I have seen the value of looking back on old blogposts and bring this forward this from over ten years ago – 2011.
Submission to Mass Observation – recording everyday life
12 May 2011see www.massobs.org.uk/
Self-portrait
Angus Willson is 56, married and lives in Ashford, Kent. He works from home as an independent education consultant which involves writing, project management and professional development.
Diary
06.50 Margaret, my wife, is already up and another alarm wakes me up again and I sneeze twice with hay-fever. I switch on the television in the bedroom and sit up to watch an item about the BBC Domesday Project which I knew was being re-launched as a website.
7.30 I took a tablet for high blood pressure and another for hay fever and then shaved and took a bath. After my breakfast of fresh fruit and yoghurt prepared by Margaret I also had a bowl of muesli. Margaret leaves for work.
8.00 Switch on the computer to look at the website mentioned earlier and to check twitter and email. I also updated a blog post I had written about the BBC Domesday Project. Washed up the breakfast implements and took the vegetable and fruit trimmings to the compost bin and listened without result to see if the blue-tits had any young in the bird-box.
9.10 Drove 2.5 miles to one of the station car parks. It’s late so I am far from the station but the walk passes by the River Stour and it is always interesting to note the level of the water and that the graffiti has re-appeared on the railway underpass. I queue up at the ticket office to buy a return ticket to London on the high speed train and, with the underground, this costs £32.50. I then buy the Kentish Express to read while I wait for train. The platforms are busy as a train leaves the platform for Dover Priory on one side and another arrives from London and terminates. The 9.34 HS train arrives and it immediately fills with all the seats taken. I read the paper for comments on the Borough Council elections and selection of the Leader of the Council. A new pedestrian bridge is being put in place over the M20 this weekend.
10.30 At St Pancras International Station I take a number 10 double-decker bus to Tottenham Court Road. I send a text to Margaret saying I have bought the local paper so she doesn’t need to get one.
11.00 Meeting at TUC, Congress House with two colleagues overseeing a 32-page document I have drafted based on previous work with a group of teachers. We work through a sandwich lunch making notes page-by-page as we go. I have more work to do on the document but it will have improved from this thorough going-over.
15.00 Number 390 bus back to St Pancras International and catch the 15.42 HS departure back to Ashford International. On the way I read two Geographical Association journals I had received by post on the previous day. I pay £5.00 for the car park, walk back to the car and drive home. 16.45 At home we have post including a subscription reminder and two building society statements. Having just been elected on to the Parish Council there is a large envelope of papers to look through. It’s the first time I am addressed as ‘Cllr’. I take the opportunity to prepare a ring-binder for this paper-work. The computer and the radio is back on. I read, clear and respond to some emails. I get carrots and broccoli from the garage and prepare them for the meal.
18.40 Margaret arrives from work and I switch on the gas hob on to boil water for the pasta and set the microwave for the vegetables. She is in a spin because she has just found out her father is going into hospital on Monday in Cheshire and she will need to re-arrange appointments next week to enable having three days off to help him. We talk about my day and the post I received. There is also a bird-feeder which she had ordered with some product coupons and the postman had left it in the utility box. We have been trying to encourage birds in the garden.
19.00 Margaret has made two phone calls and left the house to drive to a regular circle dancing group in Manston, Kent. After washing up, I put on Radio 2 to listen to Bob Harris’s country music hour and sit down to check for any email and twitter updates.
19.15 – 19.40 The phone rings and it is my mother. We speak about every other day now. She has had an engineer visit to fix her fridge/freezer which is reassuring that it is now working again. She, too, has an operation booked for Monday in Lymington, Hampshire so needs some light hearted banter and she is also pleased to have received an email from her Australian friends. It is beginning to seem worthwhile to have started her using a computing for the first time in her mid-eighties.
20.00 Type this document. Phone rings: it’s a sales call. Flick the radio off and the television on: it’s Watchdog. I sort out the newspapers for the re-cycling box. Checking twitter and it is very busy with teachers in this hour each Thursday.
21.00 Watching episode 2 of a tough ‘police procedural’ programme The Shadow Line on BBC2. It’s a superior British product demanding attention so no reading and watching as usual.
22.00 National and local news on the television, another scan of email and an exchange of banter on twitter followed by Question Time watched in bed. Margaret returns home, we talk of news from her friends and the calls with family and another day is over. Some work done, some family concerns to sort and a new chapter as parish councillor begins.
“I donate my 12th May diary to the Mass Observation Archive. I consent to it being made publically available as part of the Archive and assign my copyright in the diary to the Mass Observation Archive Trustees so that it can be reproduced in full or in part on websites, in publications and in broadcasts as approved by the Trustees”.
Originally posted 13th May 2011 by Angus Willson