Luxury: My Diary

Daily writing prompt

What’s the one luxury you can’t live without?

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This reminds me of BBC 4’s Desert Island Discs, with its 2,499 episodes, all available to listen to. And you can see the chosen luxury items on Wikipedia.

This being a Christian blog, I should say The Bible, but you get that by default on Desert Island Discs, and for me, it’s an essential item.

So, what will I choose? I feel that it might be cheating to ask for a phone or computer, because these allow you to access all kinds of films, music, books etc. So, I would think in terms of something like my guitar or piano.

However, I would be very sorry to lose my diary, which is a sort of bulleted list of my life, month by month. I didn’t often keep a diary, but one of my hobbies is to consider each month of my life, and to try to see what I can remember.

So, let’s take July 1975 as an example (when I was 13).

July 1975

Singles

• 10cc – I’m Not in Love
• Van McCoy – The Hustle
• Roy Wood – Oh What a Shame
• Johnny Nash – Tears on My Pillow
• Gilbert O’Sullivan – I Don’t Love You but I Think I Like You
• Mud – Moonshine Sally
• Ray Stevens – Misty
• Tammy Wynette – DIVORCE
• Elton John – Someone Saved My Life Tonight
• Bee Gees – Jive Talkin’

Albums

• Roger Daltrey – Ride a Rock Horse
• Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
• Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac
• Bob Marley & The Wailers – Live!
• Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
• The Eagles – One of These Nights

Significant Events

• Miami Showband Murders
• Savoy cinema in Cork Closed as a cinema
• Pink Floyd debuted their album Wish You Were Here at the Knebworth Festival in England on July 5, featuring pyrotechnics and an exploding plane

Films Showing in Cork Cinemas

• Pavilion – Three Musketeers (which I saw)
• ​Lee – The Way We Were​ and The Dove
• Palace – That’s Entertainment​

Personal

• Went to Crosshaven for holidays
• Heard someone playing the Band on the Run album by Wings in the Crosshaven Community Centre – there was a sort of a bazaar and disco there one day.
• Heard George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord for the first time on my transistor radio as I walked home from the beach. I had bought the radio two year’s earlier with the money I made from my confirmation. I heard a song called Now It’s Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Alice Cooper, Elton John by Clive Baldwin on the same walk.
• Saw Paul O’Leary performing in the Munster Arcade, Cork on 19th – he was a local ballad singer, who lived just 5-mins away. He released an album of Cork music; Beautiful City
• Using Valderma cream on my acne – I didn’t have much acne, but I fondly remember the odour of the cream.

TV Shows on RTE (Our only channel in 1975)

• These are the Days (our “Simpsons”)
• The Pallisers
• Salty (A pet seal)
• Edward 7th
• Kojak
• The Ghost and Mrs Muir
• The Brothers
• The Debbie Reynolds Show
• Last House
• To The Waters and the Wild
• Lost in Space

I’ve put the diary in various formats over the years, but I’d hate to lose it, especially now that I know of so many people with dementia. I’d like to have access to all this for the rest of my life.

I always try to see if I can find any spiritual songs in the secular charts for any given year. For 1975, it’s Hot Chocolate’s A Child’s Prayer:

So say a little prayer, baby
For all the children just like you
Growing like a flower in the morning dew
Say a little prayer that they may grow to see
The world full of love and harmony

I didn’t particularly like the song, and they weren’t any kind of a gospel group, but it’s always good to hear about prayer. And I did like Errol Brown’s voice.

I don’t have any spiritual memories from July 1975. I was big into the Beatles, and I did like the way George Harrison was vocal about his faith. I had yet to meet any evangelicals. I knew about Protestantism, but to me, they were like Catholics who didn’t believe in Mary. That’s all. I do remember hearing about Martin Luther in history class a few months before and how he said that you are saved by faith. As a Roman Catholic, the notion that you could be sure of salvation was very appealing, though it seemed too good to be true. Then, shortly after, perhaps in the Winter of 1975, I started reading the Bible and discovered why Luther said that.

Eph 2:8-10
⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

You can read the full story of my journey to faith in the Conversion Chronology post.

If I’m allowed an even greater luxuary, it would be a time machine, where I could actually become invisible and visit every month of my life. But I’m just thankful for all the happy memories.