Personal Blogs

An AI-generated image of the author, using a House Photo of the era, then transposing me to the school buildings. It rained incessantly, and we rarely wore macs. 

Five-Year Diary: Saturday, 21 February, 1976. I didn’t sleep well. There was a boy snoring again (the usual culprit). Someone went into his cubicle and yanked his bedclothes off at one point, but it didn’t make any difference; he carried on as if nothing had happened. Another boy started sleep-talking in the middle of the night, shouting, “Go on! Go on! That’s it!” as though urging someone towards a finish line. Between the two of them, they disturbed my sleep. A light sleeper, I didn't take much to wake me. If I couldn't get to sleep, I'd wander around the house, and in summer, head outside.

This is my 50YON or 'Fifty Years On' project, which could be a fifteen-year task if I see it through to the end. I have a quiet dread about later entries, not least about how much I'll need to redact or leave out, but also about the sheer volume of it. I recall a period when I was spending an hour or two writing my daily diary. The mind boggles. 

Keeping a diary. I started the diary in the middle of January 1975, and wrote for a couple of months, then gave up. I had a Collin's Five Year Diary. I began again in December 1975 and kept going through to March 1976, and then again took a break until the new academic year, my O-Level Year, in September 1976. I then appear to have had a long streak through the rest of 1976 and most of 1977 and 1978. In fact, I kept writing a diary until the early 1990s, at some point in 1980, shifting to an A4 lined notebook.

Three times I dropped the diary format for scrapbook-cum-diary, for a month in September 1978 - filling an entire arch-lever file. I therefore have Mars Bar wrappers, a ticket to the Commodores, that kind of thing. It felt excessive, so I reverted to writing just one page per day, in an A4 notebook. I did an Exchange for a few weeks in Rochefort, France and put everything from that, including photos, into a folder. I also worked a season from late November 1980 to early May 1981 in a French Ski resort - and kept a photo journal. 

Then I stumbled into blogging in 1999 and have been online ever since. To what end? Habit of a lifetime. 

I've been here since 2010; part of my student days with the OU. I'm still learning. Currently completing an Institute of Swimming Senior Club Coach Course. I did an online module on Drugs in Sport the other day. I'm a fan of learning online when it is done properly. Few get it right. The OU does. It has the pedigree. 

'I yearn for a magic camera that can photograph memories.’ Bernard Levin, ‘Enthusiasms.’ 1983.

Mum passed me the paperback version of 1984 when I was on holiday in the south-west of France with my girlfriend. We shared notes. I drew her back then.

Twenty years later, I come across a hardback copy on the shelves of the Abergavenny Arms, Rodmell, and it brought back a flood of memories and further notes on what my enthusiasms were by then.

Prompted by his example, I began compiling my list of enthusiasms—not merely as a catalogue of interests, but as a map of obsessions, fascinations, and recurring passions. Some arrived on impulse, others through work or study, but all have left their mark.

From swimming pools and sailing the British coast to Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Victorian fairytales; from the Sea, Rivers and Castles to Dr Who, Truffaut and Michael Nyman; from war memorials and obscure museums to road signs, roundabouts, and the serendipity of research—I’ve chased these enthusiasms across books, landscapes, screens, and decades.

Twenty years on again, and with a copy of Enthusiasms on its way to be £4 from Abe Books I will be able to indulge further still. This quote already has resonance. 

'I yearn for a magic camera that can photograph memories.’ 

Today we have this magic camera. I use GeniGPT and Adobe Firefly. I write a prompt, often with ChatGPT's help. I may include a photograph or sketch. Not only can I bring memories back to life, but I can also reconstruct moments in vivid dreams with extraordinary accuracy.

This is me, as a young man, next to an E-type Jag I never owned (though my late father had one he very, very rarely took out of the garage). I am outside an imaginary California home visiting my late father. He died in 2001. He never lived in California! But my dream imagined otherwise.

Try it.