Writing History

I`ve never been one to like a lot of history. It was my least favourite subject at school because I couldn`t see the point of learning about what happened hundreds of years ago. But, I`ve had an interesting day today with history. A much better day than I`d thought.

Looking through old documents and meeting minutes from the late 1800`s and early 1900`s it was fascinating reading. Getting a insight into the people and situations then, a lot of which haven`t really changed over all those years. I had to smile on reading one particular entry in which it said. "If Mr. X hasn`t done the job by Monday we`ll get someone else to do it". Which had a tone of saying we`ve waited long enough for him and we`re fed up with waiting. And also in another section they were trying to remedy the problem of the draught the organist was complaining about, also a problem I`ve know of here in recent years.

One thing that had changed is the length and detail which we write now-a-days compared to then. The earliest reports I was reading, of whole meetings, were no longer than half the page of an exercise book size, today we type at least 2 or even 3 large A4 pages per meeting, which when hand-written into a ledger cover 4 or 5 pages of A4, and that`s with writing it small.

It started me wondering, what will people in 100 or more years time think about Minutes from meetings that I write in ledgers in this era? What will they make of the things we write about. Makes me think, I should be careful in the way I phrase my writing. Until today, I`d never thought about them being read that far into the future, that what I write could be the Hitory of the future, it`s a scary thought!!