Personal diaries

No, not since I was around 15 and my mother read my diary and tore it up! There was little in it of note, just a silly teenager's thoughts.

Yes I do! I have kept one every day since 1958 and it's the last thing I do at night before going to bed. My problem now is what to do with them all when I am gone. Ideally I would love someone to collate them all into a book but as I am a totally unimportant person with no noteworthy achievements, that's not going to happen. Maybe one of my DGC might turn out to have a literary bent and do it?

I started my daily journal keeping after watching a drama series about Samuel Pepys, the great diarist, on BBC in the 1950s. Peter Sallis (of Last of the Summer Wine fame) played Pepys and I was really fascinated by the domestic details Pepys had recorded.

Maybe someone 300 years hence might be interested in mine too but where to store them until then? I am at a loss and would welcome any suggestions.

I did start one when I left my first ex, but I decided it was much too incriminating so I destroyed it!

There are archives in Sussex University that collate ordinary folks memories. They may very well be interested.

I wish that I had kept one -actually I suppose it is never too late - only I did for a time and found that memory is very selective and that you do not remember things as they really were.

I think whitewave is right. Did Sussex not take over the Mass Observation Unit's archives? I loved the books they produced. What maybe seemed dull to the writer at the time was absolutely fascinating to me. See if Sussex would be interested in your diaries. Who knows they could have a keen PhD student who would love to collate them gagagran? Please give them a go!

Thanks Jane! I might give them a call and enquire.

Same here Charleygirl!

I kept a diary - well hidden - when I was going through a very bad patch with my DH. It served as a vent for my feelings, but when, after a couple of years, I realised that I was still unhappy and upset by the same things and that nothing had changed in our relationship, it was one of the things that prompted me to call it a day on the marriage.

Me too Charleygirl and SlowGinny! Mum sussed out my 'MIBM' code for Mum in Bad Mood! She was an alcoholic, so it appeared almost daily!

Resolved on my 60th birthday ( neatly give years ago now) to keep a daily diary I record everything except appointments etc I find it very therapeutic and interesting to look back on if only to remind myself that what I was worried over then was perhaps a bit of a fuss over nothing.

Try nearly five years ago now

No, and I often wish I had. I used to write diaries in my childhood but they weren't exactly riveting (went to school, did arithmatic and compesition; went to foot clinic for varooca; didn't go to school, had tummy ache; marjorie broke my skipping rope).
In my later teens I used to keep a diary now and again, and wrote lots of stuff in shorthand so my mum and sister wouldn't be able to read it. The annoying thing is I can't read it now .

I did throughout my teenage years, and still have them in the loft. But not since I married.

Never ever kept a diary.

Kept one in around 1959, ran out of juice for it by March, threw it away!

I still have (not sure where though) a diary we had to keep in the 5th form, we filled it in every morning along with drawings during registration. That is good to read, I recorded Churchills death, not sure what year that was.

I kept a diary from age 13 (teenage angst) to 24 (married).
At age 50 I started again and write every night. It's useful to check things but I rarely look back over the piles of blue notebooks.
I don't write anything very intimate and wouldn't much care if anyone read them but they'd soon give up, my life is pretty humdrum.
My mother burnt her many years of diaries, along with her wartime letters from my father but left a couple which I read long after her death. There are fascinating details of her nurse training, her meeting and falling in love with my father, her time in a sanatorium with TB, the start of WW2 , her marriage, life in wartime. Her diaries end during her first pregnancy with twins.
It was funny to see that my mother marked the start of each period with a X, just as I did 25 years later.

One person's humdrum is a vital and lively insight into how things really were.

I've kept a diary on and off since I was about 13. Like Indinana some of mine were written in shorthand. I recently destroyed the diaries that covered my "living in London in the 60's" years as I really didn't want my DC to find out how fickle I had been
I now use an online diary, not sure what I shall do with it in the future

yes I do -It serves for me as a type of life story. I think we all have a responsibility to record our history including our thoughts and feelings. Every life is interesting no matter how you've lived it. I hope my grandchildren's grandchildren will find it interesting one day and beyond. My problem is that it is beginning to resemble War and Peace and that might put them off. Whatever it get's it off my chest and I may enjoy it in later years.

I started a diary when I first started work in Liverpool and left home at the same time. It was early 60's so I wrote about my work, my boyfriends, about seeing the Beatles and other great bands at the Cavern. Then when we married, my DH thought he had the right to read them all and I didn't want him to know about my boyfriends. So he went out one evening and I sat in front of the fire, tearing up my diaries and burning them.
I would give anything now to have them back.....

Oooh mrsmopp !

Oh, that's a shame mrsmopp.

Thanks for your replies.

I have a good few years worth of diaries but they only have appointments and basic ' what am I doing today' information.

I am now 61 had for some reason I feel I would like to write a proper diary , putting in thoughts and feelings as well as trivia and every day observations. Part of my problem in doing this is that although I have all the words in my head I can't seem to put it down on paper in the way I want. Not sure if you know what I mean.

I suppose I am also a little reticent because maybe I would write some things that I wouldn't want others to read at some point in the future when I am not around.

Will think about it for a bit longer.

I'm almost exactly the same, Ginny. Apart from wanting to keep a diary of present events, I thought I could write down one memory from the past each day, too. It's getting started that is holding me up!

Also I want to get into the habit of writing obvious stuff down. My mother is getting a bit forgetful and she really could help herself a lot by writing more things down. Desptie this, she manages brilliantly - never misses a hairdresser's appointment, for example, and manages to catch the bus into town when she needs to. But sometimes it would help if she wrote things down. Not only herself, but other people, too. I phone her every night and we have the same conversation each time!