It’s New Year’s Day, and I have to say, weather-wise, it is a dismal start to 2017. I ventured out this morning to feed the bunnies and chickens and it was very, yucky is probably the best way of putting it. We have tarpaulin tent constructed over the two chick runs to protect them from the current outbreak of bird flu and the wind was howling through it and billowing it out like a windsock. Emma is also still with cold and so we retreated back to our chairs either side of the artificial fire within the 1930s fireplace to read and enjoy the room still dressed for the days of Christmas.
I’m currently reading Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories – it’s been woefully languishing, started, on my To Read pile since 1995. There is something very comforting in these days at the end of the long Christmas break (for me, who finished work last year on 9 December, an extended long Christmas break) that allows for just sitting in one’s lounge with the Christmas tree and music on the stereo, reading.
Next to a good story, this is the perfect time of year to be reading someone’s diaries too. Last night I spent some very enjoyable hours going through my #100HappyDays photos from the last year in order to put together a video review of the year. The act of doing this brought back so many nice memories. Reading the Bennett diaries has a similar effect – particularly reading these one’s which are smack in the middle of my lifetime to date, but still memories of some 20 years ago.
From 2003 to 2009 I kept a diary pretty religiously and it has been nice to go back and look back on, but since then the more ephemeral Facebook and Twitter updates have taken over – or latterly Instagram photos – as the the primary record of my life and its not the same. This is not to say that my life is of interest to anyone. I don’t write posts with the expectation that people will want to read them, much less be interested in them. But looking back on them? They are of interest to Me, and that is why I write them.
In the same way that I spent hours yesterday going back on the last year’s happy days photos, I am going to find some way of converting six year’s of ephemeral social networking activity into something, well, less ephemeral. And I am going to take today as a marker to write in these pages again, so that in 365 days time I spend some time going back and looking back on my life as it had played out.