I’m thinking of asking one or two of my younger sister’s more grown-up friends to my party. Have in mind a girl from Gateshead. Write up bits and pieces of my diary that I can remember. By (sic) two great Top of the Pops records and two new typewriter ribbons. I do quite a bit of typing. S turns up first, five minutes late. S brings friend J. I liked her, and I immediately took action, giving her food and offering her a drink. D gets her eyes.
Expanding on this …
KAI: This is a terrific little fossil of a day. Not because it’s polished—it isn’t—but because it’s functional. It does what a 14-year-old diary is meant to do: pin down desire, social anxiety, and agency with minimal tools and no hindsight.
At 14, this diary isn’t literature. It’s an operating system log. Short lines. No connective tissue. No explanation of motive. Names dropped like coordinates. The boy assumes the future reader will remember everything. He’s wrong—but understandably so.
Q1: Notice how many sentences begin with “I”. Where does he not bother to explain himself because he thinks intention is obvious?
He’s struggling to understand how ideas form, how to prioritise them and what matters most. The goal is a girlfriend, whatever that may mean to him. Perhaps he’s simply after a buddy, like a best friend. He doesn’t trust boys because he has an older brother, and he’s wary of boys at his all male boarding school. They’re always competing, he feels to get higher up the pecking order.
He’s becoming aware of the fallibility of memory; how writing up the events of a day requires him to recall what happened. He writes before he thinks and can fill up the allotted lines revealing little of importance. He doesn’t have the vocabulary to express himself. Even fifty years on I know what he wanted to say.
Q2: Where does he compress whole emotional arcs into a single phrase (“went into action”)? What actions does that phrase quietly contain?
Here is an example of how what he writes conjures up a false impression of how he was thinking and behaving. He wasn’t a soldier ‘going into action’ but this language, reminiscent of games in the woods against opposing sides, or Cadets, or just formal competitive team sports. As he is on a mission. Intuitively he sees that as the host he has an excuse to interact with her by offering her snacks or a drink. He knows too that he should be worried if her gaze is for another boy. He’s seen films like Romeo & Juliet, he has an idea of what romantic love should look like. What he’d know as the ‘meet cute’ decades later.
Q3: Which details are precise (lateness by five minutes, number of records, ribbons) and which are vague (“bits and pieces”)? What does that say about what mattered?
He doesn’t make an easy plan, or jot down bullet points before writing his diary; he just dives in and sees where it takes him. To plan a diary entry to his way of thinking would be to make the enterprise like homework; he wanted it to be spontaneous, to see what he’d come up with.
Q4: Look at spelling and syntax without correcting them. What freedoms does poor spelling give him? What does it let him avoid?
He expected to be reading the entry to Monday 29th December 1975 the following year. He could see the spaces in his Five Year Diary for entries for the same day when he’d be 15, 16, 17 and 18. He was writing for this reader alone. He didn’t have to worry about spelling, so long as he understood what he had written, he didn’t have to write well if it was enough to evoke the moment. What I know is that he was still writing this diary in 1981, and 1982 and onwards to the day he got married on Saturday 29th December 1993 and that I am writing this on the day of my 32nd Wedding Anniversary.
No one but me would ever read, and has ever read this diary.
Q5: Prompts about what he thinks a diary is for. This boy is not confessing. He’s inventorying. Is this diary for memory, proof, rehearsal, or self-coaching?
He has a state aim to record the transition from boy to man, the fact that he kept on writing until he got married implies he had doubts about when manhood occurred. In my sixties I believe I am still too boy like at times to call a man. It works as memory as no matter how cryptically I write I can usually summon up significant parts of an individual day vividly. It may be proof – that I once existed. I could never have been self-coaching; that would have needed pages, not just a few lines.
Which lines feel like notes to his future self rather than a record of the day?
Anything that is unwittingly humorous. J is 12 and 2 months old! And I’m thinking at 14 that some of her friends might be a bit more grown up! It’s charming that a boy of 14 who looks 12, can think he’s in any way ‘grown up’ and that girls like S and J are at 14 are young adults who might flirt, and have a boyfriend and go on dates.
Q6: Where does he seem to be practising adulthood—hosting, buying things, providing food—rather than describing feelings?
He’s experienced adult parties all his life. In the ‘adult sitting room’ where his parents once hosted cocktail parties, bridge parties and dinner parties. Always men and women as couples. Always nibbles, drinks, music and conversation.
Why does he list purchases alongside people? What do records, ribbons, and girls have in common for him?
Any purchase was just an asset alongside others on the slow accretion of stuff. They are landmark purchases.
Prompts about desire and social navigation
This is the engine room of the entry.
Q7: What does “asking one or two of Joanna’s more grown up friends” reveal about status, age, and borrowed confidence?
Girls and boys in my world inhabited different worlds. You needed permission to enter. And nerve to cross the line. Sibling assistance was of use.
Q8: Why is the girl identified by name and location (“from Gateshead”) rather than by personality?
Geography decided the likelihood of seeing someone again. Proximity mattered. It was also how I remembered her. This girl. She was exceptional coming all the way from Gateshead to attend a school in Gosforth.
Q8: When he writes “I immediately went into action,” what rulebook is he following? Where did he learn it?
He or I went out of my way to make friends with girls. I preferred their company to that of boys.
How does food function here—as kindness, strategy, performance, or shield?
It’s an excuse to talk. To get a little close.
Q9: Why does he note that D “gets her eyes”? What does that cost him at that moment?
His worry is that they are looking at each other. That some unknown force would come into play if they held each other’s gaze for more than a certain number of seconds.
Prompts about silence and omission
Some of the loudest things aren’t written.
Q10: What doesn’t he say about SP bringing a friend—surprise, threat, opportunity?
Age 11 or 12 SP had been the one he’d squeezed up to playing sardines. He’d written to SP from boarding school. He’d even summoned up her name when he rolled a dice believing that by promising to marry her he’d roll a six.
What feelings are completely absent from the entry that you now know must have been present?
Fear of rejection. Not being understood. Rejection. Being laughed at. Losing out to another boy.
Where does the diary end too early? What happened after “David gets her eyes” that he couldn’t or wouldn’t write?
This was a contest. Who would get to be her boyfriend? It would end when she had made her choice.
Prompts from fifty years on (without rewriting the boy)
These are reflections, not edits.
Q10: Which images from that day still arrive unbidden—rooms, smells, gestures?
Sitting on the floor, six boys and six girls nibbling snacks, drinking juice and listening to a Top of the Pops LP and thinking we were more grown up than kids playing with Dinky Toys or dolls.
Cover songs of UK chart hits during 1975 — hits like “Bye Bye Baby,” (Baycity Rollers), “I’m Not in Love,” (10.CC) “Hold Me Close,” (David Essex), “Space Oddity,” “Oh Boy,” (Mud) and “January.” (Pilot)
I may have had the inkling that the songs were off; not authentic. In all likelihood I would have gone in search of an original LP, maybe Bowie, or Abba, John Denver or Genesis.
Q11: Which names still carry charge, and which have gone flat?
In time David Bowie gradually became my icon. All records. And performed his songs as covers. Most of the others go flat, from the ghastliness of the Bay City Rollers. Some songs like 10CC, David Essex and January were very Jane ‘safe’ and middle of the road.
If you had read this entry at 15, what would you have hoped came next?
A better choice of music. In fact, listening to these I did play these songs most likely from a collection of singles: Summer Breeze (seals and crofts), The First Time I Ever Saw your Face (Roberta Flack), If you leave me now (Chicago), Hold me Close (David Essex), I Love to Boogie (T.Rex). JY, SP and I danced. DD might have joined in. Let me take you home tonight (Boston) … D and I may have sung the lyrics this being something of an anthem and wish fulfilment in the school common room. Some Girls (Racey), Love Hurts (Jim Capaldi), Only Sixteen (Dr.Hook), You can get it if you really want (Jimmy Cliff)
My teen dream? Holding hands. Committed to each other to the exclusion of all others. Secretly engaged at 16. Married at age 19. Setting up home with first graduate jobs. Life sweetly every after. Celebrating today, Monday 29th December 2025 as the Fiftieth Anniversary of when we met. And 45 years married. That or abducted by aliens while showing her the rabbit out in the garden.
I’m an incorrigible romantic and wanted to marry every girl who looked into my eyes for more than a few moments and read my soul.
Q12: What skills was this boy already practising that adult you recognise now?
Charm, gentle persuasion, flirting, picking out a girl and making her the centre of your attention. Seeking out her likes and dislikes.
A final, useful constraint. Do not rewrite this entry yet. Instead, write one paragraph that begins:
Q13: What I was really doing that day, without knowing it, was…
Stop after five sentences. Leave it slightly incomplete. That incompleteness is faithful to the boy.
That day felt as I was pushing a raft out onto a lake. I was paddling forth to see what I might find. It was a journey of discovery. Later on in my teens I’d think it was like shooting a ball in pinball: ricochetting off any surface I touched. This was more sedate, baby steps even.
I was taking control, setting things up, bringing the world I wished for to my door. With girls present it may have been seen as a kind of beauty parade. I think there were at least two girls who were pushing 15 and looked as if they were much older and didn’t wish Robbie there but no doubt had been cajoled into turning up by their mothers – who were elsewhere in the house laughing over gin and tonic and sherry.
This diary isn’t cryptic because he lacked words. It’s cryptic because he was standing on the fault-line between recording life and entering it. The fracture is the point—and it’s still doing its quiet work fifty years on.
Rewrite 50 Years On
Here’s a way to do it that keeps the boy’s voice in the driving seat, while letting the older mind lean in occasionally—quietly, like someone standing in the doorway, not interrupting.
Monday 29th December 1975
I keep thinking about my party and whether I should ask one or two of my younger sister’s more grown-up friends. She’s twelve; I’m fourteen. I have an odd concept of being grown up. Allowed to swim in the deep end unsupervised. I have a girl in mind from Gateshead. I don’t really know why her, except that she feels possible even though Gateshead is a bit far.
I write up the bits and pieces of my diary that I can remember. Always the last thing I do before I turn out the light. Too often I record that I’ve had a bath or washed my hair. Sad. Thankfully we’re not into keeping a family “plop chart” otherwise I might by now have fifty years of bowl movements to share. I’ll spare you. It’s harder than I thought. I should jot down some thoughts before I commit pen to paper but I don’t. The pen touches the paper and I begin. If I happen to remember that the window cleaner came round that’s what I say. The day slips about when I try to catch it. I just write and hope it comes back to me later. Much later. A year later. A decade later. And this evening, Monday 29th December 2025 on a 32nd Wedding Anniversary.
Memory is a shifting thing. Writing doesn’t preserve the day so much as put in place a collection of wind chimes that when I blow conjure up a dozen tunes and a few images. Courtesy of the Internet a decade ago and AI in 2025 I can soon compile lists of the songs I put on the record player: 45s bought from Woolworths on Gosforth High Street, LPs from Windows in the Central Arcade in Newcastle.
I go into Gosforth and buy two Top of the Pops records and two new typewriter ribbons. I wasn’t to realise until I got home that the Top of the Pops hits were covers, what would be tribute bands today. I like having new ribbons because they make the typing feel like a journey, like I’m doing something that counts. I do quite a bit of typing when I get back. I wonder if typing, like jazz piano, is the experience rather than what I come up with: short stories later edited to death until it felt like no page of typing ever produced more than a single word not crossed out: death, love, word.
SF turned up first – and he was five minutes late. S brings a friend – J. I like her straight away and make a fuss by offering her food and a drink. Coke or Orange Juice. Being the host gives me something to do. Hospitality as camouflage for my true intent.
DD “gets her eyes’ is how I describe what a filmmaker might call the ‘meet cute”, when Romeo met his Juliet; I was having none of that!
I put on music to get us dancing: I Love to Boogie (T.Rex), Summer Breeze (Seals and Croft), The First Time I Ever Saw your Face (Roberta Flack), If you leave me now (Chicago), and to encourage a ‘slow one’ Hold me Close (David Essex). We danced again to Some Girls (Racey), Love Hurts (Jim Capaldi), and finally Only Sixteen (Dr.Hook).
Except, we were only fourteen and pretending.
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