{"id":1053,"date":"2011-05-28T17:08:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-28T16:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salvagesisters.wordpress.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2011-06-13T20:12:09","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T20:12:09","slug":"diary-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/?p=1053","title":{"rendered":"Diary genius"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hope you enjoy this guest post from Ali T<\/a> on the story of his amazing revamped diary collection….<\/em><\/p>\n

I am a sucker for nostalgia. For years I have kept shoe boxes full of\u00a0old letters and photographs, and bizarre trinkets that include airline\u00a0sick bags, branded bar napkins and cinema ticket stubs, hoping that\u00a0they will spark fond memories whenever I come to rifle through them\u00a0again. For almost ten years I have been keeping daily diaries to\u00a0chronologue my day to day activity, in the hope that one day I will\u00a0look back on them and remember all the amazing things that I was doing\u00a0with my life; the fun I was having, the places I was going and the\u00a0people that were shaping me.<\/p>\n

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To a certain extent this will be true, because I want to have\u00a0interesting things to remember, and will always be sure to write\u00a0significant places and events down. But because I don’t keep the kind\u00a0of diary where I log my innermost thoughts and by which I can chart\u00a0the development of my character, and instead keep a books full of\u00a0schedules and to-do lists, most of my ‘memories’ will be of\u00a0appointments, shopping lists and train booking reference numbers.<\/p>\n

Even without the wealth of interesting anecdotes to look back on and\u00a0remember the days gone by, I still keep these diaries because I am\u00a0helpless without them. I have a memory like a sieve so if I want to\u00a0get anything done I have to write it down. But perhaps even more than\u00a0the necessity of keeping these diaries for the sake of productivity, I\u00a0keep these diaries because I love making the covers.\u00a0I choose not to buy the trendy moleskin books that boast an air of\u00a0literary accomplishment, but instead opt for cheap primary school\u00a0jotters that allow maximum creative scope. Now you might think that\u00a0covering a child’s jotter would be the easiest thing in the world, but\u00a0what I have learned throughout my extensive jotter-covering\u00a0experience, is that if you want to create a diary of utmost quality,\u00a0there are rules that must be followed and phases of completion that\u00a0must each be concluded in order to provide structural and aesthetic\u00a0integrity to the finished article. I have made 35 to 40 of these books\u00a0in my ‘career’ and have always striven towards each outdoing the last.<\/p>\n

The actual imagery used to cover the diary is of marginal concern in\u00a0comparison to the quality of the assembly of the structure. Over the\u00a0years I have honed the art of diary making. I have gradually\u00a0incorporated ideas that were initially tagged on as an afterthought,\u00a0hidden structural devices in the very fabric of the book, and have\u00a0finished the product with an ever keener eye for quality, parallel\u00a0lines and perfect right angles.<\/p>\n

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But let me not detract from how important it is for me to continually\u00a0out-do myself on aesthetics, as well as on structure. Where my first\u00a0diary featured a cover made from a purple striped paper bag adorned\u00a0with a postcard of Donegal, my most recent diary involved the gluing\u00a0of 210 individual 2nd class stamps to the front cover in nice neat\u00a0rows. In the past it was easy; I just had to find a single sheet of\u00a0paper to use as a cover that was slightly more bizarre than the last.<\/p>\n

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Diary covers of old have included music manuscripts, pages from the\u00a0Oxford English dictionary, movie posters, my Italian lecture notes,\u00a0property listings from an Edinburgh newspaper dated 1952, and the\u00a0piece of crepe paper that my Dunlop Green Flash shoes came wrapped in.<\/p>\n

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But now, with the introduction of over 200 individual covering\u00a0elements coming together in unison, the bar has certainly been raised!\u00a0Some might say that I am a little bit OCD when it comes to my diary\u00a0making. I can’t really argue with that, in fact I would probably\u00a0agree. I love trying to make a more interesting and accomplished\u00a0finished article. This most recent idea using stamps will be hard to\u00a0trump, but I look forward to the challenge of trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hope you enjoy this guest post from Ali T on the story of his amazing revamped diary collection…. I am a sucker for nostalgia. For years I have kept shoe boxes full of\u00a0old letters and photographs, and bizarre trinkets that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tullyroan.com\/salvagesisters\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}