Diaries

[Marine Boy]

Did anyone keep diaries as they grew up? How young were you when you started writing? Do you still have them?

I didn't write a diary as a child, but I started writing in about 1989 during my late 20s. I would begin the diary, get bored and stop, and then restart a few years later. So I ended up with lots of short accounts. In the mid 90s, I decided to add to these with more memories and now I have quite a substantial memory archive. I go back to it every so often and add a little more.

I thought it might be nice to post some of these memories and that perhaps others may be interested in doing the same. I'm poised here to upload but thought I'd sound you all out first.

[Heather74]

Re: Diaries

I liked the idea of having one,especially after finding and reading my older sisters as we shared a room. I was only 10 and couldn't wait to be 15 like her
I made many attempts but after a week of religiously doing every night I'd soon start to forget and eventually forget altogether.
My Diary always started with a list of boys I fancied, my best friends and a list of 'my secrets'
Shame I never managed to do it properly I'd love a good read of my younger years

[Marine Boy]

Re: Diaries

Here is an extract from one of my accounts. Written in the early 90s about an incident in 1974.

"I had been at secondary school less than two weeks when I became lost during a cross-country run. Quite overweight at this time, and with no stamina, I and another boy, Colin, got further and further behind the pack. Towards the end of the course, we approached the bottom of a steep hill. Ahead, at the top of the hill, was a boy from our class, Vernon. He called back down to us, “Straight down the other side and turn right”. Now, Vernon was known as a practical joker and after negotiating the hill, Colin and I did consider that the directions may have been a wind-up. But as we didn’t have a better idea, we resolved to take a chance. Half an hour passed; we were utterly lost. (Sometime later, we were to discover that we should indeed have been suspicious of Vernon’s help and, had we turned left, would have arrived back at the school within minutes.)

After a while we heard the sound of cars and decided that if we could find the road, we might stand a better chance of determining our position. There were some workmen – resurfacing the pavement, I think – and they told us where what they called ‘the big school’ was. More than an hour late, we shuffled exhausted through the school gates to be met by our Games master, Mr H.

Even in the short time I’d known him, I’d decided he was an unpleasant man. He enjoyed encouraging the boys who excelled at sport whilst displaying sarcasm to those who didn’t. He told us that he had called the police when we failed to turn up and that they were out searching with dogs as we spoke. He said that our parents had been contacted and that they were desperately worried. I believed every word.
Quickly changing back into my uniform, I rushed home.

I almost fell through the door, half expecting to see a police officer, and started explaining to my mother what had happened in a rush of words. She seemed completely bewildered. I asked her if she’d received a call from the school. She said she hadn’t. I went through the story and she told me she knew nothing about any of it. Mr H had been making the whole thing up.

The next day, Colin and I were up in front of the Headmaster. He was very stern but ended a short lecture by saying he was glad we were safe and sound.

About six weeks later, myself and Colin received a summons from the deputy head, Mrs M. She started by saying that she understood we had failed to return on time from a recent ‘cross-country’, and would we mind explaining exactly what had happened. It seemed most peculiar that she should have waited until now before speaking to us. We went over the whole story again and, as I recall, she gave us a good telling-off. She really was a thoroughly loathsome woman."

[Trickyvee]

Re: Diaries

I was a born diary-writer. I started my first aged 6 which lasted all of a fortnight but which had descriptions of a trip to the fairground and to the pictures to see ET on one page with lovely felt tip scribbles of the events on the opposite page. I wish I still had it.

I started writing a diary properly at 13 and kept going until I was 18 but then one day I threw them all out in a fit of teenage angst! I really regret that.

I started up again at 21 and have kept a very detailed diary ever since (now into it's 14th volume). It's become a bit of an obsession and has almost got me into trouble on many occasions as I do write my deepest darkest in it. I've become really good at hiding it!

[Marine Boy]

Re: Diaries

Amazing, Tricky! I never really got down to writing about my deepest feelings.

So............ you gonna upload?

[Marabelle]

Re: Diaries

I had many starting in 1978. I eventually had to shred most of them because there was just too much stuff people didn't need to find out if I died.
I did rip out some pages and save them (yes every guy I slept with is listed on one of those pages).

I just came across a tiny little page tucked away where I wrote
about the last time I saw the love of my life before he died from pancreatic cancer.
It shed some light on our insane relationship and days together.
I was able to rest my broken heart easier that nite and have been able to start working through
the things between us and start to move on.

Diaries are the windows to the soul.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Diaries

Amazing, Tricky! I never really got down to writing about my deepest feelings.

So............ you gonna upload?

Heh heh I don't think so . Most things are better left within those pages. I do enjoy looking through my old diaries though. It's amazing how much you actually forget after a few years...people, places and things that seemed so important at the time. It's good to have a record of the really good and the really bad times. Actually the bad times make a much better read!

[Richard1978]

Re: Diaries

I tried a few times to keep diary, but always got too busy / forgetful to keep up writing an entry every day.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Diaries

It is hard to keep up a diary at first but once you get into the habit it's easy. It helps if you enjoy writing it as I do. For me it's like a hobby. Last year I got a printer and started adding photographs for the first time. I can see myself now, sitting in the old folks home with my 50 odd diaries, boring everyone silly with details of my 'amazing' life lol.

[Marabelle]

Re: Diaries

Wouldn't that be great!

[stockportyears]

Re: Diaries

Heh heh I don't think so . Most things are better left within those pages. I do enjoy looking through my old diaries though. It's amazing how much you actually forget after a few years...people, places and things that seemed so important at the time. It's good to have a record of the really good and the really bad times. Actually the bad times make a much better read!

Absolutely right, I have kept a diary, on and off, since the early 90s, and found some utter drivel about someone I was madly in love with in 1991. (And I'm not talking when I was a teenager, I was 21 FHS but had decided that someone was *the one*.) Anyway, she turned out to be nothing like the person I thought she was, so I suppose it's instructive to me not to judge everything at face value.

Mind you, I found that the really bad times are just represented by blank pages - I don't need a diary to remember them, and I'd rather not remember them. I probably preferred to go straight to sleep each night than sit up and write about something terrible.

I also found that I predicted a Conservative victory the day before the 1997 election, on the basis that however good things looked for Labour in the polls, everyone was lying and would never dare vote any government in other than Conservative. A brilliant political pundit I was.

I'll have a rootle round some time to see if there's anything else I've ever written that may be of general interest.

[Marine Boy]

Re: Diaries

...Mind you, I found that the really bad times are just represented by blank pages - I don't need a diary to remember them, and I'd rather not remember them. I probably preferred to go straight to sleep each night than sit up and write about something terrible.

This is really interesting, stockport. I feel it's an illustration of how we all use diaries in different ways. Although the extract I uploaded wasn't a diary piece, but an account written later, my actually diary entries are more often than not about the bad times. I think this came from a very wise friend once telling me that writing unhappy experiences down on paper can be a great therapy, and I found this to be true. Spelling out the bad times has actually helped me come to terms with them.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Diaries

This is really interesting, stockport. I feel it's an illustration of how we all use diaries in different ways. Although the extract I uploaded wasn't a diary piece, but an account written later, my actually diary entries are more often than not about the bad times. I think this came from a very wise friend once telling me that writing unhappy experiences down on paper can be a great therapy, and I found this to be true. Spelling out the bad times has actually helped me come to terms with them.

Very true for me too. I find the bad times have extra pages stapled in, reams and reams of thoughts and feelings all poured out in an unstoppable stream as I try to make sense of whatever is going on.

[Marabelle]

Re: Diaries

My diaries today are more about the future. The fears of growing old, the loss of friends...you
can't waste your life discussing this stuff in person with your friends and it is a bit gloomy and dark, so I let go in my diaries and write about what scares me the most.

[darren]

Re: Diaries

a diary is something i never kept.
sometimes i wish i had done.
i know someone and he has kep diary for decades writing in it every day.
its a great way of remembering things u have done,places u have been when you no longer remember everything.

a diary or diaries is like a log of your life.