One of my resolutions for 2011 is that every time I complain about something, I preface my sentence with “I’m not complaining, but…” thus enabling me to discover exactly how much I do complain. I’m not complaining, but…it’s come to my attention that The Dabbler is rather male-orientated in the topics covered by its posts. Some of the latest contributions from the cutting edge ‘culture blog’ include drinking, jokes, rock music… and the ubiquitous football.
I realize that some of you may find the subject of diary writing a tad girly, but according to Wikipedia’s list of English diarists, around 70% are male and, curiously, one of them is a pub. Oh, and if you’d prefer something a little more bawdy, may I suggest James Boswell’s journals, although he was Scottish so is not featured on this list.
I’ll leave the finer points on diary genres and journal content to the literary experts. What I’d like to consider today is the style of stationery used, if any, to record a diary. For instance, who has chronicled the minutiae of their life in a moleskin notebook, on sheets of parchment, or typed them into a computer…did David Blunkett use a Dictaphone for his?
The type of diary I’ve chosen and manner of diary entry has changed over the years. I’m not exactly sure when I wrote my first diary, but in 1973 I bought a Charles Letts and Co week to a page number, ‘every girl’s guide to the 1973 scene’ – the entries in which are suddenly terminated on May 3rd with the words, “I think I will give up my diary.”
By 1975, I’d progressed on to a Seventeen (magazine) diary – though, of course, I was much younger than that – complete with detailed instructions for eye makeup application and treatment for spots. The last entry “Go back to school” is on 2nd June.
Come 1977, I was using a fat page a day appointments diary, filled to bursting point with all sorts of additional attachments from concert programmes and newspaper cuttings to correspondence from school friends and pen pals. I actually completed daily entries for a whole year – and the obsessive details of my teenage life now seem strangely fascinating… at least to me.
And so I continued – through hard-backed A4 lined books for my university days, via the filofax phase, to the Coutts pocket (appointments only) decade and the Financial Times desk jobbie, with its scrawled over pages and crossed out lists, plus a few designery notebooks on the way, and a one-off hand bound book that was made by some especially creative friends…
Nowadays, with the aid of computers, we can customize our own digital diaries, create personal blogs, or present our memoirs in e-book form if we so choose. I’m not complaining, but this doesn’t seem quite as satisfying as experiencing the handwritten pages, quirky annotations, old photographs and sticky-taped memories of yesteryear. In so many ways, our old style diaries have become rarer treasures than ever before.
Despite a number of women I know enthusiastically embracing the ‘male’ topics of ‘drinking, jokes, rock music… and the ubiquitous football’ (the last the least but I’m with them on that) I’m sure you’re right that The Dabbler is ‘rather male-oriented in the topics covered by its posts’.
That must be because we have a preponderance of male contributors. We’d like more female ones but they’re not easy to find. Why? We’ve tried.
It’s interesting that 70% of diarists are male. But is that indicative of the value placed on male diaries versus female ones and therefore the chance of them surviving and becoming known? On the other hand, today’s diary, the blog, appears to be a format which is more favoured by men than women. However, this is based on my own unscientific and partial observation and may not be true. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places.
Anyway, we’re always on the lookout for women (and others!) to contribute (not necessarily bloggers) and join the brilliant Susan, Jassy Davis, ZMKC and Rosie Bell. Please get in touch if you’re interested!
OMG – that video! Only in America? You certainly don’t get that kind of thing on Radio 4’s My Teenage Diary…
Thanks Gaw – we could do with some more comments from womenfolk too.. Come on girls!
Nige, the curious teenage diary reading trend started in America, but now it’s over here too, with London-based sessions being run by a group called ‘Cringe’.. whatever next?
Could we be seeing Brit’s only two types of people here, those who keep diaries and them that don’t. Come on Susan, give us a peek or two, appetites have been whetted.
Where did Dear diary come from?, only sad buggers like Gordon Brown would have started his entries with that phrase. ‘Dear diary, Andrew Rawnsley was beastly to me today, in all 894 pages’
I note with interest the Filofax reference. Pre laptop, the epitome of cool, until Dell Boy had one.
I shall have a quiet word with Harriet and Germs regarding the chauvinistic leanings, perhaps a Guardian comment or two will stir things into action.
I had a fair few teenage diaries, all of which are so toe-curlingly embarrasing that I can’t even bear to look at them. I also used to write ‘novels’ where I would attempt to start my pastiche version of a genre (but then run out of steam before the end of the first chapter.) They’re still turning up – at christmas my father unveiled an absolute classic that he found in the back of one of my old school books- an unintentionally hilarious Jeffrey Archer tribute called ‘Spearhead’ where my 11 year old self had spent considerable effort in trying to imagine the accoutrements of a successful 1980’s businessman (such details as ‘he climbed into his jaguar xjs and drove back to his penthouse apartment in Croydon’)
Look, here’s a woman commenting! Will someone please hang up some bunting or make a cake or something?
My teenage diaries were mostly typed out on a manual typewriter (the sort where the full stop tended to punch a hole through the paper), on sheets of ordinary typing paper which were then stored in a box. I think the theory was that this produced something that looked more like a manuscript, ripe for acquisition by one of the better US university libraries, than e.g. those little books with padded pink covers, a lock and a little key.
Later I graduated to the Filofax, but for recent years future scholars will have to make do with patching together the content of various Smythson and Letts diaries (the choice depending not only on cash flow, but on how much I dislike David Cameron in early January each year), plus blog contents.
And as for the ‘girl’ thing, women do blog, but so often in specialist genres (food blogs, sewing blogs, mummy blogs) which, to me anyway, seem to have a creepy girls’ school atmosphere with far too much emphasis on who’s best friends with who, giving each other made-up presents and prizes and so forth, and by implication not giving other people presents and prizes – this sort of thing scares me witless, which may be why I gravitated towards the mostly-all-male politics blogs – as well as this place, although as I recently not only read but actually enjoyed a book about football*, I’ve almost certainly got a wonky chromosome or two somewhere.
*Simon Kuper’s ‘Ajax’, if you must know – and jolly good it was, too.
Barendina, I think some champagne is called for – it’s time for a celebration (wonky chromosomes notwithstanding). I agree those girly chat type blogs can be rather nauseating, but then you haven’t suffered my diaries… malty, although the mundane intricacies of teenage life at a girls’ school may sound potentially titillating, unfortunately I seem to have been curiously obsessed with washing my hair, practising my violin, Bismarck’s foreign policy and what was for dinner. Later on come some blush-worthy moments and strange gems of teenage wisdom which have had me in fits of laughter (did I really write that?!) – though nothing as sophisticated as worm’s dangerously thrilling storylines, I’m sure. It’s amazing how much more mature young people seem to be these days.
Susan, I reckon we’re pretty girly for a boy’s blog… in a good way. Your Saturday column is the Dabbler at its Dabbly-est.