thoughts on a public diary

I was pondering my blog on the weekend - not adding to it mind you - and not doing anything that exciting that it needs a record. It is either Gwendolen or Cecily in the Importance of Being Earnest who says she never travels without her diary because she might need something sensational to read on the tran. Come to think of it she also says that her diary is a very private document meant for publication after her death!

I wonder if all this new technology just makes it easier for people to expose themselves and mask opinion as fact? A lot of the diaries I have read for rsearch are boring really. You cscour them for the facts that might prop up your argument but rarely rad much that is exciting (Joe Orton excepted). Indeed one I had cause to use recently had been worked over by the author in his latter years and he hlepfuly gave a running index on the top of the page listing key people and events - clearly he wanted it to be read and probably would have been a blogger. Unlike me.

first posting

Well Joe Orton is my favourite diarist - he left nothing to the imagination but I am a bit more discreet - I think - I had a wonderful literary day about six years ago in London - my Lonely Planet Guide suggested a visit to Hampstead as much for the wonders of Kenwood House (an amazing art collection) as for the literary connections. John Keats lived in a house near the Heath which is now a little museum and I visited there and read Ode to a Nightingale in the front garden. Then I happened upon the house (privately owned but possessing one of those blue signs) that Eric Blair aka George Orwell lived in. My trinity of literary encounters was compelted by a visit to the subterranean loos in Hampstead village - apparently they were a favoured place for the many encounters so imtimately recorded in his diaries.......