My Diary And Other Big Fibs

Readers of Planet Skaro may know that my identity thereon is shared with that noted Doctor Who diarist, Benny Summerfield. I originally chose her as my log-on name for the BBCi Doctor Who boards, largely because it seemed like a good idea at the time, but also a little bit because she’s my favourite companion, possibly ever. Paul Cornell once unmemorably said that Benny was him “in a frock”, but he was telling a big fib – in fact, despite him having never met me, Paul actually based Benny on me.

Now there are many hundreds upon thousands of things that I have in common with Benny, such as a love of the Isley Brothers, particularly This Old Heart Of Mine, a lifelong friendship with alcohol, and a habit of punctuating the most inopportune of moments with bursts of wittage and punnery. However, the common factor between her and I that I feel the urge to mention here is our mutual use of diaries as a means to re-write life as it should be, rather than chronicle life as it actually was.

I don’t keep a diary, by the way. I have done, but I don’t anymore. I’m terrible for giving up all the good habits yet hanging on to the bad ones. In fact, giving up good habits is a bad habit that I’m trying to quit. In total, I’ve kept three diaries: one that covered about a third of 1994, a rather extensive one that lasted from the summer of 1995 to a similar period the following year, and a third that lasted intermittently throughout the latter six months of 1998. Now, that Benny comparison that I mentioned a paragraph of so ago: In the New Adventures, Benny frequently writes an entry in her diary, and then changes it with the help of a handy Post-It note over the top. Sometimes, the truth is underneath and the re-written version is on top, sometimes vice versa. However, the bare truth of the day’s events are visible to the eye, unexpurgated, and it is at this moment that the similarity between me and her fades away. Looking back, there are frequently moments in my diaries where the truth is only visible if you can see inside my head.

This doesn’t mean every entry in my diaries is a big fib – far from it. There’s certainly no “May 12th – Lifted the FA Cup at Wembley”, November 23rd “First broadcast of my Doctor Who story”, or January 5th “Shagged Cameron Diaz in the school toilets whilst skiving Quantum Scuba Diving (A-S Level)”. The vast majority of entries are the frozen truth, as I saw it and experienced it there and then. Certainly my final diary, the 1998, is, as far as I can recall, utterly factual in each and every word.

However, I’ve always been of the opinion that people write a diary in the secret hope that they are read by somebody else – maybe the day after it was written, maybe a decade later, maybe after my death, but I certainly wanted it to become part of the public domain at some point - and I wrote in it to match this. The majority of the time, no matter how miserable, or happy, or dull life was, the truth was perfectly acceptable. However, at times, I deliberately changed things that I would prefer people not to know – times I acted badly, things I’d lied about to people, sometimes even writing lies to supersede truths I’d actually told people to their face that I’d regretted being so open about. There are only a handful of occasions, but to me, they stick out like a sore appendage, and I often wonder now why I felt the need to do a Jim Hacker about things that now seem at best, unfortunate, and worst, merely trivial.

There are no great misdeeds being covered up in these diaries – no secret terrorist plots, no bodies buried under the patio, and no admissions of watching porn… well, apart from one… and most likely now it seems that nobody will ever read them who either knows the protagonists or gives two hoots anyway. I’d established this by 1998, I think, as that year’s diary certainly contains several corrective truths about entries in the 1995/6 one. Perhaps this came about after I learned a rather severe lesson that, whether people want other people to read their diary or not, the consequences of people seeing your private thoughts and chronicles can often be rather unpleasant.

Fact: A friend of mine had bulimia, and confided in her brother about it. Her brother confided it in me, because he was so shocked and confused that his hitherto seemingly fine younger sister had a painful secret he was totally unaware of.

Fact: I wrote this in my diary.

Fact: Their other sister read my diary, uninvited, and, naturally concerned, approached her sister about it, under a pretext of having seen or heard something happening in the bathroom.

Now I never knew, and still don’t know to this day, whether the one sister finding out about the others illness was a good or bad thing, or if there was a feeling of broken confidences, either from the brother or from me. Certainly now, everybody involved in the aforementioned scenario is well and happy, and living life, as far as I know, to the fullest. Perhaps this was just a storm in a teenage tea cup that blew over very quickly, and with only my diary, rather than my memory to tell me what occurred, it’s impossible to see for sure any ramifications that “the diary reading incident” had on the protagonists.

Maybe I did know the truth behind my worries at the time, and the passage of time has removed it from my memory, and I don’t want to try and uncover it. I’m not sure, but I am sure of one thing. Certainly, looking at my diary from thereon in, the entries seem to be more personal and reflective, and perhaps not things that I’d ever want to be read by people, even after my death. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe that’s just how I was changing, how life was changing. But it’s a noticeable change – I think. Or maybe this is just another big fib. Until somebody else reads my diaries, I won’t get a second opinion.

31st October 2003