I’ve kept a diary ever since 1981.
Each year Jim would buy me a big full-page, A4, lined jobbie, which I would fill religiously with waffle.
A different colour each year, so I have a library of red, blue, black, and so on.
The journal kept me sane.
Family issues were laboured over.
Work troubles were all recorded.
The good, the bad and the unpublishable were all written down and I had a special pen for the job.
My Conway Stewart with its wonderful soft nib, was swapped for a pink, plastic ‘Woolies’ fountain-pen back in 1958.
Gillian Quick, the bane of my life at Cowley Hill Junior School, got the bum deal.
I’ve always wondered whether Mr.and Mrs.Quick knew of their daughters rash trade.
I still use mine, although the plunger doesn’t work so I have to dip it into a bottle of ink.
One of my duvets is stained with a massive green blob where a bottle of ‘Mont Blanc’ tinte tipped off my bedside table.
I have cried into my diaries, written funny poems, stuck paper clippings, jammed in photgraphs and flowers, but always I have written as if somebody else, other than myself, was reading it.
Then one year Jim bought me a five year diary from Camden Lock.
Pantotime
It’s late. OH! NO IT ISN’T. OH! YES IT IS. I’ve just come back from Jim’s first night in ‘Mother Goose’. OH! NO YOU HAVEN’T . OH! YES I HAVE. There was so much traffic, and an accident coming back that it felt like I was time travelling. The headlights were shining in my mirror. … Read more