The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

The kind folks over at The Orwell Prize have begun a remarkable project: a daily blog post corresponding to George Orwell’s diary entries of 70 years ago. Here’s today’s entry:

This morning all surfaces, even indoors, damp as a result of mist. A curious deposit all over my snuff-box, evidently residue of moisture acting on lacquer.

Very hot, but rain in afternoon.

Am told the men caught another snake this morning – definitely a grass snake this time. The man who saw them said they had tied a string round its neck & were trying to cut out its tongue with a knife, the idea being that after this it could not “sting.”¹

The first Beauty of Bath apples today.

Fantastic. I love the attention to detail rather than style. It is simply a record. And that’s the difference between keeping a diary and blogging. Unless you’re a bit of a megalomaniac, you’re not writing your diary so that it can be read by other people.