Twenty seven years ago today, much to my Mum’s horror, I left to go travelling solo around the world. I remember picking my ticket up from STA Travel (thanks Stuart), the rucksack purchase, the guide books I bought. I really, really wanted to buy a new camera too, but the budget didn’t stretch that far. Days before leaving, with Mum’s anxiety levels rising, Dad arrived home from work. He had a surprise. A new camera. But it had conditions. He then presented me with a hardback notebook. A diary he said, to record the trip, to write down what I saw and did, because our memory fails us. He knew I’d never written a diary, it’s not my thing, but he seemed strangely adamant.
And whilst I’d never journaled before, I honoured that agreement and I wrote in it every day. It became a little evening ritual wherever I was in the world. And when I filled it I bought another. And another. And I took photos. Hundreds and hundreds of them of them. A box with 1000’s of negatives and my diaries have sat in various lofts for over two decades. It’s time to revisit them.