The Diary That Nobody Reads

DAY SEVENTEEN: Sunday 17th January 2021

Dave’s Diary, the diary that nobody reads !  I began writing a daily blog in December 2016, it was fun. I never had a day with fewer than one hundred readers, on three separate occasions my daily readership topped three thousand. However, now writing this 2021 daily diary as part of my challenge to write one million words across the year I am lucky if I need two hands to count the numbers.

I BLAME GOOGLE. This unintelligent internet giant destroyed the format of Google Blogger when it redesigned it last year. It has also now silenced it right across the blogosphere. Geeks, don’t you just hate them !

This daily diary will be published in twelve monthly editions on Amazon. Not that many will read it there but I am writing what I hope will be a cyber time capsule for society in years to come to read. Will there be a society in years to come ? Will society survive china virus ?

Day Seventeen and now half way into the first month of 2021 and as of this paragraph I have written 18,176 words. Each day I have had certain features and these are developing: SMILE OF THE DAY  ON THIS DAY  WORDS  BEHIND THE NUMBERS 4am MOMENT. I am going to add ALTERNATIVE DIARY, READERS and perhaps more. So……………

SMILE OF THE DAY:

Walk away from people who put you down. Walk away from fights that will never be resolved. Walk away from trying to please people who will never see your worth. The more you walk away from things that poison your soul, the healthier you will be. SMILE.

Some sound advice there, advice I need to take myself.

READERS: Ah well ! On Google Blogger this page attracted a giant audience of – wait for it – 2. Oh dear, what a shame never mind.

4am MOMENT: My 4am moment each day comes as I slowly move from deep sleep to waking. Ideas burst into my head ready for the day. My 4am moment came at 5am today – he he.  I am working on a crime-fiction story. The crime fiction stories I have already written and have on my Amazon Bookshelf are different to the norm. Agatha Christie is the world’s best selling author, she died in 1976 and yet her books are sold each and every day. Why ?  Her stories are rubbish. Her plots are totally unbelievable and she never develops her characters, they go into a situation as they are and come out the other end exactly the same. What they go through does nothing to change them. That said by an author, your truly, who sold one book on Amazon yesterday against Agatha’s total sales which top two billion.

The book I am writing right now BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS THE DIARY OF A SERIAL KILLER is different, my style of crime writing is different. Yesterday I rewrote the opening draft, made it darker and more sinister. I am now introducing characters to the story: Detective Chief Inspector Jack Jackson and someone who right now is not named, today I will name him – Zane aka Insane Zane. No, Zane is not the killer. At five o’clock this morning my head leaped up in the air as my brain told me how I am going to develop the character of Jack Jackson.

That was one 4am or should I say 5am moment. The other if for a more factual crime investigation BEHIND THE NOOSE. I will speak more about that in future editions of the diary nobody reads.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS:  Pleas can I ask you every night as you lay your head on the pillow to sleep to pause and think of the real people behind the numbers the media feeds to us each day. Yesterday forty-one thousand, three hundred and forty-six new cases of the

virus were recorded. One thousand, two hundred and ninety-five people lost their lives. REAL people with grieving families for whom today will be a terrible day. REAL people who were loved and cared for by beautiful doctors and nurses within our NHS, our NHS which is at breaking point but will not break because of the love each and every member of staff has.

Please spend a few moments before you sleep tonight loving the REAL people behind the numbers.

Before I move on to ON THIS DAY I would like to share something I watched on TV yesterday. The news feature showed vaccinations in Delhi India. As each person was vaccinated they were give a red rose – a red rose of love. How special was that. The report then went on to talk about the role India had played in dealing with the polio virus – polio, poliomyelitis. Many people today will never have heard of that virus. As a child I knew people who had suffered from the disease which attacked the muscles and caused paralysis. I knew a girl who was confined to a wheelchair, I knew a boy who walked with callipers on his legs. I did not know anyone whose breathing muscles were attacked but those who were ended up in an iron lung, a pressure chamber which pushed the chest up and down to force breathing.

Nobody today knows what polio was. Will a day ever come when people will not know what this virus is. I hope not.

ON THIS DAY: Thank you Wikipedia for your help as each day I surf you lists. However, I only report on dates within my lifetime and events I remember. Off we go for today.

17th January 1991: Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning as aircraft strike positions across Iraq, it is also the first major combat sortie for the F-117. LCDR Scott Speicher's F/A-18C Hornet from VFA-81 is shot down by a Mig-25 and is the first American casualty of the War. Iraq fires eight Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation. That I remember. I know people who served in that war.

17th January 1996: The Czech Republic applies for membership of the European Union. Silly people.

17th January 1964: Michelle Obama, 46th First lady of USA was born. Happy Birthday Michelle.

Tomorrow we’ll see what happened on 18th January.

WORDS: Yesterday I added 3,537 words bringing my writing total since 1st January to 201,716. The plan is to write a minimum of one million words and to publish these within at lease twenty-four books on Amazon. Right now I have published five e-books.

Yesterday I added 722 words to my crime story. 1,342 words were used to write the diary page. 1,473 words were used to add new quiz sheets to WHO NEEDS A PUB TO HAVE A QUIZ. I completed quiz sheets: Poetry In Motion and Shops. I began work on a series of sheets looking at various decades. Each will have twenty-five questions before adding them to the draft. This is how things look this morning.

1930’s – 14 questions

1940’s – 12 questions

1950’s – 24 questions

1960’s – 24 questions

1970’s – 9 questions

1980’s – 2 questions

1990’s – 2 questions

Each week I send out quiz sheets to various people. I have promised a care home that all of

the decade sheets will be ready for them some time next week. I had better get a move on. Tomorrow our NHS quiz and SMILE cards will be sent to our hospital of the week which is Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital. A Quiz For Teachers is on its way to Oakgrove School and Animal Crackers will be in foot boxes distributed by Dreamsai to people in need.

ALTERNATIVE DIARY: One of the questions in one of the quiz sheets I am working on reads: Mrs Dale’s Diary, what did Mrs Dale’s husband do for a living ?  Mrs Dale's Diary was the first significant BBC radio serial drama. It was first broadcast on 5 January 1948 on the BBC Light Programme, which became Radio 2 in 1967; it ran until 25 April 1969. A new episode was broadcast each weekday afternoon, with a repeat the following morning. I’ll tell you more during the coming days.

 

Also within the coming days I will add a new feature BOOK OF THE WEEK but right now it’s time to sign off.

 

Speak again tomorrow

Dave

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