As the past threads to the present, the eye of the needle either grows larger to allow in new hope or smaller to keep out the misdeeds of times past. While “Goodbye, good riddance, old year” is a comfortable knee-jerk reaction to a tough year, I caution myself not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying reminds.
Even when the baby is throwing a temper tantrum, there remains the possibility of enlightenment.
I have kept journals for most of my life. Some were in formal diaries, like the locked ones I had when I was a teenager, with covers sporting replicas of faces smiling, a surreptitious warning not to write on its pages if one was unhappy. These provoked guilt about most of the things a teenage girl might want to write about.
Maybe that was the reason for the thin faux leather strap that snapped into a lock when the diary was closed and needed a key to reopen. A snip of the scissors would also have gained entry into the secrets within, but I convinced myself that no one would dare enter without permission. And just in case, the key was hidden in a small jewellery case in my dresser drawer.
My dear diary. (Getty Images)
In later years, I kept my thoughts in spiral notebooks allowing me to rip out a written page and pretend that part of my life never existed. However, most of the time I would fold the discarded pages and tuck them into the pockets of the notebook. It was as though someone whispered, “Just because it is sad doesn’t make it bad.”
Eventually, I graduated to lined yellow pads and finally a reporter’s notebook with occasional notes on napkins in between. I kept more of my written thoughts as I developed an awareness of their possible value to me. While some of them became seeds of stories I wrote and published, many in this column, I discovered a more significant reason for respecting my thoughts in the time frame in which I recorded them.
They are a reminder of what is possible. Reading my own words about disappointment when a story was rejected made it all the sweeter when one was accepted. From disenchantment to surviving illness and loss, the journals became my blueprint from “I can’t do this” to “Maybe I can” to “I did it.” I’m still stuck on many “Maybe I cans,” but I have developed a strong reverence for possibility.
So as I thread my needle for the new year, I need the eye to be large enough to accommodate my journals of mishaps and made betters, my reminders that hope still hangs in the air.
I have reached the point in life in which most of the Christmas gifts I get are ones I have gotten for myself. Consequently, I approach the task with a certain unsentimental efficiency. The question is less what I want than what I need: a new sweater, a better overcoat, a smarter wristwatch. To acquire these items at Christmastime adds a certain jolliness to what would otherwise be practical purchases.
This Christmas, however, I took the liberty of giving myself a Christmas gift that was less a reflection of a nagging need than an expression of a wish for myself for the coming year: that, after a lifetime of trying, I could turn myself into a writer who maintains a daily diary.
Among the little stack of presents waiting for me after church services Wednesday morning was a “ledger book” from the leading journal and stationary maker, Levenger. Bound in cloth, the book holds 200 sturdy ruled pages whose vast blankness cry out to be filled with their owner’s thoughts—and their owner now is me.
From Flannery O’Connor to Dawn Powell, many of my favourite writers kept diaries, though few can claim greater steadfastness in the practice than Herman Wouk. The author of The Caine Mutiny, Youngblood Hawke, and The Winds of War had long been one of my favourite modern American novelists, but he jumped to the front of the pack when he revealed, in a memoir published when he was 100, that he had been maintaining a diary for most of those years.
“Until recently I kept a frank private diary, which ran to more than a hundred bound volumes,” Wouk wrote in Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author. “It will remain private. Call it my nature, or a pose, or what you will, the adjective often attached to my name has been ‘reclusive.’ Now it must stand.”
I remember savouring those words: one hundred bound volumes. That Wouk could document his daily joys and woes with such constancy—and with no expectation that they would ever be made public—was an inspiration for someone who has been, his entire life, a reluctant and often failed diary-keeper. (I should note that Wouk’s assertion that the diaries will “remain” private is not entirely accurate: The author, who died in 2019 at age 103, gave his diaries to the Library of Congress, though, according to the Finding Aid to the Wouk collection, access to them is restricted until 2039.)
As for myself, I could never muster the candour to write for myself and myself alone, so my infrequent and entirely unsuccessful attempts at diary-keeping have consisted of self-conscious, self-important entries obviously meant to be read by some future reader—a frankly hilarious notion for a little-known writer of arts criticism and chronicler of the passing political scene.
Later, the reasons for my reticence shifted. As a professional writer, I found myself constitutionally incapable of putting pen to paper without the promise of a paycheck. I even find it difficult to write a piece on “spec”—that is, without the go-ahead from an editor at a fine publication such as The American Conservative and thus without the assurance of remuneration—so the idea that I would take the time away from my paying work to write for myself was anathema.
Apart from elementary school journals that were assigned and graded by the teacher (and thus not real journals at all), the first diary I tried to keep was a notable failure. It, too, began with a Christmas present: When I was 13, my parents gave me a beautiful leather-bound diary book. I endeavoured to fill it, but for months, I filled it with quotations by favourite authors. The diary became not a repository for my own thoughts but a collection of creeds by others. I took most of the quotes from Jill Krementz’s photography book The Writer’s Desk—itself a gift that same Christmas, which meant I was essentially transcribing the wisdom from one book I owned to another book I owned. I still remember some of the quotes I copied into my diary, including this one by novelist William Styron, speaking of the labours of his trade: “I get a fine warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.” Indeed.
Yet some diary-keeping instinct stayed with me. About 25 years ago, I began keeping a record of every movie I saw in a movie theatre. I’m sorry to report that this diary is not an actual diary but a mere Word document that has survived multiple computer crashes and software upgrades, but it still constitutes something of a guide through my life in motion pictures. The first movie I noted having seen was Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, which I saw at a local multiplex on January 16, 1999. I saw Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner on December 6, 2003, Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur on June 15, 2005, and Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth on July 22, 2009—you get the idea. The most recent movie I saw was Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 earlier this month. (December 2, to be exact.) Alas, even this ersatz diary was not even my idea: I began keeping the log after reading that the moviemaker Peter Bogdanovich (What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon) had accumulated a massive “card file” of every movie he saw as an adolescent and young man. Clearly I had a need to memorialize things, but how to memorialize my own life rather than the movies I saw or books I read?
My diary-keeping remained a notable failure until the last 12 months, when, after the death of my mother, I found myself jotting down thoughts, impressions, memories in whatever vessel happened to be near me at my desk: a daily calendar, a small notebook ostensibly used for story ideas. This habit convinced me that, maybe, I was finally ready to keep a diary for real.
If I can maintain the habit with anything like the faithfulness of Herman Wouk, I already know what I am giving myself next Christmas.
NOT long to go now. Soon all the shopping will be done, the presents wrapped, the food prepared and then, if you’re lucky, you might have a few minutes to sit down and relax over the next few weeks. If so – and I very much hope that this is the case – why not spend a bit of time looking back and thinking about what you’re grateful for?
People tend to think the end of the year is about looking forward: New Year’s resolutions, change, a fresh start. Why look back? I’m often surprised how many people say: ‘I’ll be pleased when the year is over’ – as though it’s something you should turn your back on and not think about again.
Of course, some will have had a tough year. There will have been setbacks, upsets and maybe even tragedies. But for most, there will have been good things, too. Even if someone has had a very difficult time with a bereavement, say, there will be some positive, heart-warming or life-affirming moments too – perhaps the way friends rallied around or a partner supported you. If we only focus on the future, determined to look forward and put difficult experiences behind us, we risk missing these little gems.
In consigning the whole year to the waste bin of life as an annus horribilis we don’t get to see the glimmers of goodness that were probably also there.
THE strength of our memories tends to be closely related to the strength of the feelings attached to them, particularly in the case of negative emotions. This means we remember things that provoked strong reactions much more vividly than others. It’s very normal to find a few upsetting events dominating our memory of a year, while the lesser, but enjoyable things, fade or are forgotten.
This is why I always recommend keeping a journal. We often forget all the moments of fun and joy we had, despite everything else that might have happened. I’m not talking about a Bridget Jones-style diary with endless entries covering all your thoughts and worries. It’s actually enough to have an old fashioned datebook or calendar with a record of the things you did, where you went, people you saw. If you don’t have a physical diary, maybe you keep notes on your social engagements in your phone calendar? If so, I highly recommend that, in the time between Christmas and New Year, you spend a few hours just flicking through it, remembering everything you did.
You’ll be surprised how many fun, interesting and enjoyable things you’ve done over the year, and simply forgotten. The reality is, if we don’t reflect, we don’t get to be grateful. Finding the good things in the rubble of life often doesn’t come easily. Sometimes you have to force yourself to spot them – and to say thank you.
Psychologists call it ‘gratitude therapy’ and it helps you focus on the positives in your life. It comes out of a branch of psychotherapy called ‘positive psychology’ which has become increasingly popular in recent years.
It’s quite a shift from traditional psychotherapeutic approaches which tend to focus on the problems that someone has in their life. Positive psychology, in contrast, makes the focus of the work about exploring what is going right in someone’s life and thinking about the things they can be grateful for.
It is an important weapon in the arsenal to tackle life’s difficulties. Countless studies have shown a robust association between high levels of gratitude and long-term mental wellbeing.
It is thought to work on several levels. By focusing on the positive, we reduce toxic emotions such as anger, frustration, envy and regret.
Research has shown that saying ‘thank you’ to the people in your life helps solidify friendships and form new relationships, meaning people have better social networks. This in turn helps to stave off loneliness and improve mood. It also helps to improve empathy and decreases interpersonal conflict.
Showing gratitude for someone who made an impact (however small) in your life over the year doesn’t have to involve getting them a lavish present. Often something as simple as a phone call to wish them a Happy Christmas or a Christmas card with a thoughtful message written in it is all that’s needed.
It shows you thought about them, that you remember and appreciate them. We all know how good it feels to be on the receiving end of that.
AND it’s not just something you can do in the brief bit of downtime at the end of the year. Advocates of gratitude therapy recommend people make a conscious decision to set aside a block of time a day – say, 15 minutes – during which you reflect on the positive things in your life. The key is to really think about everything you are grateful for, which is why it’s recommended that you actually write it down, rather than just cycling through a list in your mind. The act of putting pen to paper provides a physical, tangible focus.
It’s also very helpful if you find yourself having an overwhelming negative emotion or thought. Pull out your list and remind yourself that not everything in life is bad – even if it might feel like that at times. I hope you find many things to feel grateful about this season.
Keeping a diary is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Sticking to it was a struggle at first; I stopped writing for about six months in 2020, but I don’t think I’ve missed a single day since then.
I’ve got a record of most of my two sons’ most hilarious observations, for example – the kind of things that inspire parents to turn to each other and say: “We really should write this down.”
But then, never do.
(“Some people are allergic to Arsenal,” my five-year-old son remarked on Saturday, April 20, as I sat on the couch watching the Premier League.)
The diary has endowed me with a superhuman memory.
Earlier this year, my wife mentioned that her physician insisted she’d had a blood test a few months prior, though she couldn’t recall it. A quick search through my diary settled the debate instantly.
My favourite thing about my diary is the end of the year – that’s when I compile a list of memorable moments, funny quotes, and lessons learned.
Like this gem:
My father-in-law came over for dinner this summer. I asked him how his new diet was going. “It’s been rough,” he confessed. “I ate eight bananas last night.” “Eight bananas!?” I asked, incredulous. “Yeah, I woke up four times during the night and ate two bananas each time. Eight bananas,” he repeated.
(To be fair, avoiding all those cookies must have left him famished.)
Anyhow.
It’s that time of the year when people make New Year’s resolutions.
My advice: start keeping a diary. You’ll thank me later.
If there’s one thing author Amitava Kumar wants readers to take away from his latest, The Green Book, it’s to inculcate the habit of walking and keeping journals.
The book, released earlier this month, is the third and final volume in his diary-and-sketchbook trilogy. Like its two predecessors—The Blue Book and The Yellow Book—this volume too is filled with Kumar’s original artwork and photographs, along with observations jotted in his diaries as he walks through life.
By the time this reporter arrives at the Bandra cafe where we’re meeting Kumar at 11.30 am on Wednesday, he’s already scribbled about things he’s seen since stepping out of his AirBnB in the morning. There’s a hilarious anecdote he’s recorded from a journalist friend he was meeting earlier on, who narrated how he had arrived late at an event that VS Naipaul was to speak at, only for the author to storm out of the venue on learning that his name had been misspelled on the invitations. There’s also a sketch Kumar has made of the chauffeur driving him around town on his last day in Mumbai. In the cafe, he’s insatiably curious, whether it’s about our magnetic powerbank, or another patron’s high-tech-looking insulin pump discreetly placed on their leg.
“Life springs everywhere. You have to be alert and catch it on the fly,” says Kumar, “The idea of being a writer is precisely, I feel, to explore and expose.”
A professor of English at New York’s Vassar College, Kumar is ever the teacher, pointing out how great literature often begins as jottings made in writers’ notebooks, from Virginia Woolf to Shiva Naipaul. From his own notebooks, Kumar shares sketches and written accounts from his travels, walks and even visits to prison, where he was teaching a Bachelor’s course in literature to inmates. Throughout the book, he emphasises on the importance of observation, both to be more mindful and also as a crucial skill to become a better writer.
“I passed so many years of my youth when I felt I was not creative, had no sense of direction and was basically wasting my life,” Kumar says, “I didn’t have a language that I could put down in a diary. If I did, then those years of my youth would have had some coherence. They would have had a shape. It’s important to keep a diary so that your days do not blur, are not shapeless, so that they form a story. Otherwise, you will not know what is happening to you. It will be a passive existence. And my job is to rescue every reader of my diaries from such an existence.”
It’s all very well for a celebrated author such as Kumar to record his days that are peppered with meetings and conversations with literary and artistic heavyweights. One day he’s meeting filmmaker Shyam Benegal, on another, he’s corresponding with English novelist Zadie Smith. But what would the rest of us even have to put down in our notebooks from our day-to-day lives?
“It is about attentiveness to all forms of life,” he underlines, “Yesterday, I was walking in Mankhurd and I saw this [holds up a photo of chickens hanging by their feet from the bumper of a mini tempo]. I wondered what would happen to the beaks of the birds when the van moved. Not that they were headed for an any easier fate at the end of their journey.”
It turned out that the chickens had already reached their destination —a hotel kitchen to which they would be taken momentarily. “The hotel workers came and took them inside for what could be described as either a better or a worse fate,” Kumar adds wryly.
This focus on bearing witness to all lives, and all that life is, comes through again in the chapter All That Breathes. Kumar writes about a 2022 docu-film of the same title, which tracks brothers Saud and Nadeem as they run a rehab centre for injured black kites in New Delhi even as the anti-CAA (Citizen Amendment Act) protests rage on in the backdrop.
Like the film, which is inherently political but doesn’t overplay that card, Kumar’s own conscience is a gentle but constant voice through the book. “I’m trying to journal everything I can in order to say that I was here and, in some ways, not to forget what’s happening in the world,” adds Kumar, who has also devoted chapters to Gaza, climate change, rising communalism in the nation and other issues.
Politics and civic awareness forms a large part of the next project that Kumar is working on: “I’m working on a non-fiction project. Many years ago, VS Naipaul had started a project in Bombay, which turned into a book called A Million Mutinies Now. Three decades have passed since then. Where is India now? I thought, I should take the temperature of the country again, in my own way.”
As for The Green Book, were there no apprehensions at all about opening up his diaries for the world to read? “I have no worries about myself. But do I worry that I may be exposing someone else? Yes, I do. For example, I end the book by mentioning a writer friend of mine who lost a child. I wrote her a note to tell her what I was doing,” he recalls, adding that there were no objections from the friend to the anonymous mention.
An unchanging mantra Kumar always offers his students is to write 150 words and walk mindfully for at least 10 minutes each day. “Walking and using public transport are ways of reclaiming space and promoting a healthier, more creative lifestyle. My best ideas come when I’m walking. It’s a meditative practice,” Kumar says.
Of course, his walks in Mumbai have been quite different from his regular strolls in the leafy suburbs of Poughkeepsie, NY. “Yesterday, I was in noisy, dusty Mankhurd, where the area under a flyover had been converted to a park with exercise machines and a walking track. I thought that was a great thing to have done. But I did feel bad for those who were energetically walking there, amid so much pollution, dust and smoke.
“One would likely feel more meditative by walking in a forest or park. But I wouldn’t want to say that life can’t be observed in urban spaces. For example, on the other side of the flyover, I saw a woman squatting beside a small shrine, lighting diyas and making an offering of marigold. This is also life; there are things to observe everywhere,” he says.
Tebay, Cumbria: We have 13 new cows to keep indoors, and no running water. It is, at least, a distraction from the budget, which was the last straw for many farmers
I have to keep shaking my hands to stop my fingers from freezing as I fill more buckets with water. I have nine of them in the back of my Gator four-wheel-drive vehicle, filled from the one outside tap that is working, which I then drive across the yard to put into the water troughs. This is the second day without running water in the farm buildings, and it is hard work.
I recently bought 13 young heifers and bullocks from the Galloway Cattle Society sale at Carlisle, and from two local farmers who are breeders. As these cows are new to the farm, they are kept indoors for the first couple of weeks for biosecurity. Unfortunately, this has coincided with a very cold snap, and no running water. It is amazing how much water 13 cows can drink in a day. The fact that they are eating hay indoors and not grass outside will also make them thirsty.
Cows at the Galloway Cattle Society sale. Photograph: Andrea Meanwell
It has been a troubling time on our small hill farm. The younger generation recently went down to London for the farmer protests. They are very concerned about the future of upland farming, as well as the issue of inheritance tax, which my son says was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
Farms in the area have been plunged into uncertainty by the chancellor’s budget, with the sudden and large reduction of the basic payment scheme, which was quicker than we were expecting, and the delays to environmental stewardship schemes. Our application for the sustainable farming incentive (SFI) was submitted on 4 August but the system is still “checking application” so we still don’t know whether we will be accepted. All this ultimately means not just difficulty in planning, but a reduction in revenue, and it is very hard to make any money from upland farming.
Today, however, there is no time to worry about schemes, payments or taxes. The animals must be cared for in this extreme cold snap, and fires must be kept burning in the house to keep it warm. There is a woodburner in either end of the house, the middle rooms are Baltic but the end rooms near the fire are cosy. Thank goodness we have a bedroom above one of the fires. Wet gloves and frozen hats and scarves are hung above the fire to warm up for the morning.
"Hello! I said to myself today that if I do five handstands and flip over it will be an excellent year and I did!” Thus, unceremoniously, began the 41-volume (and counting) story of my life. It was 1984 and I was 14, fumbling through adolescence in a scarlet beret. My likes, according to a list on the front page, included jacket potatoes and graveyards. My new year resolutions were to “see how long I can go without cake” and “improve my character.”
I haven’t missed a day’s entry since that 1 January. My past crams two bookshelves in rows of page-a-day journals. It’s startling how little four decades seems when it’s represented by slim, stacked spines.
I have little idea of the tales they tell. Most of the entries have lain unread since I wrote them. Yet every morning, I hunt down my fountain pen (life must be recorded in a pen that takes itself seriously!) and write up the previous day. If ever I were to miss one, it would seem it had never happened; if my diaries were lost, I’d feel my foundations had buckled. Journaling is a chore and a panacea, and yet I still can’t fathom why I do it.
There are many reasons, according to Fiona Courage, director of the Mass Observation Archive that collects personal records of everyday life in the UK. “Some people want to leave something of themselves to posterity,” she says. “Some find it therapeutic. Virginia Woolf’s diaries were a way of practising her writing.” Courage says that the habit soared during the Covid lockdowns as people realised that they were living through history. “Diaries give you the ability to distil your experiences and make sense of them,” she says. “For historians they are priceless as they record social trends, layers and details that wouldn’t make it into the history books. They plug a gap in the everyday.”
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote diaries to practise her writing. Photograph: Alamy
I had no inkling of what I’d started when I recorded that first New Year’s Day. My mother, a local historian, had nagged me for years to keep a diary so that future generations might learn what a 20th-century teen did for fun and ate for dinner. It was more an urge to write that motivated me to begin. I did not, I had sadly discovered, have a novel in me. There was a point, I like to think, when it dawned on me that life is its own story. A series of chapters, an evolving cast of characters, a thickening plot and an unguessed ending.
Those future generations will have a very misleading idea of the 20th-century teen. Doris Day provided the soundtrack of my youth. My recreation was climbing trees. While classmates danced at discos, I was in bed with Anne of Green Gables. Adolescent passion passed me by entirely. My heart was broken by the deaths of pre-war film stars, announced in lurid felt tip in the page margins, rather than boys.
Over the years, the entries evolved from a record of school lessons and domestic routines to confessional and reportage. And I can chart my startled ageing: “I’m much too young to be so old so soon,” I marvelled on my 21st birthday.
On my 30th: “My face is lumpen, my body stale and my hair like tinned sardines. Feel every inch of 30.”
When 40 arrived: “My haemorrhoids are growing and my brain is shrinking. However, I am quite contented to be 40, if a little awed by my antiquity. I have always known that middle age would suit me and feel qualified now to march about in large hats berating miscreants.”
Fiona Courage, director of the Mass Observation Archive, says: ‘Diaries give you the ability to distil your experiences and make sense of them’. Photograph: Roger Holfert/Alamy
Now, when I look back on them, those volumes do read like a story. A chronicled life seems more like a plot with a sense of direction than a puzzle of random events. The darkest times – the night my mother was run over and the long years of her recovery; two unexpected redundancies – are, reading back, no longer isolated intrusions, but part of a developing narrative. I can read the chapters with a God-like omniscience. I’ll know, if I follow that misfit teenager through four years of school, how things turned out. Which hopes came good, which friendships lasted; how, now and then, foes became benefactors.
I could trace how becoming a university sacristan at 20 to please a dishy chaplain began a chain of events that led, seven years later, to my husband. Or, further back, how a crush on my new German teacher at 14 inspired me to study German at university where I encountered that dishy chaplain. I know that the self that celebrated the arrival of 1996 as a sorry singleton (“While the others waltzed, J and I washed up and reflected mournfully on our unloved state. It’s a condition that has landed us the worst bedroom behind the wellington boot depot. No one brings us tea in bed and no one dances to the Pogues with us”) would meet at a ceilidh, before the year was out, the man I was to marry: “I found myself paired with a priest. I was instructed to ‘grab his left’ and do a Doozy Doo. He kept coming back for more, so we ‘stripped the willow’ successfully together and later I found myself contemplating the pros and cons of marriage to a curate.” And I can confirm that five handstands and a flip ensured that 1984 was “not at all bad, despite Orwell’s ominous predictions.”
You pay more attention to the world when you know you’ll be writing it up. I pen character sketches of strangers I meet – a pony-tailed sheet metalworker from Avonmouth who revered Prokofiev, the substantial matron in a waiting room “who described to me her knicker situation”. I want to do justice even to the dullest day because life is a privilege and the mundane of today will be tomorrow’s history.
I recorded my first sight of a mobile phone, wielded from a pulpit as a spiritual aid, in 1985: “‘Can anyone tell me what this is?’ asked Father R, holding up what looked like a bendy grey banana.” In July 1996, I sent my first email “all on my own”: “This,” I marvelled, “could become an addictive device. [My colleague] and I spent the morning pinging simpering messages to each other across the desk like toddlers with toy phones, but they take up to an hour to arrive so I shall still prefer faxes.”
Dear Diary… Anna Tims with her life’s work at her desk. Photograph: Alun Callender/The Observer
In the privacy of a diary, ego can take precedence over world events. Wars raged, governments came and went while I focused on domestic headlines. “Today, I threw out the old Boden catalogue,” began 20 January 2009. “Barack Obama was inaugurated president also, so one had a vague sense of historic-ness as one flossed and hoovered, but the former event seemed to me more significant!”
It’s never too late to start a journal and a life is never too dull to record. As the years pass and memory fades, I find it a comfort to know that I can dip at will into childhood or child-rearing and that milestones are preserved. I imagine my future self in a care home, faculties slipping, reliving my first property purchase: “I examined my feelings at being a flat owner, but it didn’t seem real. I must buy some hyacinths and cats.”
My first date: “I wish I hadn’t said my beer tasted of pus; he must now think I suck boils!”
My first born: “All of a sudden E was holding a large, pink, alert baby of a size quite unfeasible given the manner of exit. It didn’t seem remotely real that this was mine.”
I feel that if I were to read from the first entry to the last, I might find an answer to a question I can’t articulate. But time travel can become unhealthily consuming so I do it sparingly. The past still lives on in those pages and I can feel it closing over me if I linger there.
In lockdown, I read every day of my university years. It was like reading a novel about someone else. I read in suspense of predicaments I no longer recalled and of dramas whose endings I’d forgotten. Unremembered griefs were disinterred; dormant grievances rekindled. Long-lost friends jived to Abba in my student room and long-dead voices spoke again. When I closed the volumes, I emerged blinking into a different century, a different home and a different family and marvelled at the chain of successive days that had brought me here.
But some things are constant. It’s simultaneously reassuring and dispiriting that I remain recognisably the same me from 40 years ago. I continue to transcribe my likes at the front of each diary and jacket potatoes and graveyards reliably top the list. I remain faithful to Doris Day and still wear a red beret.
It’s a weighty business recording a life, yet it’s taught me not to take myself too seriously. When painful moments are written down I can more easily let them go. Seeing life as a story with an unknown number of chapters left to write is both exciting and daunting. My children are already alarmed at the space my life will take up on their shelves when it’s over, but I plan to chronicle the days until I can no longer hold a pen. The only part of the story I’ll never get to write is the ending.
