I keep a daily diary. It’s a small one that slips into my pocket and holds 3 days on each right-hand page and four on the left. I don’t really know why the manufacturer thinks my life at the weekends are less interesting but the space for Saturday and Sunday is half that of a normal day.
Memory Triggers
The diary is my memory of that day and consists of about 100 words and without those words scribbled down in about a minute I will have lost, forever, that day by the middle of the next week. If something amazing happens and requires more space I commandeer some page at the back of the diary and write as much as is needed.
The 100 words consist of keywords and phrases that within seconds retrieve from my brain the more detailed memories of that day. Look, I’ll give you an example.
“Take a day, any day from 2018.”
“OK it’s 26Th August”
“Right then, this is the entry for that day in my diary, scouts honour…..”
“Rise and make her sandwich lunch and wave her off to work while I take to my heels and walk to the island and back, ringing her as I walk. I also ring an old workmate from a company I left earlier in the year and find out that another close workmate XXXXX of ours has bowel cancer and has gone on sick leave with 6 weeks of chemotherapy to look forward to. I return to work on a legal case that requires 30 years of my life to be revisited and documented. She returns exhausted at 6.30pm and both early to bed.”
Now reading these 104 words have indeed brought the day back to me.
The most important happening of that day was the news of XXXXX with whom I worked for 4 years until May 18. We sat facing each other for the last 5 months and I regularly reduced him to tears, of laughter. I was invariably the last one in each morning and wore an array of coats to amuse, him in particular. One day I arrived in dark glasses, a long black leather coat, matching gloves and man bag. “The Matrix ” look, I thought but most people thought of "Herr Flick" of the TV sitcom “Hello Hello”. The next morning I wore my brown bomber jacket with white fluffy collar and cufflinks. “Hello Binky” XXXXX chimed out as I reached my desk. “Encounter any flack over the channel?”
Right now I confess haven’t thought of XXXXX for months. I did give him a call a few days after that diary entry and he sounded his usual self but truly I have neglected to call again to see how he was. I’ll do that soon. Time just flies by.
I remember the walk too, such a fine day and a fine summer too. And yes for many months I made her lunch box of sandwiches, yoghurt drinks and sliced of fruit. It got to the point that her workmates began to ask, jealousy, what was in her box today! I bet they began to give their husbands grief about not making their lunch up for them!
Time travel
The Diary is a permanent memory box you can refer to when the human memory box lets you down. The older I have got the more frequently this happens. I now have 20 years of small diaries and I often sit down and say “What were we up to on today, 4th January in 2000, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2013? Together we’d sit and find what country we were in, what was going on in our lives about that time and what we did that very day in each of those years. It’s fun to travel in time and relive those bygone days.
Life too boring to record?
You may think that you don’t need a diary to record your life. I mean, who really gives a damn about your life? And even if the only ever reader is you why bother? Most days are the same….. got up, went to work, came home, TV and bed. But you know, even as you are thinking this, you realise that your days are more interesting and complex that you are admitting to yourself. Each day contains events, challenges, interaction with others, moments of comedy, drama and tension. On top of that there are the events going on in the world that day, world news items and for friends and family that are worth recording.
Then there are the medical, dental and other appointments that you/ family attended. Always worth knowing the last time you had treatment and what it was for.
Diaries are good for not missing birthdays and anniversaries.
Diary of 2018
I’m looking sadly at the 2018 diary as it is now complete and I won’t be reaching for it anymore. It’s been an almost daily companion over the past year. “Almost” as there were days when I flicked it open and found 3 or more days blank! Faced with so many blank days my first reaction is panic but the secret is to start on the most recent day and work backwards. Gradually as I wrote the day’s activities came flooding back to me. Just occasionally do I have to leave the day blank, gone and lost forever.
It will join the shoebox with its other 19 predecessors.
The Future for Diaries
Looking to the future I see the future diary as an electronic record of life. I have started to migrate data from the hard copy diaries onto Microsoft Excel where I can filter and search for keywords and events with absolute confidence that I will find them. Speed reading 20 years of diaries in search of anything is an arduous exercise but you know there is a comfort in knowing that if the laptop fails or the internet goes down I can reach under the bed and retrieve the shoebox.
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