feeling very lonely and isolated when a lovely older girl called Ellen O’Driscoll, gave me her huge collection of scraps – to keep! Armed with a whole book of beautiful scraps, I immediately belonged, and spent many happy hours swapping my treasures.
Two years later, I left that school, and I never saw Ellen O’Driscoll again – and my precious scraps got lost in the move. Fortunately, I still have friends, and when I told the lovely Sarah Webb my scrap story, she tracked these down and sent them to me.
Now who’d like to swap?

Originally published on www.girlsheartbooks.com