Tag: Diary
Country diary: Avian flu is devastating the seabirds of the Northern Isles
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Walking the Orkney shoreline, usually such a peaceful and calming activity, has been more disturbing of late. Along the strand, a succession of small bedraggled forms lie prone – victims of the avian flu ripping throu...
Young country diary: I lie in my garden and let spring wash over me
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I wake up every morning at the moment with a spring in my step, as I know it is my favourite season. The sun blazes down, warming the earth, as the fluffy clouds slowly part. In my back garden I can see the young spro...
My teenage Prozac diary
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Abba pulses through the nightclub and I dramatically burst into tears due to a recent breakup. I apologise for my outcry to friends over a late-night takeaway. I watch The Worst Person in the World on a Sunday night s...
Ukraine country diary is a balm for the soul
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I’ve avidly read the country diary for more than 50 years. Many of the contributors have made me gasp in wonder at their sense of being humans in their natural landscapes of time and place, most notably in times of wa...
‘My nerves collapsed’: Ukrainian girl vlogs horror of Mariupol under siege – video diary
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When the Russian invasion reached Mariupol in Ukraine at the end of February, Alena Zagreba, 15, went from filming vlogs with her friends to chronicling the destruction of her home city.While most people hid in bunker...
Country diary: Willow tits are here, but good luck with seeing one
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The numerous bird feeders here are permanently stocked and flocked around by garden birds. Long-tailed, blue, coal and great tits pop up every second or so; and sparrows come and go with goldfinches, while reed buntin...
Diary of a director: ‘I am buzzing off the passion and sweat of this gang’
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This is a massive show. After two years of working on Zoom, we are finally in a room, with 15 live and kicking cast members, the writer Douglas Maxwell, composing team Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly, designer Emily James...
Diary of a Somebody review – stunning drama from Joe Orton’s journal
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‘I’ve high hopes of dying young,” announces Joe Orton cheerfully in Diary of a Somebody. He got his wish: the author of barbed, subversive comedies such as Entertaining Mr Sloane and Loot was murdered in 1967 at the a...
‘God has left Mariupol’: diary entries chart horror of besieged city in Ukraine
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At 3.50 on the cold morning of 24 February, Iryna Prudkova, 50, received a message on Telegram from her 24-year-old daughter, Valeria, who lives in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. “Are you listening to Putin?,” Valeria’s mes...
Kherson diary: ‘Now we know in person our heroes and our traitors’
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Now in their third week under Russian occupation, Kherson residents have resisted attempts to declare the city a “people’s republic”. But in a third dispatch for the Observer, two female journalists, whose identities ...
Young country diary: An ode to the arrival of spring
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Spring is my favourite time of year. Flowers sprout up, a sign that it’s here. Frosty winds begin to depart; I get a happy feeling in my heart. Around every corner, every plant has a story to tell. They turn into snow...
Young country diary: There’s a flying hotdog in my garden
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At the back of our house we have some bird feeders – they’re very busy and I love to pull up a chair to watch. There’s always something to see, like blue tits, coal tits, sparrows, siskins and nuthatches. But the othe...
Ukraine: a war diary from Lviv – photo essay
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For the inhabitants of Lviv, being woken up in the middle of the night by the air raid siren is a warning that, despite being untouched so far by the bombings, the time may also come for them. In over 10 years of work...
Diary of a disaster: the week that Tonga went silent
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It was the week Tonga disappeared. Riveted by the shocking satellite images of the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano and subsequent tsunami, the eyes of the world turned to the South Pacific island cou...
Country diary 1922: sympathy for the hunted fox
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Perhaps a country diarist may be allowed to comment on the correspondence about foxhunting, especially as one advocate of thesport signs himself “Nature Lover.” He affirms that the fox “expects to be hunted,” but do w...
A headteacher’s diary: ‘First day back and we have 13 staff absent’
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Evelyn Forde, the headteacher of Copthall school in north-west London and vice-president of the Association of School and College Leaders, shares her diary from the first week back at school in 2022 as she grapples wi...