vada abditae

By TomS

A journal for one's times

This is the journal of Mark Swaddle for May, June, July an August of an (unfortunately) unspecified year 1914 (I should have read the right hand page!). Apparently Mark kept a journal for 50 years from 1868 to 1918. He worked in mining as a pithead engineer and trade union leader. He was religious and a teetotaller and his hobbies were mending watches and growing strawberries.

Mr Swaddle was writing his journal at a time when many detailed and reflective diaries were being published (as well as works of fiction in journal form), and he clearly had the time and education to write such a journal, and yet what he wrote was a record of major events - from storms through Sunday School picnics to deaths and injuries at the mine - in strict factual style with no adornment and not even a daily pattern. For those who like word-games, it is both quotidian and not even quotidian.

Anyway, the journal stimulated me to think a little about Blipfoto and my own blipping behaviour. I doubt I'll keep going for 50 years though, however intermittently.

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