Diaries

All day I've been holed up in the shed looking through 20 years worth of diaries, scouring for entries about my dear friend Fiona. She's 60 in January and a photographer friend & I, a woman who takes as many pictures as I frame words, are planning a book to celebrate what she has meant to us both.

I thought this might take a day. Idiot. As soon as I starting reading details of my faraway life, crammed with details of children, friends, animals (now sadly gone, but in those pages pups and scallywags) I realised this could take weeks. How strange to see my thirty year old self, struggling with babies, work and family, and not finding time to do anything but scribble, often at night, in an effort to record it all. I wanted to say to that often panic stricken young woman, "It's fine. It all worked out."

It was the best possible way to spend a rainy Friday. Warm, snug & reliving a time when my feet barely touched the ground, filled with with parties, occasional sadness but overwhelmingly, love.