Diaries

I spend a lot of time finding things other than those I’m looking for.  So it was that, yesterday afternoon, I discovered that from 1959 to 1962, I had kept a diary.  I’d pretty much forgotten this.  It came about, I now remembered, because late in 1958, my father, who could be quite inscrutable, casually handed me one, with the words “Thought you might want one of these”.  It was a palm-sized week-to-view, published, I found, by The General Electric Co. Ltd. Of England, obviously a free handout at his work.  Each day’s space was about three inches by one. 

I must have been fairly suggestible and literal-minded, because I immediately concluded that I should use this gift to record my day-to-day life, rather than to note forthcoming events and appointments, which was probably my father’s intent.  It obviously didn’t occur to me that perhaps a larger format might have been more appropriate for this purpose.  I just started writing things down, within each day’s little box, as they happened.  There was no room for reflection or introspection, except in the sparsest form. 

Well, you can guess how I spent my afternoon yesterday.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to quote extensively – that will have to wait for when my archives are donated to the nation after my passing.  Nor am I going to draw any profound life lessons from the contents, except, perhaps, to note that I seemingly found it difficult to distinguish one girl from another on a weekly basis (apart from two or three, who seem to recur at varying intervals over the whole four years).

Oh, all right.  At random [there is a ‘notes’ box at the end of each week]:

‘Sunday 13 March 1960: Read morn.  Rolled lawn, 5/-.  Group practice after at Tony’s.  Not much good.  Vic didn’t turn up.  La Fiesta [local coffee bar] eve.  Saw Bobbie.  Walk with her.  Cliffs.  Wow!  Back to La F then home.

NOTES: I think I’ll go out with her.’

And, by contrast:

‘Wednesday 4 October 1961: Did nothing all day and eve.’

But here’s the important bit.  After I went to University in Leeds in 1960, I began to go to the pictures quite frequently.  There was a fleapit across the road from the digs in Harehills, and students could get in cheap to the city centre cinemas in the afternoon (ninepence, I think).  And I tended to note the films I saw in the diary.  This isn’t by any means the full list, but I think it’s quite interesting.

Psycho

The Greengage Summer

L’Avventura

Taste of Fear

The Guns of Navarone

East of Eden

La Dolce Vita

Spartacus

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

The Innocents

A Kind of Loving

Last Year at Marienbad

West Side Story

Fall of the House of Usher

The Alamo 

By the way, can you spot the odd one out?