This might be a project I regret committing to; there is no end to it. Death perhaps.
What began as a simple revisiting of old school diaries has evolved into a vast, long-term autobiographical archive project spanning more than half a century of recorded life. I am currently working through a sequence of contemporaneous diaries, letters, dream journals, photographs and notebooks, reconstructing and publishing them exactly fifty years after their original dates.
As of 9th June 2026, I have worked through approximately four months of entries from my surviving five-year diaries covering 1975–1978. In practice, this means revisiting around 330–450 individual diary days so far, usually processing the same calendar date across multiple years together. Each entry is expanded from compressed teenage shorthand into reflective first-person prose, enriched with contextual memory, emotional interpretation, historical detail and, increasingly, accompanying visual material. It is intriguing to discover what I was doing on a particular day at ages 13.7, 14.7, 15.7 and 16.7.
The archive itself expands dramatically beyond these early diaries. A second five-year diary covers 1979–1982, after which I moved into large A4 hardback notebooks written daily, eventually filling entire lever-arch folders with a single month’s reflections. Alongside the diaries are dream journals, letters written home to parents and grandparents between the ages of seven and seventeen, and two substantial photojournals documenting school life, travel and family experience. By 17.1, 18.1, 19.1 and 20.1, the writing becomes somewhat Henry Miller in topic and tone.
The project is intended to unfold slowly in real time. A diary entry from June 1976 appears in June 2026; June 1977 will appear in June 2027, and so on. If sustained, the archive will continue publishing into the 2040s, eventually bridging handwritten childhood diaries, adult notebooks and the emergence of my online writing life in the late 1990s. I will be in my early 80s if I make it to the end.
In general, I retain real place names because geography, schools, landscapes and social settings are central to the historical and autobiographical value of the archive. However, I routinely alter or fictionalise personal names, particularly where individuals are private citizens still living ordinary lives. In some cases, composite characters or pseudonyms are used.
I recognise that even altered names may not guarantee anonymity. Someone familiar with the events, relationships or social circles involved may eventually identify themselves or others through accumulated detail.
For this reason, I try to avoid material whose publication could cause unnecessary embarrassment, distress, reputational harm or renewed personal conflict, even fifty years after the original events. I am especially cautious with photographs of handwritten pages, as modern image enhancement and OCR technologies can recover more text than may initially appear legible.
I delete material if asked. It happened once during an earlier attempt at this project, perhaps fifteen years ago. The fact that someone I had briefly known in France as a teenager identified herself from what I had written was a reminder of how universal and searchable the internet has become.
My aim is not an exposé, revenge, or confession for its own sake, but the careful reconstruction of memory, atmosphere, social history, and personal development across time. Wherever possible, I seek to preserve the emotional truth of the archive while respecting the dignity and privacy of the people who unknowingly became part of it.
And yes, in some instances, I will still defend what I thought, said or felt as a young person. That too is part of the historical record.
One of the unexpected dilemmas of this long-term diary project is how difficult it is to share even a single photographed page safely online. At first glance, many pages appear harmless: school notes, doodles, lists, dreams, scraps of observation or compressed teenage shorthand. Yet almost every page contains traces of other people and places woven invisibly through the writing.
The archive was never created for publication. I wrote freely because I assumed the notebooks, diaries and letters would remain private. Names, initials, emotional reactions, arguments, crushes, schools, journeys and family details were recorded casually, without any thought that strangers — or the people involved — might one day read them fifty years later.
Even when names are changed, anonymity is not guaranteed. Over time, small clues accumulate. A school friend, former girlfriend or travelling companion may recognise themselves through context, chronology or repeated details. Modern OCR and AI image enhancement technologies also mean that handwriting once considered illegible can now potentially be recovered from photographs.
As a result, I increasingly favour pages that reveal atmosphere rather than information: sketches, diagrams, fragments, visual notes or partially obscured text. My aim is to preserve the authenticity and texture of the archive without unnecessarily exposing the people who unknowingly inhabit it.
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