Sheffield Girl

[RichardB]

http://www.reminiscethis.co.uk/freda.htm

Extract :

At fourteen I was making notes in the back of my school exercise book, recording events that were important to me, events that I felt sure I would want to recall later. At fifteen I received my first diary, a tiny thing which, as it transpired, would become crammed with excitedly written and now, almost illegible jottings. These 'jottings' became so prolific in later years that I would buy bigger and bigger diaries, until I gave up trying to cram daily events into such small spaces and bought loose-leaf notebooks, so that I could scribble away to my hearts content, writing in the date myself.

These diaries, kept in an old carrier bag, have travelled with me throughout the last three decades, often mislaid for many a year, then suddenly falling out from the back of a cupboard during a rare clear out. (I'm hopeless at throwing things away!) I'd sit down and have a good wallow in nostalgia, wondering at the amazing pace of my lifestyle then! At the number of famous people who came into my orbit, and the occasions when I so narrowly missed coming to grief! At the difference then, to our lifestyle today. I wonder too, that I did not write even more than I did, as these diaries serve to jog further memories that did not find their way into print.

But of course, I was not writing my biography - then. Just recently, I stumbled across this 'cache' of diaries yet again, and was concerned that they were rapidly fading (the first ones written in pencil on semi-shiny paper), and the loose-leaf notebooks, even looser than ever. I have often wondered what most precious things I would save if ever the house went up in flames, now I know that it would be my diaries and my favourite photographs - I'm sure the cats would be ahead of me...

So I decided to type up these precious memories and save them on disc, and to also include the memories not recorded at the time. It was then that I began to realise that what I was typing up was history - I mean real history!