On Friday, Jatb and I were talking about when people quote their old diaries in their blogs. I s'pose people diarise things more at times of stress or strong emotion.
Certainly when you're single you journal it a lot more. What's the point of writing a diary about being in a couple?
"Dear Diary, today she left hairs in the bath AGAIN. I swear I will strangle her in her sleep. Ate cottage pie for tea. Watched teev."
I didn't think blogging old diaries would really work for me, as although I kept diaries for about five years, they're all in code, and most of the codewords are for sex.
I did sometimes diarise in prose, but after the sick situation when I read my onetime flatmate, Gremlin's diary, I stopped that.
I'd snuck into Gremlin's room and read her diary, in which I found a detailed critique, lasting around a thousand words or so, of entries in my diary. It was relatively eloquent - I was characterised as the planet Pluto, I remember, because if you weren't cool enough, I'd expel you from my orbit or something. (No, I have no idea if that ties in with any astronomy.) It was all probably more to do with the fact I used to use Gremlin's special chopping board to cut up onions, so she ended up having to wake up every morning and sniff all her kitchen chopping boards to check. Nutter.
Boy, was it hard to work out that aggression, though. I couldn't admit to reading her diary, so I couldn't confront her about it. I had to work every conversation around to it indirectly. "Have you read any Atwood? Well you know the second female character in that one - would you characterise her as cold, controlling and self-obsessed? No? Because I think she's rather more innocent than you realise. No, listen, this is really important. I really want to know what you think of these characters ..." etc....

I just had a quick look at my diary for 1993, which was the year I graduated from university, and the year I came out of the closet. I had huge torrid affairs with three or four different people that year. Two of whom I fell in love with. One of whom I was using to get the attention of the other two.
Being unemployed I also got as close to prostitution as I ever managed - I taught English grammar to a married Korean friend who regarded this as a brilliant excuse to feel me up during the more difficult grammar questions. I needed the money (my diary lists my state benefits as #40 a fortnight at the time), so I had to keep going back. Therefore, I reasoned with myself, if I was going to keep doing the job even with the harrassment, I may as well get a ritzy dinner out of it every night, on top of the feel. See what I mean?
Most of the entries, however, are about racing around the country getting pissed. (No change there then.)
No detail or even any full sentences. So, I can tell you that October 16th 1993 was the night I fell in love with Cheesy, my first proper girlfriend (as opposed to proper shag - you see how the need for categories comes about...). And that I stayed over at her flat, unbeknownst to my boyf of the time, and we did C7.
Told you it was a bad idea to raid old diaries.