Diary Keeping

Wed 2026-02-18

Diaries

There are pictures.... coming soon...¹

What is a diary as a rule?

A document useful to the person who keeps it.

Dull to the contemporary who reads it...

...and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

-Walter Scott

I keep a diary

I like to store memories on paper, for later. Mundane daily life or exciting events.

I started in 1992, my mid-20's but then I let it lapse after a few inconsistent years of intermittent diary writing. Looking back the snatches of life I recorded from those days are (to me) fascinating and I regret not having kept it up.

I started bullet journaling in 2016, a few days before my 50++th++ birthday.

After about a year of this small A6 format bullet-points-with-longer-bits-and sketches-every-now-and-again I started proper daily diary writing later in 2017. Bullet-journaling is still one aspect of my practice, but not for task-management - just for remembering what I did.

I've been at it ever since.

I'll be 60 shortly, so that's coming up to 10 year's worth of life captured, in 45 A-5 sized Volumes (I'm now on Volume 46)

I write short bullet points at the beginning of the day, and add others if necessary at other times. These can be quickly scanned when searching for things at a later data.
I do small sketches (usually pen & ink & watercolour) of little things that will jog my memory later
I write a long-form entry each morning telling the story of the previous day, usually between 2-5 pages, after the bullet-sketch-quick-view page(s)

I stick in ephemera
- cinema tickets
- photographs
- till receipts
- bus tickets
- labels & tags from significant purchases

I write longer angsty brain-dumps on whatever topic is on my mind, to try and think-through something that's bothering me

In more bullet-journal style.....

I keep track of various regular occurrences
I keep track of purchases, online orders etc.
I keep a record of medications and medical treatments and consultations and symptoms
I keep track of the scores of our almost daily chess games.
I note the weather each day.
I track what days I work (I'm self-employed, so it's a bit variable)
if I've walked the dogs
if I got to bed before 11pm.
I track if I cooked tea
if I went swimming
I note the family finances each week
and the electricity meter reading
and heating oil level and when the last delivery was
I note when I last changed the cooker's propane gas bottle,
and when I last had a haircut (in the kitchen, by my own hand, with clippers)
and when the dog last had a haircut (at the groomer's for the sum of £60, every roughly 6 weeks)
I note the deaths of "significant" celebrities

I get through an A5 Leuchtturm hard-back in around 9 weeks.

My motivation?

Everything can be interesting when viewed later, from the future, even my own humdrum life.

I can now look back at almost 10 years of my "middle-age" life, in my 50s.

I know when I first saw frog-spawn each year (it's quite variable), and when I made the Christmas Cake.

When the car broke down, how often I've agitated the septic-tank to break up fat-blockages (yes, indeed, the joys of isolated rural living). I can find that time when we kept pigs, or the dog had a cruciate ligament rupture (and the subsequent repair & recovery).

And there's the strange blank period of a couple of months in mid-2018, when I'd had a heart-attack and I seemed unable to write anything in my diary about it (or anything else). Until I was back to normal again. I think I felt that I would remember everything anyway, without writing it down. I'm glad I did write a quick precis of the events of those weeks, even if it took a few months to get it down on paper.

And Covid-Times.....

I'm inspired by Mass-Observation, the diaries of Alan Bennet, the writings of Simon Garfield, the passionate call-to arms in Irving Finkel's video (see below).

Indexing

In December 2023 Idecided that I need a way of finding old entries/events/facts etc. so I started an Index.... more later in another post...

Influences

Alan Bennet

Writing Home
Keeping on Keeping on
House Arrest

Simon Garfield

Wartime Mass-Observation diary collections
The diary of Jean Lucey Pratt A Notable Woman. Jean was one of the Mass Observation diarists in the Wartime collections above (anonymized as "Maggie Joy Blunt"), but Jean also kept a separate diary covering her whole life, starting in 1925 aged 15 until she died in 1986.

The Great Diary Project

The wonderful Irving Finkel mini lecture on You Tube Rescuing unwanted diaries gives a feel of why I think capturing everyday life, in ordinary peoples' diaries, is important.

The result of Irving's discovery of the importance of diaries is the The Great Diary Project

The Man Who Saves Life Stories

The American Diary Project

There is a similar project in the USA The American Diary Project

Anne Lister

Now well known after the BBC dramatization as "Gentleman Jack" - Anne Lister lived in the 18th Century, was a land-owning woman (unusual) and most famously, gay.

Her diaries were written partly in a "secret" code, to hide the more personal aspects.

They were researched and sections published in 2 volumes by Helena Whitbread.

Wikipedia : Anne Lister

I've read the first volume, and it's a fascinating insight into life in the 1820s - leaving aside the sexual aspects - just the practicalities of life, the leeches and quack medical treatments. The amount of walking needed to get anywhere, the poor diets (even for the wealthy). The physical discomfort tolerated (even by the wealthy).

John Gadd

I recently discovered John Gadd and his diary.

He seems to have kept a very similar style of journal to mine - writing daily in one book storing EVERYTHING, writing, photos, tickets, labels.... and a record of his day, his thoughts and only touching on "world news" if it particularly meant something to him.

He called it his "Omnium Gatherum".

He died aged 90 on 2020, after keeping his diary consistently since 1947, really settling on its eventual format in the early 1970s. His diary was a memory-aid, as is mine, but of course it also captures lots of other things, mundane at the time but over a lifetime the mundane becomes the historical, and illustrate how life changes.

I'd love to see the books and look through the pages, and see how he indexed everything to make it searchable and to find anything within a few minutes.

My Diaries

Book of choice: Leuchtturm1918 A5 Hardback Dot Grid
Pen(s) of choice : Lamy Safari EF nib, TWSBI Eco and Pigma Micron 02
Fountain Pen Inks of choice : Diamine Eau de Nil & Platinum Carbon Black
Watercolours of choice : Winsor & Newton Cotman Sketcher Pocket Set with the China White swapped for some Payne's Grey instead.
Shop of Choice : Cult Pens

Make It Tea