I have been reading my own diaries.
I do not mean these pages, but some other, very much older, diaries.
When we went to visit my mother last week it so happened that she has been having a clear out, and amongst her clutter discovered a pile of junk with my name on it.
This turned out to be a collection of ancient writings done by me, in my childhood, which she had kept because of course when you are a parent you are stricken with a vaguely uncomfortable sense of guilt every time you hoof out some smeary painted or handwritten effort created by your offspring. This happens even though you know perfectly well that it displays no evidence whatsoever of hidden genius, will clutter up your drawers for all eternity, and you will never look at it ever again anyway.
My mother displayed all of the above lack of ruthlessness, which she has always managed to facilitate by living in a very large house. If I had treasured all of my own children’s creativity I would have had no room for all the rest of life’s detritus, like spare sheets or bottles of tomato sauce or the trousers that will probably fit me again one day if I manage to lose another couple of stones.
Despite the continued largeness of her house, she had been having a go at getting rid of unwanted junk. This is called Marie Kondo and when you have finished you become joyful and mindful and free and also have room to buy some new trousers which fit you properly.
Hence she had prepared a bag full of ancient clutter to be returned to me, on the off chance that I might have an unoccupied cupboard which I wished to fill with mis-spelled childhood ruminations and improbably optimistic teenage letters.
I suggested that she cut out the middle man and just shove it straight in her dustbin, but Mark said it might be funny, so we took it.
It sat unopened in a corner of the conservatory for a few days, smelling slightly mouldy and making me itch with the contemplation of mites every time I thought about opening it.
In the end I dug it out.
Almost all of it should have been repurposed as firelighters about fifty years ago. There were letters, describing activities of which I had no recollection whatsoever, and might possibly have invented, some juvenile attempts at fiction which were too ghastly to be read past the first paragraph, and some hand drawn pictures betraying even less talent than Roger Poopy might exhibit.
Several of these starred individuals snappily dressed in bell-bottom trousers, the date of their composition being approximately 1972.
I sighed deeply, hoping that my mother had not regretted her lack of storage space for the last half century, and finally lit on a slim little book upon which I had painted the name of my primary school and a smudged coat of arms, above some motto, I forget what, it wasn’t Arbeit Macht Frei, but it was something similar.
I looked up the motto of the primary school now, but it was We Enjoy Learning And Achieving In A Christian Environment, which I didn’t think was terribly catchy, and probably not strictly accurate unless things had changed quite considerably since my own time.
It was a diary.
It was not a personal diary. The school, in 1974, had been having an extension built, and we had been obliged, I recalled, to keep a record of the proceedings.
I opened it with interest.
I am sorry to tell you that no evidence of potential future genius was apparent here either. It appeared that my then eight-year-old self had not been terribly enthralled by the building work, despite the lack of Health and Safety that had led to the Standard Three teacher taking us to wander around the excavations on more than one occasion.
Much of the diary said that there had been Nothing To Report Today, like the radio newsreaders of the nineteen fifties used to do.
I sympathised with this, it is the way I feel when opening these pages sometimes.
Some entries, however, were wonderful.
My very favourite recalled, matter-of-factly, the way the bulldozer had been shoving the soil out of the way when there was a large flash, followed by three smaller flashes, because he had dug through the electricity cable, and the Electricity Board had to come out and fix it.
Then there was the workman who had stuck his mis-spelled tongue out at me, and another one, who when questioned about how long the extension would take to build, said: About three months, blue eyes.
It was the nineteen seventies. The diary recalls that work stopped because steel girders had to be inserted in the floors, but there were none to be had because of the coal shortages.
I read it with great interest, the nineteen seventies suddenly resurrected to brilliant life before my eyes. I wished that my eight-year-old self had been more forthcoming, perhaps I should bear that in mind whilst writing diaries now.
I shall post it off to my old primary school, they might be interested.
I chucked the rest in the dustbin.
I don’t have that much cupboard space.
