please empty your brain below
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Happy New Year Samuel, sorry DG! Here's to 2017 and your fascinating daily blog.
Sara | 01.01.17 - 7:43 a.m. | #
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I wrote a diary from 1958 until 1963, then for some reason there was a gap until 1985-1989. Then I stopped writing them, maybe a good time to start again.
I still have the old ones.
Happy New Year.
John | 01.01.17 - 8:13 a.m. | #
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Many thanks for your informative and interesting takes on the Capital City. As a Londoner who has not lived there for many years I am entertained and informed by your blog. I have never read one yet that I have not enjoyed. The lost rivers of London remain a particular favorite. Very best wishes. Danny
Daniel Rust | Homepage | 01.01.17 - 8:14 a.m. | #
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That is seriously impressive. Out of interest, do you now keep the parts of the diary that overlap with blog topics much shorter and cross reference? Thanks again for a wonderful 2016 of articles.
Peter of London | 01.01.17 - 8:26 a.m. | #
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I take my hat off to you. I have never managed to write every day for more than a few months. I have detailed diaries from various times in my life, for example, the year I ran the London Marathon for the first time (that was 1987), and sometimes when I am travelling to interesting places. But what I do now for general record is this. I wrote a program which makes a file of a year, with family birthdays and ages and other significant dates included; I write appointments in this file, and afterwards I write a brief account of what happened if it warrants it. Also I write about things that just happened. So nothing like a "proper" diary, but it has some account of where I stayed or ate or walked.
Peter Cameron | Homepage | 01.01.17 - 9:20 a.m. | #
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I'm dead jealous that you are able to use this life archive to pinpoint what happened and where on any given day.
I'd love to be able to do that too - especially as each year passes the clarity of my memory is not what it was - but that said, you've nailed it with "..you really only have time to write a regular diary when your life isn't quite full enough to be worth regularly writing about".
Frank F | 01.01.17 - 9:26 a.m. | #
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I have diaries going back to 6th Form in 1976. They list appointments and events, with only very occasional comments. The random pocket diaries were succeeded by Filofax pages in the 80s/90s and then Windows print outs with home and work events in different colours. Free diaries from Knitting Magazines were added to record my productive efforts and the kitchen calendar took over for events, once I stopped working. My daughter now gives me a small diary each year which I use for Reading Group planning and a few random events. Each New Years' Day, I put the old calendar's events into the old diary, file it and then start the sequence again.
Your blog provides another diary for us all, thanks again for your creativity and diligence.
RosemaryT | 01.01.17 - 9:52 a.m. | #
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Maintaining a diary for 40 continuous years, with the final 14 paralleling an *internationally-known* blog, is probably a feat equivalent to something letting the author win the Nobel Prize of Literature.
Patrickov | 01.01.17 - 12:15 p.m. | #
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Sara stole the exact comment I was going to make. Bugger.
Antipodean | 01.01.17 - 12:18 p.m. | #
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Just in case anyone conjectures, like I did, that Sara has somehow stumbled on DG's well-kept secret of a name, I would like to draw extra attention to the very first clickable link in the piece, which may advise them otherwise.
Although I respect anyone's preference for privacy, I think it is a shame that such a record should die with its creator. Whatever afterlife anyone is expecting (or not), it is unlikely to be troubled by any embarrassment at having hitherto private thoughts and deeds revealed.
Oh yes, well done DG for the 40 year achievement, and thanks for telling us about it. And a happy new year to all - to echo a common theme - may it be less awful than we may be expecting.
Malcolm | 01.01.17 - 12:40 p.m. | #
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What is paper?
Kirk | 01.01.17 - 12:47 p.m. | #
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Paper, it turns out, is a legacy recording medium that's still readable 40 years later.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 01.01.17 - 12:51 p.m. | #
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Surely if you "plan to safeguard it" one should a) keep it somewhere safe (i.e water/fire resistant/proof) & b) start making a digital copy?
Grumpy Anon | 01.01.17 - 1:13 p.m. | #
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We would all like a Pepys at DG's diary; wink.
Half a physicist | 01.01.17 - 1:13 p.m. | #
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I began a 'diary' as a London Sixties schoolkid, mostly tv seen instead of doing homework.
That became records of work, shifts and locations, and a separate Flight Log for my cheap and free travel (airline staff). On leaving the travel trades in 1982, I began a proper 'Journal', to note my life-changes, having given up the 'employer for life'.
From then, I too have never missed a day (even if written 'later'), but as it's on paper, I need the DATE to re-see those experiences, and wonder what I was taking when I wrote it, other than self-aggrandising.
I now have sometimes barely readable cubic metres of paper, of people I've forgotten, places I can't remember, and events I'm convinced I was never at...
Joel | 01.01.17 - 2:10 p.m. | #
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The most durable way of deliberately recording information would seem to be by carving notches in bone - one such record is dated to about 30000 years ago. Of course, this would only work for a diary if the text were encoded digitally, and I'm not confident that Unicode will be properly recognised that far into the future.
Malcolm | 01.01.17 - 2:44 p.m. | #
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The Colonel Loftus referred to was the first headmaster of Barking Abbey Grammar School. He was long gone by the time I got there, 1967, but there was a bust of him in the entrance lobby.
He is much mentioned by (very) Old Barkabbeyans.
Victor Vectis | 01.01.17 - 3:00 p.m. | #
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I started with an A5 one featuring Disney's Aristocats in 1970 when I was 7, and had a selection of those little Letts diaries during my childhood, but never got further than February or March before giving up.
Started up again in 1981 with a Fab 208 magazine one - like an annual, but with daily boxes to fill in, which I diligently did. But then came uni and work, so it all stopped again until 1993 when I got married.
Since then I've kept a weekly journal, rather than a daily diary, and if nothing else it's been helpful for when I'm asked a question by the husband and can refer back to it for the answer!
Cornish Cockney | 01.01.17 - 3:17 p.m. | #
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When I'm travelling I try to keep a sort of diary, using an oldfashioned method called pen and paper. Otherwise I only write a diary when I'm unhappily in love, and I make sure those diaries are thoroughly destroyed later!
Leuconoe | 01.01.17 - 3:58 p.m. | #
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I was once informed by someone who claimed to have read your diary that the code wasn't that secret/difficult. However, for reasons that we both know only too well, it is hard to know whether that is true or not...
Happy New Year!
Blue Witch | Homepage | 01.01.17 - 4:19 p.m. | #
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A writer writes. Impossible not to. Your dedication to the craft is what makes your blog so very good. Forty years as a diarist is an amazing achievement. Congratulations.
Mary | 01.01.17 - 4:53 p.m. | #
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@Victor Vectis: I knew I recognised the name Colonel Loftus ! 'Grammar' had changed to 'Comprehensive' by the time I got there, six years after you...
Paul | 01.01.17 - 5:20 p.m. | #
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We are all beneficiaries of your flair for perseverance, among your many other talents, DG. Thank you for 366 days of blogging in 2016. I hope you are still going strong when the next leap year arrives in 2020!
Geraldine49 | 01.01.17 - 7:44 p.m. | #
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Happy New Year DG, and many thanks for the hours of enjoyment you give me reading the blog.
As to diaries, I am seriously impressed. I tried once or twice and don't think I got beyond a week. I'm just not the sort of person to keep a diary and, given the twists and turns of my life, it's probably best that chunks can be forgotten.
Here's to a good year ahead.
Caz | 01.01.17 - 7:49 p.m. | #
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Have a very Happy New Year!
By curious sychronicity, there is an article in today's Times about the loss and finding of a personal and precious diary. There's no point in posting a link, because of the Murdoch firewall, but I read it on the Twitter feed of the writer, Sarfraz Manzoor.
bob L-S | 01.01.17 - 8:29 p.m. | #
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Eight Bibles' worth of ordinary paper - that's pretty weighty. DG will need all his physical strength as he flees his burning flat.
Great Aunt Annie | 01.01.17 - 11:29 p.m. | #
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Performing the arithmetic: in very rough terms, that's about twenty minutes a day to write about 500 words a day. That's hugely impressive speed on top of the dedication and consistency!
For the last year and a day, I've been keeping a text file with a single line daily about something good that happened that day. You sometimes see suggestions of "if you want to improve your mood, write down one good thing that happened to you that day on a tiny slip of paper, screw the paper up and put it in a pot for a happy lucky dip later". This is my version.
Practiced gratitude surely can't hurt mental health, and the bar is very low: daily entries can be a single tasty thing eaten, a single web page or TV show that made me smile, or a single good thing that happened at work. For instance, the 1st of January's was that I dealt well with cycling through hard rain to and back from work, then that I fell asleep after the day shift as early as I ever have done, just because I needed it.
And so I'm going back to sleep now.
Chris | Homepage | 02.01.17 - 2:03 a.m. | #
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I admire your diligence. 40 years of consistently writing a diary is a feat when you consider how much we rely on everything being instant and "snappy" in how we communicate and do things these days. Writing decent prose twice a day every day (diary and blog) must almost rank as an endangered activity.
I'd love to delude myself that I could find the dedication to write a diary but, like many, I've tried in the past and failed. Nowadays not much happens to warrant me scribbling in a diary anyway.
PC | 02.01.17 - 3:51 p.m. | #
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"And it's all for personal consumption only. I have no eye on publication or posterity, so there are a few frank and honest chunks I hope nobody else ever reads. "
That's the sort of stuff that makes a diary a valuable insight into life for the generations to come, increasing the likelihood of publication and being read by loads of people.
That's the bad news. The good news is that, if your remain single (and virtuous :) ) then you'll have no offspring that will end up being embarrassed by your dirty little secrets!!
Happy New Year from this long time lurker.
Gary Denness | Homepage | 02.01.17 - 8:07 p.m. | #
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30 years writing and still going, there's nothing like the joy of writing that first entry on the 1st - the only problem is, I've no idea where I've put the shoebox that contains the first two decades!
| 09.01.17 - 12:47 p.m. | #
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It's a bit scary, searching for this post and then finding out that your post from the 1st of January, 2007 is (almost) the same as this one. I wonder if anyone but me has already noticed this
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.de/2007/01/diary-geezer.html
Simon Hellinger | 23.06.17 - 10:18 a.m. | #
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Look out for it again in 2027 :)
diamond geezer | Homepage | 23.06.17 - 10:24 a.m. | #
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