Sign Here, Please — mot juste

When I was 11, I was given an autograph book.

I know exactly how old I was when the green-cloth covered book came into my possession because the first page reads, “To Diane, August 1975. Best wishes for your future. Love Brown Owl & The Pack. 3rd Victoria Brownie Pack, Umhlanga Rocks.”

On the second page are the signatures of the members of my Brownie pack, getting underway the sole purpose of an autograph book in the seventies – to collect as many signatures as possible. I didn’t survive the Brownie journey, never having an interest in continuing to Girl Guides, but the autograph book has made it through more than four decades with its plastic and gold box still intact.

Although the classic role of the autograph book was to collect the signatures of famous people, the tissue-soft white, pink, blue and yellow pages of mine were filled with cryptic, gently rude or risqué (at least in our young minds) notes from my friends, my sister and, yes, me to myself!

“To Diane.

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

Onions stink

And so do you.

Love Cathy”.

This autograph from my sister - before she reverted to the definitely-much-more-sophisticated Catherine - is an example of the level of humour that recurs in the small rectangular book.

My friend Lea wasn’t at Atholton Primary School and so came to my autograph book in the early years of high school. Her entries show an understanding of the lameness of the jokes we went for.

“Dear Di.

It’s hard to find a friend

When your heart is full of hope

But it’s harder to find the towel

When your eyes are full of soap.”

In the bottom lefthand corner of the page she notes “corny crack”.

There’s also a useful list of secret meanings for words that make this world of LOL and IDKs seem positively bland. Swank = seal with a nice kiss, Paris = perhaps a romance is starting, Elvis = every little virgin is sexy, Holland = hope our love lasts and never dies - and one for Russia that is too mind-blowing, and possibly disturbing, to note here. Most of my Standard Five class at Atholton Primary School also made their lasting mark on the book’s pages.

Some simple and other more elaborate signatures, circa 1977

In the end I only managed to get two sets of real “autographs” in the entire book – a reflection of small-town living and South Africa’s isolation ahead of the onset of the cultural boycott in 1980. The one comes from a member of The Bats, a South African music and comedy outfit that descended on our lounge, during the Durban leg of a tour. “Diane, Lots and lots of love, don’t bully Owen see? Stay tall and lovely,” wrote Paul Ditchfield. The “Owen” referred to by Ditchfield was my dad who was a leading music journalist and who regularly assembled musicians in our Umhlanga lounge (although, probably because most of them were members of the Durban Folk Club and therefore never going to be “famous, they weren’t asked to take pen to paper in my little book).

It was because of Owen that I got THE MOST IMPORTANT autograph in my book. On a blue page, I drew red hearts and lots of little arrows pointing to the opposite page - just in case my memory needed jogging at a later time or perhaps to make it easier to show off. “October 1977, Rockwell, Warren Morgan and John Paul Young at Elangeni,” I excitedly wrote in red pen. John Paul Young’s autograph is short and filled a page – as befitting a “famous person”. “To Diane, lots of Love, John Paul Young,” the Australian pop star wrote. On the following page, Rockwell wrote “Dianne. Love ya!”.

Alongside meeting the members of Rabbitt several times, this was the highlight of my 13 years on earth up to then. Owen had taken Catherine and I to the Elangeni, a swanky hotel on Durban’s beachfront, to not just meet, but HANG OUT with JPY whose music we adored, especially “I Hate The Music” – written by George Young and Harry Vanda and a number one hit in South Africa (obviously!). Catherine and I were the envy of our friends because we all thought JPY was almost as dishy as David Cassidy. Plus JPY’s other big hitter, “Love Is In The Air” was the perfect track for a time when my friends and I were writing notes to each other that said things like “can you see a mark on Kim’s neck” in reference to that absolute confirmation of teenage romance: the lovebite!

I found that note folded into my autograph book along with a few others that survived being passed around the classroom. There was also a newspaper clipping about those other pin-up pop boys, the Bay City Rollers but our love affair with that Scottish, tartan-clad musical outfit that once had a South African as a member is a story for another day.