How to remember everything

The best diary I have ever had

I refuse to be described as a hoarder, with its grim connotations of living amid piles of old newspapers, ancient clothes and cats.

But I am a keeper, although maybe that’s just a more acceptable term, since I DO live with piles of stuff, including cuttings from old newspapers, only they all have my byline on them and they are all organised in chronological order in a series of hopefully unsmelly and undusty files.

There are a lot. When we had to (quickly) move house after we received a death threat (thanks to a TV investigation my brave ex-husband was doing on some violent criminals), I felt it necessary to temporarily rehouse them at my dear friend Franny Moyle’s home, since they contain every single article I have ever written. I would save them over photographs in a house fire.

I keep all sorts of stuff, not thrown in the bottom of a cellar, but filed and shelved. Why? I don’t know. Such as theatre or concert programmes from shows which date from the mid-70s. As a former drama student, arts hack and theatre critic, I have hundreds, but how could I possibly jettison them?

Each one provokes an awareness of a live art work, a tiny creative moment by a person or group of people, at a specific time and place. It gives a sense of permanence to something fleeting. The arts world is so fascinating, an archive like this can draw you to people arriving, rising, falling, triumphing as the years go on.

Equally, because I was in charge, I have kept every single press cutting connected to Hull 2017 City of Culture - like this one from 2023 in The Guardian, citing Hull as the perfect place for a last minute Easter getaway. What a change! The city which had the worst press about it, no question, now cited as a holiday destination.

“An interesting, multifaceted destination..” ABSOLUTELY

I keep all my Mother’s Day cards, and gorgeous quirky things like my press card for the Cannes Film Festival, or the Oscars. And key receipts; from significant dinners or emotional shopping trips, such as that tough one which you take to IKEA just before your son and daughter goes off to Fresher’s Week.

Then there are my children’s things. Tiny shoes, of course. But also letters, every drawing, every wobbly start in writing a name, every small thing made in clay, obviously the hilarious reports, and this Post-It note scribbled in fury by my younger daughter (aged 11). She never did leave, by the way.

All are neatly piled in large labelled boxes for each of my offspring, ready for when they finally get a flat of their own. So not leaving my house any time soon, then.

The children, of course, are digitally orientated. Their memory cache is, for the most part, on Instagram. As far as mine is concerned, it is more or less wholly analogue. Something printed, on paper. Maybe I do this because when I was 18 I once lost my memory, temporarily, after a bad car crash. It was rubbish timing, as it happened a few weeks before my A Levels. I banged my head, hard, and didn’t know who I was for a fortnight. Perhaps those lost weeks turned up the dial on my tendency to keep everything, but I was already writing a diary.

Diaries of course are the GOAT memory deposit. I have the diaries, part in writing, part illustration, belonging to the artist Pat Millard (my great uncle), head of the Polytechnic School of Art on Regent Street. They are things of wonder, including a letter from Stanley Spencer and extraordinary entries such as this, regarding the death of his close friend John Minton.

Like Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet The Spy (one of my favourite books ever), I keep a diary. Currently this is in the form of a 5 Year Memory Book, which is the most brilliant thing and which you can order here.

One of my daughters encouraged me to get it (she has one too). For anyone who wants to keep a diary but do it quickly, and not spend hours doing so, it is perfect.

It has a page dedicated to the same date across five years. Each is divided into five horizontal bands; every day you write a few lines into the relevant space. A year later, you come to the same page, and write a few more. And so on. I am now half way through the book, and therefore have come to the moment when I can simply look at a single page, and find out what I did on this day in 2024 and 2023.

It is a revelation, and not just because you forget all sorts of stuff. Putting memories in order shows the unreliability of recall. Plus, prophesies can be proven or not, and fears can be junked. Having once had a diary stolen in a bag snatch, I never take it away with me. Meaning that when I go away, I have to have a secondary diary which I then am obliged to transfer to the Memory Book when I get back. This is clearly only worth it for me, but as Pepys might have thought, devising his diary in a personal code, who is a diary for if not yourself?

Remember me…tiny felted carrot made by my younger daughter in a happier mood

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