Keeping a Diary

“I always say, keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you,” says Gyles Brandreth in Literary Review. I started mine aged 11, when my great aunt Edith gave me a shortened – “and thoroughly expurgated” – edition of the diaries of Samuel Pepys, which inspired me to keep my own. It’s how I bonded with the veteran MP Tony Benn, “probably the most prolific diarist of his day”. He encouraged me to keep at it and include as much everyday detail as possible. “It’s a dreadful burden,” he said, “but you’ll be grateful in the end.” Tony dictated his diary in later years, which led to misunderstandings in transcription. He told me how he had found “cuddly Pooh” in the middle of one entry, and it had taken him a while to work out that it should have read “Cudlipp, who…” As an MP, I wrote my diaries in the Commons; the rules of the House do not allow you to read books in committee, but you can write them. (Though one colleague did manage to complete War and Peace while serving on the Finance Bill Committee, by photocopying 50 pages a day and tucking them inside the Budget Red Book.) “Mildly squiffy” in the Commons library at 2am, I once wrote a colourful account of a late-night spat I’d witnessed between the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary. The following morning, “sober and aghast”, I couldn’t find my diary anywhere. I searched high and low before remembering where it was. I rushed to the library and saw Peter Mandelson, already known as the Prince of Darkness, leafing through my papers. “My heart stood still.” Peter looked up and smiled: “I’ve found it.”

Use Kinscape to keep your diary. Keep it in My Personal Space so no one can see it. You can always share it with the family later. We suggest that you have a Story for each year and a Chapter for each month.

If you want to get really detailed, set up a Community ‘Diary – [YYYY]’ where you are the Administrator and have no other Members. Then have a Story for each month in a year  and a Chapter for each day. Dictate your diary entry directly into the day’s Chapter if it is easier.

Now would be a good time to set it up for 2025 in Kinscape.

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