Everybody on the 8.15

F ' EELING better'?'

The invalid, who had adopted, mutatis mutandis, a sphinx-like posture, waggled her behind in an irritable and preoccupied way. An unfinished game of patience, two biscuits, a pencil-sharpener, and a work by Miss Enid Blyton glissaded irresolutely to the floor.

'I am writing my diary,' she said severely.

I looked over her shoulder. The day's entry read : 'Got a cof.'

* * *

When you are eight years old, I suppose, a diary is a sort of gadget and as such issues—like scissors, stirrup-leathers, cigarette-lighters, nut-crackers and other artefacts—an auto- matic challenge. You want to make it work yourself. And for once you can. You are in control. There is none of the usual nonsense: 'Oh, do let me "But why can't I?"Hurry up, darling, do. Perhaps you'd better let Daddy finish it'?' With a diary you have, more or less, carte blanche.

The privileges of childhood are many, and the opportunity of keeping a diary is hardly among the most enviable of them. But it is perhaps the only unconditional privilege, not suscep- tible to curtailment or supervision by higher authority. It is certainly the only privilege of childhood which remains with us, pristine and inviolate, until we die. Yet how many of us do keep diaries?

I cannot answer this question, nor the numerous others contingent on it; but before examining some of the latter it seems only fair to make it clear that I do not keep a diary myself. At one time I used to travel in remote parts of the world, and while doing so I forced myself to keep a sort of log. (Van. 20. V. cold again. Sick camel v. groggy so only did v. short stage. Ate remains of yesterday's hare with noodles. Not much on hare but noodles v. good.') The vestigial self-discipline thus acquired--or bequeathed, to be accurate, from my family's rightly totemistic policy towards the entering-up of game-books—failed to survive two sharp rebuffs administered by Fate during the Second World War. Each rebuff was delivered in what can only be described as a pointed manner. On the first occasion, having survived a number of what I regarded as interesting experiences during one of our early retreats, I found myself on the deck of a small boat in the lee of a small island. The boat could not move during daylight for fear of being bombed, and although I was rather tired—a withdrawal (even if orderly, which it seldom is) is the most exhausting of all military operations—I spent the day writing down what had happened in a notebook. An hour before dusk two German bombers on their way home spotted the boat; and that was the end of, among other and infinitely more valuable things, my diary.

This pattern of events was repeated three years later. Again an interesting but rather exacting tranche de guerre, again a painstaking effort to record, under difficulties, its essentials. We reached a wide river. We had to swim across it in the darkness. There were sixteen of us. One had a rubber tobacco- Pouch. I asked him to put my notebook in it. He did; and he alone of the party failed to reach the other side. Although 1 dislike excuses, I now regard myself as being exempt from a diarist's responsibilities.

* *

1 suspect that diary-keeping, after enjoying for several fairly obvious reasons a renaissance during the war, is once more on the decline. The commonest excuse for not keeping a diary is that one simply hasn't got the time; yet is one all that much busier than Goebbels was, or Ciano. or any of the other villains and mountebanks in the camp of our late enemies who left so voluminous a record of their follies for the edification of posterity? Laziness is surely a truer and more basic reason— laziness coupled, perhaps, with a sense of the outward same- ness of our lives.

Many people are individualists, but comparatively few lead individualistic lives. As the conveyor-belt of routine carries us smoothly towards oblivion, what is there to record, and what temptation to record it?

It is true that prisoners, and especially prisoners in solitary confinement, have often kept interesting and moving diaries, but these recorded thoughts and emotions rather than external events, of which there were few to relieve the loneliness and monotony of their lives. Many men and women today arc prisoners in a sense—prisoners of the 8.15, prisoners (while in it) of The Times or the Daily Mirror, prisoners of the office or the factory, prisoners of television. But these are prisons without bars and their inmates' sentences are self-imposed; so they are only fleetingly, if at all, aware of captivity and not at all aware—like a man in a cell—of singularity, of undergoing a strange and unnatural experience. .

Besides, there are so many of them, all doing the same thing at the same time. 'Train 7 minutes ice' or 'Train punctual for once'—is there any point in everybody on the 8.15 noting such facts in his or her diary? When they disperse to their different places of business, any incentive to jot down the more memorable events of the day is lessened by the knowledge that most of them are recorded anyhow on the files. 'Dictated restrained memo. to J.K. on growing prevalence of pin-ups in canteen used by lower grades of staff.' Why waste time writing this down in lorighand when a copy of the document itself is available in a neat folder marked 'Miscellaneous (Inter-Office)'?

There is, in short, every excuse for the white-collar worker not keeping a diary. Eyen the traveller may reasonably query the value of carnets de voyage full of entries like 'Took off London Airport 8.15. Flew above clouds so not much to see. Landed Timbuctoo 2.45. Delayed till 4.30 by mechanical fault, but passengers not allowed out of lounge. Given coffee and biscuits. Dark soon after take-off from Timbuctoo. Captain's name is Prendergast. . . .' This sort of thing is scarcely in the tradition of Marco Polo, or even of Miss Rosita Forbes.

But of course the fact of the matter is that the best diaries always have been, and always will be, about people. Some people, and some lives, appear to be. and perhaps in truth arc, duller than others; and if everybody on the 8.15 conscientiously kept a diary it is a sad fact both that the great majority of them would be quite unreadable, and that few of the diarists would—in their hearts—believe that this was so. But it is also a fact that nobody—absolutely nobody—can say for certain that if they kept a diary it might not one day prove to be a document of great interest and even fascination.

I therefore urge you (as I urged the small invalid) to carry on with your good work; it cannot possibly do any harm. The worst that anybody can say about your diary is that. 'historically of small importance, it also lacks human interest,' which was what a reviewer said about John Evelyn's diary in last week's Spectator. If immortality can be purchased with such small change, it is surely worth making a bid for it.

STRIX