I used to be bought the Letts Schoolboy Diary every year as a Christmas stocking filer. January's became crammed with spidery text telling of snowball massacres, worm executions, tries almost scored and faint glimpses of teachers' cleavage.
By mid-February a pattern emerged: "Got up. Went to school. Came home. Had tea".
At an early age, I'd discovered the tyranny of a diary's expectation. How they...