Jeni Barnett

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.

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Sometimes the only thing to do is go with it.
So I filled a bucket with hot water and floor cleaner and scrubbed the kitchen floor.
Why I felt like ironing is beyond me, but I did.
I then gathered up all the stray bits of washing.
The house is now grime free.
I then found myself vacuuming, in the buff, well the demons had got me. I was too hot to wear anything, and no I don’t look anything like Ms. Griffiths in ‘Working Woman’.
Dom, was raking leaves and snipping hydrangeas. I feared he may walk past the kitchen window with his wheelbarrow so every time I went down stairs I draped myself in a quilt that was made for BB when she was born.
The thing is ripped and all the stuffing is coming out of it, I can’t get rid of it, throwing away twenty years of memories.
But it’s just the right size to do one turn round my body and it stays up for about 20 paces.
I did our bedroom, smiling as I went back and forth with the Dyson. Then one unwealdy move and I’d sucked up the belt from Jim’s blue-polkadot-silk, dressing gown. I must remember to tell him.

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I know there are bugs flying around because I’ve snapped one up.
I have had a headache for two days that is so bad I feel like my eyes have been sewn up.
I have visited the bathroom more times than Una Armetage Shanks.
I ran for 30 minutes this morning, hoping that it would make me feel better.
It did, of sorts.
I made porridge and grated an apple into it. I thought I could do with the roughage. Jim shouted at me and said I should have eggs to bind me.
The thought of it made me feel queasy.
The daughter called trying to track down tickets she’s lost for a gig she’s going to on Sunday. I hot-footed it to the computer to assist.
Then the old man left with his guitar, amp, box of make-up, and various other bits of pantomime paraphernalia, and set off for the theatre.
I didn’t feel great but Jackson looked at me with those big, brown eyes of his and so off we went.

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Having been to TOADS to have my hair done, I set off in the drizzle to London Town. The hair stayed in tact. I have to admit to having a stiff neck from trying to keep my head as still as possible.
Annie, one of my oldest friends, sacrificed her gardening to babysit Jackson and Emmy, so I left Sussex with a guilty, though happy heart.
Got to the flat by 2.30, Jim turned up shortly after me. He’d been rehearsing all morning.
The ‘Nearasdamnitson’ turned up an hour later.
In the hour before he arrived Jim and I nipped into Sloane Square to buy him a ‘Tiffany’ bean.
You all know Tiffany’s.
You all know what a bean looks like. Well imagine a bean cast in silver and wrapped in the tourquoise blue packaging that Tiffany’s are renowned for, and there you have it.
We had a little ceremony in the kitchen where we gave the boy his bean and wished him well for the opening.
He then went off with Edge, his long term partner in crime, and Jim and I followed on later.

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