Wine, or cheese?

In the course of sorting out the junk in my spare room I have discovered a collection of diaries dating back to 1976. As I've never been very consistent in keeping records these journals are quite patchy; there might be regular entries for a few months, or even weeks, and then nothing for months. Some are written in proper, page-a-day diaries, but many are in a motley collection of notebooks.

To save space I've decided to transcribe them before throwing them out - it's been an interesting exercise and I've learned a few interesting things about myself in the process.

Those who know me will be aware that my memory is not very reliable; until I started using the Google Calendar I was constantly double- (and sometimes triple-) booking myself. Recently, on the basis of some not very definite evidence, I stopped taking the cholesterol-reducing drugs I had been taking for several years, with the hope of some improvement in my memory function.

However, looking at my scribblings from the early 1980s makes me realise that my memory was just as bad back then; some entries mention these problems specifically. So perhaps in a few months when I have my regular battery of tests done and my current regime of diet and exercise hasn't managed to keep my cholesterol levels down I am inclined to return to taking the statins.

Probably the most surprising thing I've found in these diaries is the person I was nearly thirty years ago; I don't really like who I was then. I was self-centred, lazy, wasteful, amazingly promiscuous and frankly, quite often pretty obnoxious. Certainly there is ample evidence that I was nice to friends, kind to animals and children but the overall picture I get in these journals is of someone I would not like to spend time with.

I think I've certainly improved with age.