There was a heavy snowfall back in January 1982.

I remember that it was January ‘82 because that was when I started my diary.

Actually, it was a journal not a diary, because men don’t write diaries unless they are Samuel Pepys and he is dead.

The journal was one of those A5 day-per-page yokes that offices like to issue to their minions where they are supposed to write in appointments and boring shit like that.  As I never bothered keeping appointments the book was just there, waiting to be filled in.  So I started writing.

I had never bothered writing anything before, but I kept at it, day after day, month after month, year after year.

I grew quite an impressive bookcase full of the things.  Each day was meticulously recorded in great tedious boring detail.  One thing I can guarantee is that those books will never see the inside of a publisher’s office.  Each year though I tried to get a new diary that looked as near as possible to the old ones, so when they are stacked on the bookcase they look really neat and tidy.

I kept it up through the Eighties and the Nineties.  The New Millennium was recorded and the diaries continued.  I used to fill ‘em in each evening before going to bed.

One evening in 2009 I was thinking about hitting the sack, and there was the diary waiting to be filled in.

It sat there challenging me.

On the spur of the moment I said fuck that, and I went to bed.

I haven’t put pen to paper since then.

I’m not quite sure why I stopped.  I am fairly sure it was because it was tedious.  Each entry had become a repetition of the previous day.  At times I was just tempted to enter one word to fill the entry – Ditto.  It became tedious trying to find something different each day to write about.  One way or another, I didn’t plan on stopping.  It was a spur of the moment thing and I don’t regret it.

Now I can’t help but wonder if the same will happen here.  Will I sit down to do a scribble and just say fuck it?  Will I just decide not to bother one day, and just leave this site to gather dust?  The intriguing thing is that the Big Stop won’t be planned.  There will be no big fanfare and no gigantic farewells.  It will just stop.

I don’t plan on stopping.

But then I didn’t plan on stopping the journal either.