23 July 1976
After a hesitant start in February 1975, this is supposed to be the first year in which I complete an entry for every single day. Yet 23 July is missing. It feels as though I have had a front tooth knocked out: an obvious absence, impossible not to notice.
Hang on. The 25th and 26th have gone AWOL too.
So much for perfection. So much for every day.
What happened? The explanation is simple enough. I had gone to stay with my father for a couple of weeks. My parents had divorced six years earlier, so going to Dad’s was a regular migration between two separate lives.
And I had left my diary behind.
That was not good. Not good because I needed it in order to write. Not good because somebody else might find it and read it.
Why did I not keep daily notes in an exercise book while I was away? Because I was particular about the routine. Writing each evening in my green Collins Five Year Diary had acquired a quasi-religious quality. I would unlock the little catch, click it open at the next page, glance at what I had been doing the year before—if I had written anything—and then begin.
Somehow, I needed that ritual before I could expel the day onto the page. Not merely a page. That page.
The diary was not simply a container for the words. It was part of the act itself.
So why are only a few days missing? Presumably, once I returned home, I reconstructed what I could. I wrote backwards from memory, recovering events before they disappeared altogether. It must have felt like a form of penance: sitting down to repair the record after neglecting it.
But I could not recover everything.
The blank days remain as punishment.
Leave a Reply