I did not decide to write my life. I decided to sort a few dates.
The difference lasted about a week.
The local history group had asked members to bring a memory connected with a place. I wrote about the move from Portsmouth to Portchester in 1969. When Claire read it, she asked what else I had written down.
I showed her the notes I had made after Alan died and several lists from family photograph albums.
‘You should put these together,’ she said.
Michael’s response was more cautious.
‘Not everything goes online.’
He had already made that point in 2022. I told him I remembered.
On 3 February 2025, I began the Life Archive on the computer in the bungalow. I entered my name, birth date and the places I had lived. Then I created a list of memories in date order.
The date order did not last long. Some memories had exact dates from certificates or diaries. Others had only a year, a decade or an argument between two relatives.
I made three groups.
Public entries could appear on the website.
Private entries were for authorised family members.
Draft Notes held memories I had not confirmed or finished.
This was more useful than pretending I knew everything.
I began with my birth, using the certificate and Mum’s account. I added Peter’s question about whether I was staying. I marked that one as a story told to me because I could not remember being two days old, despite what family retellings sometimes implied.
Claire helped with the grandchildren’s dates and checked the spelling of Simon’s middle name. Michael reviewed the privacy settings before reading any prose.
I added People and Places so the entries could be browsed in more than one way. Portsmouth led to Portchester, then Fareham, Havant and Emsworth. Alan appeared across work, marriage, holidays, family life and loss. The same people and places appeared under several headings.
I worked on the archive two or three times a week. Some days I wrote a full memory. On others, I changed a date, added a name or admitted that I did not know.
I left the unfinished entries as drafts.