And so, with a heavy heart I returned home. I was soon re-heartened by a radio item on the lunchtime news. Apparently, if we all take time to keep a diary we can possibly reduce stress. Yup, it’s all true - I heard it on the Beeb! I wonder if that includes when you’re stressed over not getting an Aldi LED baseball cap? “Yes Magic, even that; just write about it and your blues will dissipate!”
Now I don’t know about you but in these days of Facebook, Twitter and other social media (where people share their most intimate and often unedifying thoughts) you’d think that something as old hat as a written diary just wouldn’t hold its own. But if the new research is write (get it?) it could even be making a resurgence. After all, diaries have a long illustrious history from the actual-factual likes of Sammy Pepys through Anne Frank and up to Tory bounder Alan Clarke; to the fictional ones of Adrian Mole, Bridget Jones or even the famous ‘Captain’s log’ of James Tiberius Kirk of the Star Ship Enterprise… Yup, when you’ve got the stress of Klingons on your starboard bow, what better way to unwind than write a couple of paragraphs about the buggers in your log, eh?
But, I guess, beyond the newly found ‘stress-relief’, diaries are also a good source of research: they provide anecdotal documentary evidence and therefore, an eye into previous times.
Dr Irving Finkel has been amassing diaries over at the British Museum for years now. He says: “As long as people write diaries and as long as there are examples around, they ought to be rescued.” Irv, you can have mine from the 60s if you like - I put in so many secret codes (for encrypting my nefarious goings-on) that I haven’t a single clue what was actually going on.
Mind you, truth be told, most it was pretty mundane. “Not so Magic,” says Irving, “people talk about the weather and mundane things… then something happens, they meet someone, there’s an adventure and suddenly you find, whenever you peep into people’s lives, that nobody has a completely normal life.” Oh, cheers , maybe I’m windswept and interesting after all? So what about the next meet at Xmas?
Another recently released study shows that men who have a shed to potter about it live a small percentage longer than non-shed occupiers. So, if we combine the stress relief of diary writing and the longevity afforded by shed dwelling, maybe in the future we’ll find lots more men of over a hundred years of age - and shed loads (excuse the pun).
Toodle pip Magic
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