Why not keep diary? Here's mine from 60 years ago!
I keep a diary and I have done since 1959. I don’t often look back at my old diaries, but I am an enthusiastic reader of the diaries of others. My five favourite diarists are (probably) Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Noël Coward, Harold Nicolson and Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon. In his diary, Channon remarked: ‘What is more dull than a discreet diary? One might as well have a discreet soul.’
‘I wonder why I do it?’ Virginia Woolf asked herself in her diary. Tony Benn told me he kept a diary because it enabled him to experience everything three times – once as it happened; again, when he wrote it up; and once more when he re-read it later.
I keep a diary because I quite like talking to myself. I think, too, that writing it makes me more aware of what is happening to me and what’s happening in the world. James Boswell, Dr Johnson’s great biographer, admitted that he kept his journal with immortality in mind. ‘My wife, who does not like journalizing, said it was leaving myself embowelled to posterity,’ he said, ‘but I think it is rather leaving myself embalmed. It is certainly preserving myself.’
I’ve preserved my diary for more than sixty years. I now encourage my grandchildren to keep diaries, too. 1st January is a good day to start your diary – and you don’t need to write much. Today, for example, I might write a line about life in Tier 4 and the pandemic; a line about the first proper day after Brexit; a bit about breakfast in bed (a New Year treat: toast with cheese and Marmite) and about our morning walk around the streets near where we live in south-west London (we managed 5,000 steps and then it began to snow) . . . oh yes, and I popped up on Iain Dale’s LBC radio show this morning, too – and when Iain asked for my predictions for 2021 I said I predicted the pundits would miss Donald Trump (they will – whatever you may think of him, he’s been fabulous copy) and I predicted, too, that by next Christmas we’d be going to the cinema to see the first Covid rom-com . . .
Suddenly I’m realising it’s been a busier day than I remembered: I delivered the MS of my new book to my publisher today! 150,000 words done and dusted. I finished the revisions yesterday, but I felt 1 January was a more auspicious day on which to ping it over to him. (I’d better start another book now. I have an idea . . .)
But back to today’s diary: there’s more. With lunch today we watched the 1947 film black and white version of Nicholas Nickleby – it’s so good: Derek Bond, Cedric Harwicke, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Fletcher, Sibyl Thorndike, and Bernard Miles among others. And speaking of Bernard Miles, by happy coincidence, he featured in my diary sixty years ago today.
Here’s some of my diary from January 1960. It doesn’t amount to much – but I was only twelve. I lived with my parents and sisters and brother in a flat in Earl’s Court. I will have to add footnotes to explain who everybody is and what’s going on, but my diary isn’t really the point of this blog. The point is: why don’t you keep a diary this year? Go on, give it a go. You’ll be pleased to have it there to look back on in a few years.
Friday, 1 January 1960
New Year’s Day. Bank Holiday in Scotland. Annual Motor Licences renewable
Pa broadcasting on BBC Network 3, Motoring and the Motorist.[1] Get present for [my sister] Hester. For a New Year gift I was given a record, High Society, 33 1/3 rpm. Yesterday I went to the Mermaid Theatre for Treasure Island starring Bernard Miles as Long John Silver. Really good. Happy New Year!
Sunday, 3 January 1960
Carol service at St Stephen’s.[2] I had a reading, Genesis chapter 3, verses 8 to 15. It wasn’t easy because the word ‘bruise’ was in the last sentence TWICE and I say ‘bwuise’ when I want to say ‘bruise’. Never mind. T. S. Eliot was there and told me that I read very well![3] I told him that I am going to learn his poem ‘Macavity the Mystery Cat’ by heart. He was pleased. He put his hand on my head. I like him and he likes me.
Sunday, 10 January 1960
Go to evensong and benediction at St Stephen’s. Server and boat boy. Good things this week:
1. Went with Hester to the Schoolboys’ Own Exhibition. Very good.
2. Went with Foss [friend from school] to see The Hostage by Brendan Behan.
3. Went with Foss to see the film of Gigi. Very, very good.
4. Went swimming with Ma at Fulham Baths. She didn’t swim.
5. Went with Pa to the Harrods Sale. Pa bought a suit. We saw Randolph Churchill[4] in the street. I am collecting famous people – Charles de Gaulle, John Masefield, etc.[5] Who next?
Sunday, 17 January 1960
Was feeling poorly, but served at evensong and benediction. (The smell of the incense made me feel better.) On Friday I ran to Gapps [the local grocery store] and back in three minutes. Pa was on the radio at 7.30 p.m. and 9.00 p.m. Yesterday went to see Dick Whittington at Streatham Hill. V good show. Back to school on Tuesday.
Thursday, 21 January 1960
Played my first game of rugger. It was quite fun but rather cold. Read Miranda in the Art Room. It is a play about a man who meets a mermaid on the Thames embankment and falls in love with her. Very good.
Saturday, 30 January 1960
Had first ’cello lesson with Mr Reid. Not very good. He is old and serious. He wears a wig. You can see that it’s a wig because of the very clear parting right down the middle. It looks as if it is going to fall off.
Footnotes
[1] My father was legal adviser to the Automobile Association and a regular broadcaster on motoring law.
[2] I was a server and altar boy at the High Anglican church, St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road, and a chorister at Holy Trinity, Brompton.
[3] Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), poet and playwright, was a sidesman and regular worshipper at St Stephen’s.
[4] Randolph Churchill (1911-68), journalist son of Sir Winston Churchill.
[5] President de Gaulle (1890-1970) visited the French Lycée, when I was a pupil there, and John Masefield (1878-1967), Poet Laureate, was a worshipper at St Stephen’s.