When my father passed away in 2023, we discovered a large catalogue of his personal diaries. I had always seen him with a diary and he carried one round on his person to write things down in where ever he went but I had not imagined that he had kept most of his diaries dating back to 1968 (when he was 13!).
My father was a deeply private person and his diaries are more about what he got up to on certain days rather than his feelings and emotions about certain situations so I hope that he forgives me for deciding to share some of the contents of his diaries.
I have decided to digitise and upload these entries as a tribute to my father, to figure out what he got up to over the years, but also as a great piece of social history. There are not a lot of accounts of what the average person was doing over so many years of their lives and I feel the need to ensure that this is available for people to study or simply as a bit of curiosity.
Not all days are filled in, some pages contain other people’s addresses from when he went to visit them as an insurance salesman and some simply contain calculations of costs etc. Other people’s personal details I obviously cannot share but my aim is to try and share as much as possible for the sake of transparency and perhaps I may also share some of my thoughts on some of the entries or try to put some of them into context.
I’m writing this on 23rd August 2025 as I embark on the start of the manual process of typing up entries and also taking photos of the pages and the diaries. While I’ve read through some of them, by the time I am done I will have read every page of his diaries and given both myself and potentially the world, a glimpse into my father’s life.
