I love reading diaries. I don't mean peeking a look at someone's private jottingsbut published diaries. Samuel Pepys's diary is a gem, but I also like the mundane happenings of ordinary people.

By chance, I came across a copy of 'The Red Leather Diary'. It gives a glimpse into the lifeof a young girlfindingher independence in New York during the early part of the twentieth century. She is very daring and uses money she's won in a writing competition to defy her parents and travel to Europe. (She soon gives the chaperone the slip and the fun can begin).

For almost seventy years the diary was forgotten. It was only whenanapartment was being cleared thatit was found by a janitor.Knowing a young journalist whomight be interested, he saved it for her and she traced the writer to Florida.

'House Wife No 47' and 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady', also gave me many happy hours of reading.I'm interested in the minutiae of people's lives.

I forget what prompted him, but Peter once remarkedthat minor irritationsvexed me, butthe big things in life hadgone unnoticed by me. This reminded me of Charles Dickens's assertion that life is composed of trifles; this might have been saidaboutdiaries, too. It is the details about the wholewheat bread for tea,spread with plumjam, the clothes peggedon the line for three days thatare still wet, that interestme.

At the moment I am readingthe handwritten diary ofAgnes Griffiths, a Pembrokeshire housewife. The diary is for the year 1882 and gives glimpses of the daily round of chores, enlivened bytrips to market to sell eggs or a fowl.

On Thursday, 2nd April, Agnes finds that rats have got into the calf's cot and eaten three gosling eggs, leaving only twenty one, 'Such a pity'.

Friday 3rd and Baby Gwladys is a little better. 'Busy all day. Killed a fowl for dinner'.

Saturday 4th:'I went to market. Sold twenty eggs. Made baby's biscuits by dinner. Gwladys better'.

What will I write in my diary tonight? 'Arranged white chrysanthemums spiked with red berries in a large glass vase. Wanted to impress my mother who was visiting. We had salad and cold pork followed by apple sponge with cream for tea'.