{"id":1652,"date":"2016-10-17T12:19:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T11:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2016-10-17T12:19:07","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T11:19:07","slug":"keeping-a-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/2016\/10\/17\/keeping-a-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping a diary"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>If Shakespeare had kept a diary there would arguably be far fewer books written about him.<\/em><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1660 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/selfpublishingforthetechnicallychallenged.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/10\/shakespeare-2.jpg\" alt=\"shakespeare-2\" width=\"297\" height=\"347\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">If we knew for instance<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">What he got up to during the &#8216;missing years&#8217; <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">How he got to leave his\u00a0home in Stratford and fetch up as an actor\/playwright in London<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">How much of the 37 plays he actually wrote<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Whether Shakespeare was Shakespeare or someone else<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Who the Dark Lady of the sonnets was<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Whether or not he got on with his wife<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Etc etc etc<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">We wouldn&#8217;t need to endlessly speculate. And it would not be half as much fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\">~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align:left;\"><em><strong>What will people say about you when you&#8217;re gone?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Diary-less ancestors tend to be remembered for what they did rather than what they might have said. Or rather for what they did that made the public records. So we are likely to know more about men than women, especially if they played a prominent part in society.\u00a0We may also know more about the ones who got into trouble,\u00a0and the ones with police records, especially if they ended up in Australia.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1729\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1729\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-1729 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/selfpublishingforthetechnicallychallenged.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/10\/silhouette-sepia-again.png\" alt=\"silhouette-sepia-again\" width=\"290\" height=\"353\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1729\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Who was Mary Pitt?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">As a family historian I&#8217;<\/span><span style=\"color:#000000;\">d have given anything for my ancestors to have kept diaries\u00a0so I knew exactly why my four times great grandmother decided to emigrate to a penal colony.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">On the other hand lacking the facts gives one scope for one&#8217;s imagination;\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color:#000000;\">so what would have been a case of simple transcribing becomes something rather more creative. The challenge of filling in the gaps while remaining as true as possible to the character you think your four times great grandmother was, for instance, is a fascinating one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">A certain amount of mystery is no bad thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">If you want to read the story of my pioneering Australian ancestress please click here:\u00a0<em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/dp\/B008CF36AQ\">The Worst Country in the World<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align:justify;\">\u00a0<em><strong>Who was Claudia Faraday?<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1766\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1766\" style=\"width: 253px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1766 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/selfpublishingforthetechnicallychallenged.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/10\/brown-flipped-smaller.jpg?w=239\" alt=\"brown-flipped-smaller\" width=\"253\" height=\"318\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1766\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Claudia Faraday?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Claudia kept a detailed diary of a crucial period\u00a0in her life when she made a discovery that altered her entire outlook on life and on the people in it. The fact that she kept this diary in her loft, to be discovered by generations to come, suggests to me she wanted them to be found, and to be published.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Nonetheless such was the intimate nature of the diary\u00a0I went to great lengths to protect her reputation by not just changing her name but the names, and some details, of her daughters and her friends, and a few other bits and pieces beside.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">So I defy anyone to identify her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">If you&#8217;d like to read her story click here: <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/dp\/B015QMQ5VE\">The Unlikely Adventures of Claudia Faraday.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align:justify;\"><em><strong>Have you kept a diary?<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">I have, from time to time. It makes for hilarious and sometimes embarrassing reading. It is also a handy reminder of the person you once used to be, and if you think &#8211; as I often have \u00a0&#8211; you are still an eighteen-year-old wrapped up in a middle-aged woman&#8217;s body, it is good to be reminded that, actually, you aren&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">But I wouldn&#8217;t want anyone to read them, no way. Unlike Claudia I will make a point of destroying them before I pop my clogs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Shakespeare had kept a diary there would arguably be far fewer books written about him. If we knew for instance What he got up to during the &#8216;missing years&#8217; How he got to leave&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/2016\/10\/17\/keeping-a-diary\/\">More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,9,11,16,18,28,29,30],"tags":[82,193,239],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}