Memories of my youth echo to sound of laughter
SOME people have kept diaries to help cope during Covid lockdown. Research suggests it can be psychologically beneficial, calm the mind and relieve stress, not to mention being a contribution to posterity, as long as you don’t mind your daughters laughing their socks off when they find them a lifetime later.
That’s what happened when my daughters read the diaries I kept as a callow youth in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
It’s all very well keeping a record of the Great Fire of London or the Plague like Samuel Pepys, war diaries from the Crimea, or Nelson Mandela’s musings during his years in prison. But mine seemed to be mostly concerned with bouncing from one girlfriend to another in one of those mixed social circles of friends where everybody changed partners on a regular basis. They don’t make riveting reading.
At the time I recognised the frivolity of their content and attempted to beef up my literary contribution by buying a ledger big enough for Scrooge in which to ink more important and portentous thoughts. I named it my Commonplace Book, in emulation of John Milton, Francis Bacon and Mark Twain. As well as being pretentious, this too, was a bit of a flop.
The most interesting entry recorded Albert Finney appearing in a Manchester Theatre in John Osborne’s Luther. I went with my pal Keith and afterwards, full of awe at the play and performance, we went looking for a drink and, as two 20-year-old fresh faced journalists, descended into a long basement bar in Oxford Street, unaware that it was the city’s major gay venue. The looks we got. We did not stay long.
The major issues involved, sadly, did not rate a line in my Commonplace Book. Times were different, well before LGBTQ and equality awareness, and I was still a callow youth.
Since then I’ve had nights out in Shepherd’s Bush with gay friends that really would have made for amusing entries. Perhaps I should make a retrospective visit to my Commonplace Book?
Or burn it to save the embarrassment of posterity?