Edel Coffey: A recent email from an old landlord struck fear into my heart

I could imagine with great vividness the faux-literary bedroom ramblings of 15-year-old me.

I recently received an email, forwarded on from my agent, with the subject heading: ‘Edel Coffey personal materials found in my attic.’ Now there’s a line to strike fear into your heart if ever there was one!

I carefully opened the email as if it might explode and read the note through my fingers. It was from a former landlady who, upon clearing out her house, had discovered said personal items and very kindly tried to track me down to return them. I had bought a self-addressed postage label and sent it to her faster than you can say ‘Dear God no!’.

I knew immediately what the personal materials were. I could visualise them all too clearly. Old notebooks and diaries dating as far back as secondary school. I had put them away in the attic, out of harm’s way and promptly forgot about them. I could imagine with great vividness the faux-literary bedroom ramblings of 15-year-old me.

I texted some writer friends who I knew would understand the horror of old diaries rattling around like ghosts in limbo. They cringed in sympathy and shared their notebook war stories, agreeing that a writer with an unaccounted-for diary was like a shepherd with a missing lamb. There could be no peace until the missing notebooks were back under my protection.

The idea of a diary is such an evocative one. I realise we’re all into journalling these days, writing down the things we are grateful for and Instagramming our bullet journal technique but when I was a teenager diaries were secret things to be hidden away, a means of making a mundane, suburban adolescent life seem exciting, a way of pretending to yourself that you had anything nearly as exciting as secrets to keep.

These days my diaries and notebooks are mercifully functional notes to self that are almost cryptic in their brevity, a line about an idea for a story or a book, an aide-mémoire for future reference. But I was once a very diligent diary keeper, writing long and detailed entries, accounts of holidays and events, relationships and friendships, and embarrassingly detailed tracts on feelings. 

I even packed a diary in my maternity bag so I could record my immediate intimate thoughts on the whole childbirth thing (spoiler alert: I didn’t have much time for journalling once the babies arrived). So you can see why I was so agitated by the news that some of these teenage diaries were floating in space.

Edel Coffey: I was so agitated by the news that some of these teenage diaries were floating in space. Picture: Ray Ryan

I don’t mind telling you that the few days waiting for the diaries to make their way back to me felt among the longest of my life. What if they accidentally fell off the back of the postal lorry? What if someone found them and posted them on Twitter (yes, I’m still calling it Twitter)? Of course, teenage me wrote my full name on my ‘secret’ diaries.

A few days later I discovered the heavy package on my doorstep. I heaved a sigh of relief but I surprised myself by not opening the package for several days. Did I really want to be confronted with my old self, the one who thought she was writing thoughts of great profundity? I found the answer was no but after a few days passed I was curious to discover what was in the package.

There was much more there than I had remembered. Not just diaries but ticket stubs and set lists from concerts, a torn stub from an Eddie Izzard performance in the West Village from the summer I did my J1 in New York. 

Intriguingly, there was an envelope of undeveloped photo negatives from a semester spent studying in Chicago. A folder full of press clippings from my early years in a band and working as a radio presenter, which I presumed I had thrown away.

Then there was the old wooden cigar box full of letters, cards, and notes, not just from old boyfriends but more interestingly from old friends, some of whom I have completely lost touch with. 

I had forgotten how involved and intense those early college friendships can be and of course had forgotten that we barely used mobile phones or email at that time so we still wrote each other letters when we went abroad.

I suppose that’s one of the nicest things about finding old diaries and personal materials like this. It reminds you of the way things once were, the way you once were and with the advantage of age, experience and retrospect, it might even allow you to see your younger self through more compassionate eyes.

Diaries like these, however cringe-making, are artefacts of our own histories, pathways back to parts of ourselves that would otherwise remain inaccessible, a map to see how we have changed over time. 

Embarrassment aside, I am glad to have these diaries and mementos back in my possession. I am grateful to my former landlady for not just throwing them in the bin, because diaries, no matter how poorly written, are, and always will be, sacred.