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.