Caveat: It’s Friday night. There is a large and heady G&T next to the computer. I could get even less coherent than usual. So, I am staying firmly away from deep and meaningful subjects. Anyway, I think we’ve just about done deep and meaningful for this week, don’t you?
So. Does anyone else keep a diary? That should be nice and harmless and on-topic. By diary, or journal, if you prefer, I mean a traditional – I nearly said ‘proper’ – one, on paper, in notebook. Or even, heck, on a hard disk somewhere. Blogs do not count. Oh, well, yes, they DO count, very much. Why am I here? What is this I am wasting booze on, after all? But it is precisely because blogs have a purpose, an intended audience and (a somewhat different thing, this) an actual audience, that they don’t count as diaries. Even the ‘Oopsie LOL’ brigades that litter the blogosphere thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks In Vallombrosa are SHOWING OFF. I know I am.
The sad thing is, I think I show off even in my private diary. I didn’t used to. I reread my adolescent ones recently, and the frank, sad angry blurtage made me feel quite shaken. Hideously embarrassed and longing to give myself a good slap, too, but decidedly shaken. I used to record every mean, sneaking, envious, spiteful and whining thought, every stupid row, every foul-up, every shameful crush, every fumble, zit and tampon. It makes for horrible reading, admittedly, but Lordy, it’s interesting. When did my personal diary become so decorous? Rows (and we do have some humdingers. Doesn’t everyone?) are passed over in a few words or, worse, left out; embarrassment and raging curiously absent. The weather is admittedly beautifully described, the book reviews are good, and the sarcastic remarks on the News of the Day are always amusing. But nothing ever seems to happen to me any more. Not since I left University. Not since I took to living with someone.
Oh.
Well, you see where boozy posting gets you? Sozzled enough to let cats out of bags, too sozzled to work out which cat. Which bag for that matter.
Same thing happened to George Eliot
