‘Ow my head.
Decided to round off a Bad Day (which got worse after I got home what with people not telling me what is happening with my bloody belongings, Radiohead on repeat, buying twenty pounds worth of wrong phone credit and so on) with a trip to the pub where I proceeded to neck four pints of Stella and then annoy my flatmates by not telling them the answers to some pub quiz that happened to be going on. Drunkenly agreed to go to a belly dancing class at some point next week, fell off my chair and then escaped to the loos only to be attacked by a gaggle of scary looking women who kept going on about what ‘amazing eyes’ I have and how I ‘look just like that Sophie Dahl’. Argh. Ran away screaming.
Went home and had a very nice phone conversation which had the end result of me being properly boyfriended which made me so enormously happy that I ate all my advent calender chocolates (Bob the Builder!!) and ran around the courtyard in my socks. Hurrah.
Have decided therefore that today is officially a Good Day albeit a hungover one. I woke up with good hair as well – always a plus point.‘ — my Live Journal, 3rd December 2003.
As many of you will know, I maintained (‘wrote’ is too kind a word for what went on there) an incredibly hideous Live Journal account for several years before I chucked it in and escaped to WordPress. My Live Journal diary was as full of gothic angst, pathetic drama, passive aggressiveness and over sharing as anyone could possibly wish for and I have to say that although I regret pretty much every word that I spewed forth into its chilly white text box, it would make for an excellent novel should I ever choose to wring some sort of sense, if not sensibility, out of it.
However, since I started this blog on WordPress, I’ve pretty much completely stopped recording my day to day life. On the plus side, I don’t have petty dramas any more so there’s not really much to tell but on the other hand, I have no private record at all of my quite nice, peaceful life with my husband and boys and the fun stuff we get up to.
Therefore, I was very pleased when The Handpicked Collection offered me this One Line A Day Five-Year Memory Book from their Christmas gifts selection. The sad fact is that I am too busy nowadays with my writing and this blog and looking after my family and home to spend hours wallowing on Live Journal but I can easily fit just one line at the end of every day plus as this is a private written diary not some terrible public attention seeking exercise with comments enabled (although as every seasoned Live Journaller knows – the true attention seeking posts are the ones with comments switched off) I don’t even have to be funny or interesting! Perfect.
I’ll be keeping this lovely blue diary for myself and keeping it on my bedside table as part of a new year’s resolution to write down a little something every day about what we did or how I feel, but I’m sure this would make a fabulous gift for pretty much anyone. Perhaps you have a former Live Journaller in your life who is feeling sad about losing all those memories? This would be perfect for them. They could even add little symbols for ‘current mood’ and ‘current music’ if they’re suffering serious LJ withdrawal.
It’d also be a great present for my fellow Twitter fanatics as we’ve had to learn how to be succinct and pack as much information as possible into just 140 characters. It’s quite a skill actually.
As an aside, Handpicked also do an amazing selection of well chosen gourmet food gifts including my absolute favourite, Montezuma chocolate!
By the way, the diary entry at the top of this page describes my happiness at getting together with my now husband NINE YEARS AGO today, which perfectly illustrates why it’s actually really nice to keep a record of these things.
