I have been bad at letting the Diaries of my Great Great Aunt Kate slip. There are just not enough daylight hours, or I don’t have the strength at the end of the day when I’ve finished making sheep, to sit down and type out teensy-tiny writing for an hour or so.
But they pray on my mind and I am genuinely keen to finish the project properly but at the rate I’m going, I might not. I have only reached 1937 and she died in 1961. You can do the math(s).
So this morning, instead of sitting at the kitchen table achieving very little apart from drinking a cup of coffee, I started transcribing the 1937 diary because I must keep going. The writing doesn’t get any bigger as the years go by either.
After a good few hours, I had finished January and mostly put it on the internet page along with accompanying photos. I needed to get some fresh air, stretch my legs and it was time to take the dogs out for a walk.
We happened upon Iacs having his morning snooze in the sun.
Haakon spotted me and wandered over to see if his cousin was getting anything nice to eat.
Oh, ok!
The dogs had a good time hunting and, as usual, catching nothing but enjoying themselves nonetheless.
After a good walk, we returned to find Monster guarding the house from invaders.
Luckily, he is very good at his job. There were none around.
So my day has a new structure now. I need to keep going with the diaries because I know myself and will never finish. Onwards, ever onwards.
My sister has a motto I use all the time “do the worst first” this way you get the dreaded chore done and can
move on to more enjoyable things.
I like that. Now, where to start!
Love the last photo of Pepper “guarding” the chickens.
Thanks for this…..
I’m even further behind with reading them!
Seriously though, I think it would be wise to leave the diaries to a specific person so you need to discuss it with your daughters. In the first place you wouldn’t one of them to feel left out but on the other hand you would not want the diaries to fall by the wayside and accidentally get overlooked and lost. They are of great importance to your family, to distant relatives and even to national archives.
I have recently joined the Society of Genealogists and they recently gave a talk about the importance of family letters to genealogy. They are happy to give such things a home. I think they might be very interested in housing Great-aunt Kate’s Diaries at some point in time. Here is a link to their website article about depositing research with them: https://www.sog.org.uk/depositing-materials-with-us/
It’s worth thinking about how to look after such a unique and interesting source of material for the years after our own lives.
I am determined to finish this project, Judith. I started it and somehow it doesn’t feel fair on my daughters to lumber them with this. Thank you for the link too. I will bear that in mind, though I did talk to Irving Finkel about them. He runs The Great Diary Project.
Ah yes, I think you mentioned him previously. I do think it’s worthwhile to ensure the diaries are preserved for the future.