The glorious Rae Earl on what to do with one’s teenage detritus:

As a lifelong hypochondriac, I have had a will since I was seven. Its conditions have changed over the years (I don’t think my brother wants my Smurf collection any more), but one codicil has remained unchanged since 1989. In the event of my death from a horrific tropical disease or a burst appendix, my best friend Mort must go to my house and burn all my diaries.

This seems faintly ludicrous now. After all, they are published and there’s a TV series based on them. Millions know that I have suffered from various mental health issues, that I rabidly masturbated with pillows and I once pretended I had a cardboard cock by using a toilet roll. I’m fine with all that, though. What I have to be careful of is the feelings of others.

Oh, the feelings of others, without which we could be so free. It’s interesting! Perhaps in the future our emails will be immediately released posthumously in a sort of Speaker for the Dead-esque celebration of transparency and understanding. One hopes not. I don’t have any physical diaries, I always missed three days and couldn’t bear the blank pages or feelings of failure and chucked them out, but, well, the internet.

“What will survive of us is blogs.” –Philip Larkin, in An Arundel Tomb.