No.119, Wednesday, 8th. April 2026

I do not feel well this morning, with what appears to be a debilitating stomach ache that is from time to time verging on painful. Whatever it is, it kept me in bed longer than usual this morning and has prevented me from getting ready for the day – I am still in my pyjamas. A shower will make me feel better – it always does – and I can only hope that it also, in some degree at least, relieves the aches and pains.

As for my Substack diary, I am not at all sure that I should post this. Who wants to read this sort of thing? On the other hand, it is my diary and it reflects what is on my mind at this point in time. Which brings me to why I post a diary online for all to see in the first place.

Firstly, it is possible that someone living in a different part of the world and whose life is entirely different to mine, may have a passing interest in what it might be like to live in my part of the world. Secondly, it is also possible, no matter how remote, that someone may come across this diary in the 22nd. century, somehow surviving amid all the destruction of preceding decades, and find it a useful guide to life in the early 21st. century from the point of view of an ordinary person. Not that anyone is ‘ordinary’ in my view; each one of us is an extraordinary individual in many ways.

Finding the diaries of past royalty, bishops, dukes, politicians, musicians, artists and so forth has fed history for centuries. But what of those who plough the fields, work in factories, bring up a family on a low income? Or for that matter of a Devonian whose life took unusual turns along a crooked but eventful path that was anything but ordinary, leading perversely to his present state of penance?