…Did SMP and Comprehension corrections.
At Lunch Mrs Barker [one of the dinner ladies] spilt a whole tray of yoghurt on the floor.
Continuing boring project on grasslands and deserts.
Not taking part in the Loughborough Schools Swimming Gala. HOORAY…

I’m kind of more interested in what I’ve not mentioned in this entry than what I’ve put in.

By 29 April 1986 Chernobyl was all over the news. I wouldn’t have not been aware of it.

Yet I decided to fill my diary with stuff about yoghurt and swimming galas, rather than potential impending radiation poisoning.

I know I would have been alarmed. I know I would have dug out the plans I had drawn for a homemade nuclear bunker under our back garden, and pinned them pointedly on the corkboard on my bedroom wall in the hope they would be spotted and commented upon.

But still I chose to omit Chernobyl entirely from my diary entry for today and indeed every day over the next few weeks.

Maybe some things were just too horrific, or perhaps too far-fetched, for me even to confide in secret.