I've always been a bit of an archivist, always trying to capture and document a moment in time. Maybe it's because my parents came to England from Italy before I was born with no heirlooms and took very few photgraphs as we all grew up and perhaps I'm trying to make up for it. So, our house is stuffed with scrapbooks and photo albums of pictures of my dinner and people I met only once along with notes on days out, tickets and programmes. It's lucky then that I, the archivist who loves to log everything, happened to marry a nostaligist who loves nothing more than to pull out an album or two from the collection and reminisce about the good old days.Ten years ago, I started the Polaroid dairies. I took one photo every day and stuck it in a small album with the date and a note. I never missed a day and over the course of the year ended up with eight albums. At the beginning of the second album is a picture of Robert so the diaries also chart out first year together when we lived at my old flat. I have a similar photo album charting the first few months of Fabio's life, how much he weighed, how much milk he drank etc. I'm glad for these things more and more as time passes and I guess that blogging is just a continuation of the same.
I dug the polaroid diaries out this morning and on this very day 10 years ago, Ian and Jo moved into the flat they'd just bought in our block. Ian is from Derby and Jo Gordon is a famous knitwear designer now (she was clearly brilliant even then). We moved to East Dulwich and soon after, they moved to a big house in the road I covet in Dulwich Village.
Anyway, it was an interesting year 1997 and my diaries have recorded a lot. I didn't drive, I look 2 stone lighter and 15 years younger, I spent a lot of time in pubs, in clubs and on care-free holidays (Paris, Carribbean & Australia in one year!) and had a lot more money to fritter on massages and lipstick than I do now. Princess Diana died and Tony Blair became Prime Mininster and Robet and I met. What do you remember of 1997?
6 comments:
What a great idea. It is like a simpler, hands-on blog, or a more sophisticated scrapbook. I hope you continue with it. Nero
In 1997 I was working as a Club 18-30 rep in Mighty Magalluf.
Happy memories of good times.
How my life is different now.
I know James, how quickly things changes. If I were to do a polaroid diary now, all the pictures would be of the park and the supermarket.
Nero - only did this project for one year. Maybe time you started a diary or blog?
I married my second husband in 1997. I hope to divorce him before 2007 ends.
Grandpa died in January, aged 84 good innings, but I still miss him :-(. Dad died in May, aged 66. Felt crap then, still does. :-((. Blair's new dawn :-). Youngest born :-)).
Pretty high and pretty low, really.
I went inter-railing with one of my best friends who lost his ticket four days in in the middle of Brussels, leaving me to sit under a newspaper vendor's awning in torrential rain for four hours cursing his sorry arse in French through two packets of Camel fags. I talked to Nelson Mandela about Welsh rugby as he went on a walkabout in Oxford and I looked after a vomitty Chemistry student who had fallen off a wall for six hours, then went out with him for a year and a half. I also spent vast amounts of time making cheese and pickle toasties and listening to LTJ Bukem's Earth while doing inventive things with Evian bottles and funny tobacco.
But what we all really want to know is - Rob, is that you in that picture?
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