#1 - 2024 Hell, let's do this.
Why on earth? Who would publish their teenage diary? Just why? Or then again why not?
2024. 1984. It's 40 years on since I wrote this daily diary aged 16 and 17. I keep thinking I should publish it, you know one of those annoying thoughts that bugs you for about 10 years. So… hell, let's just do it! Other people do, there’s the very lovely BBC Radio 4 My Teenage Diary series (though participants get to edit and choose their juiciest scribblings for that). I’ve recently come across a few brave people putting their 1980s diaries online, some even in print. So maybe it’s a thing.
In his brilliant and moving 2019 autobiography-cum-reveal-of-local authority-records My Name Is Why, acclaimed poet Lemn Sissay tells of his years in a foster home and an abusive care system and throws out the question during his worst time in 1984, “What where you doing when you were 17?” I’m just a couple of months older than Lemn, whom I’ve met a couple of times. So, in a way, this is my answer.
Warning: there’s probably too much culture for your average teen diary, more ballroom than disco, more Beethoven than Bowie, and not much sex (technically none at all, though there are more girl friends than I give myself credit for). I quite like what I think is my rather self-depreciating humour, but then I would. You might, you probably will, find it all rather dull more mundane than me, which is maybe in the nature of someone else’s unedited diaries where no one gets kidnapped or beaten and things tick on relatively happily. Though looking back there are quiet actual proper life-changing moments - as there should be at 17. But hopefully it’s a window into the 1980s - blimey, maybe even a historical manuscript - revolving around life in a quiet village near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, the sixth form of an all boys’ grammar school with Jerusalem as the school anthem, and a generous education that, despite the relentless overload all teenagers feel, comes across as instilling a love for learning, which has been lifelong. Hey, today’s teens are WAY ahead of what we were back then, but there is also something neat about being among the last of the digital non-natives and doing stuff like being able to head off alone on holiday to Europe without having to report back to parents on Whatsapp.
There are people I still know who feature in “1984”. Maybe they’ll contribute too if I ask nicely. I’m not quite sure how to do this, I was going to have a plan, but there is even less time in 2024 than in 1984, so it’s going to have to be on the fly. I think it’ll be weekly chunks in line with the weeks exactly 40 years ago. So please subscribe to get the latest instalment to your inbox.
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
George Orwell, 1984
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Sunday 1 January
1 -364 Week 52
TO MY DEAR FRIEND
SEBASTIAN of the future
Lemn’s book, now that is actually a proper thing. Go read! Funnily, Lemn through his teens and later had to fight to unearth his Ethiopian heritage; later in life, having once been a solicitor (true that!), I ended up managing an Ethiopian band, travelling the world with them promoting Ethiopian music, and our paths, which had started off so differently, have crossed a couple of times. Maybe he’ll subscribe here too…
